Dear Duolingo: Why don't some words change over time

Dear Duolingo: Why don't some words change over time?

There's a reason these are the most stubborn words in the world!

Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for learners. Catch up on past installments here.

Hi, everyone! We're back this week with one of your favorite topics: language change! And today's question has a very specific answer. Let's take a look

Our question this week:

What Apples and Oranges has noticed is that even for related languages, some words seem to resist change more than others. This is indeed a pattern we see around the world, that languages hold on to some words and their specific meanings and pronunciations more than they do to other words.

There's a good reason for this-and you'll be able to see it for yourself.

Why words change over time

Before we get to the words themselves, it's useful to remember that all languages change over time: Words can get new meanings or lose old ones, how we pronounce something changes in tiny ways until we might not even recognize it centuries later, what was once slang becomes the norm, etc.

Contact between different language communities can lead to all kinds of linguistic phenomena, like lingua francas, new creole languages, and many other kinds of borrowings and blending.

But even in the absence of external factors, some words just retain their meanings and even their pronunciations over time more than others… and here they are!

The Swadesh list: the most stubborn words in the world

This pattern has been known to linguists for a long time: Some words stay pretty constant while others are subject to more dramatic changes. Words that have more stable meanings tend to fall into two categories: function words and basic vocabulary.

• Function words are words tied to the language's grammar and often have meanings that are hard to explain, and they include articles (a, the, those) and pronouns (we, yours, him).
• Basic vocabulary includes words that are fundamental to life and culture (not necessarily those that learners would consider "basic"). Basic vocabulary covers family and home terms, foods and nature, daily activities, etc.

One linguist who studied basic vocabulary patterns was Morris Swadesh, who created what is now known as the Swadesh list: "core" vocabulary that is resistant to change over time. This doesn't mean that the basic, core words most tied to our daily lives and culture never change, only that they seem to be less likely to be borrowed and replaced and that their meanings stay more consistent over time.

Here are some words from the Swadesh list. You can see how similar today's English words are to the ones we were using in Old English a thousand years ago! Compare them to the modern equivalents in other Germanic languages-a group of related languages that includes English-and you'll see that these words have changed pretty little since they evolved from a common language thousands of years ago.

Modern English	Old English	German	Swedish	Dutch
man	mann	Mann	man	man
name	nama	Name	namn	naam
blood	blód	Blut	blod	bloed
hair	hær	Haar	hår	haar
nose	nasu	Nase	näsa	neus
hand	hand	Hand	hand	hand
hear	híeran	hören	höra	horen
come	cuman	kommen	komma	komen
long	lang	lang	lång	lang
moon	mōna	Mond	månen	maan

Note: The Old English examples may differ from variants found in different Old English texts and across dictionaries. This is especially true since there wasn't a standardized spelling system, and different Old English dialects would have had slightly different pronunciations, too!

Common sound changes hide relatedness

If you know a little bit about common sound changes, and especially those that happened in Northern Germanic languages vs West Germanic languages and those between German and other West Germanic languages, even more relationships between core vocabulary becomes apparent. For example, these sound pairs share some similarities in where or how they're produced in the mouth, so it's common for one to become the other in different related languages:

• f ~ v
• p ~ f
• th ~ t ~ d
• s ~ z

You'll also see more complicated sound changes in some of the examples where the German "s" sound (spelled ß in Fuß) corresponds to "t" in the other languages.

Modern English	Old English	German	Swedish	Dutch
foot	fōt	Fuß	fot	voet
heart	heorte	Herz	hjärta	hart
drink	drincan	trinken	dricka	drinken
eat	etan	essen	äta	eten
see	séon	sehen	se	zien
sleep	slæpan	schlafen	sova	slapen
sit	sittan	sitzen	sitta	zitten
sun	sunna	Sonne	solen	zon
water	wæter	Wasser	vatten	water
earth	eorþe	Erde	jorden	aarde

Smaller meaning changes hide relatedness

There are also examples of core vocabulary that have undergone relatively small meaning changes-and they reveal even more similarities across languages!

Here are some words from the Swadesh list where some examples seem pretty different from the others… until you know what the related English word is! For example, in the first row, can you guess an English word related to German wissen, Swedish veta, and Dutch weten?

Modern English	Old English	German	Swedish	Dutch
know	cnawan / cunnan	wissen / kennen	veta	weten
walk	gan	gehen / laufen	gå	lopen
dog	hund	Hund	hund	hond
bone	baan	Knochen	ben	bot
leaf	leáf	Blatt	blad	blad
tree	treów	Baum	träd	boom
bird	bridd	Vogel	fågel	vogel
fire	fyr (also brand)	Feuer	eld / brand	vuur

Were you able to guess the English word related to the other Germanic words? Here are the answers:

• wise: the English word wise is related to the Germanic words for "to know"
• go: the English word go is related to the Germanic words for "to walk"
• hound: the English word hound comes from a Germanic word that meant all dogs, not just a particular breed
• knuckle: the English word knuckle comes from the diminutive of a Germanic word for "bone"
• blade: the English word blade, as in blade of grass, comes from the Germanic word for "leaf"
• beam: the English word beam, as in a supportive piece of wood used to build structures, comes from the Germanic word for "tree"
• fowl: the English word fowl comes from the general Germanic word for "bird"
• brand: the English word brand, as in to burn an identifying mark on something, comes from the Germanic word for "fire"

In these cases, the old Germanic word didn't remain our default English word-but its meaning didn't wander very far over the centuries!

Could this just be language families?

Of course, related languages share lots of vocabulary, since they inherited words from their common ancestor languages. But other kinds of vocabulary can vary widely in related languages! The resistance to change is something particular to core vocabulary.

In this chart, you'll find more "modern" words that wouldn't have necessarily been a part of the vocabulary or culture of the Germanic language(s) that these four example languages came from. There are still often similarities between languages-especially if they borrowed the English word or if they both got their word from another language (like French).

Modern English	German	Swedish	Dutch
apartment	Wohnung	lägenhet	appartement
elevator / lift	Aufzug	hiss	lift
hospital	Krankenhaus	sjukhus	ziekenhuis
room	Zimmer	rum	kamer
butterfly	Schmetterling	fjäril	vlinder
island	Insel	ö	eiland
potato	Kartoffel	potatis	aardappel
bicycle	Fahrrad	cykel	fiets
uncle	Onkel	farbror / morbror	oom
language	Sprache	språk	taal

Stubborn words with long histories

Language is a core part of human history and culture, so it's not surprising that many of the words we use the most are preserved over time!

For more answers to your language change questions, get in touch with us by emailing [email protected].

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