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By Jam Ham
Among etymologists, it is common knowledge that people borrow words from other languages, gradually change the meanings of utterances, and make other changes in their language based on how their society and culture are configured.
Take the English words beef, pork, cow, and pig for example. Beef and pork, which are the culinary names for the meat of a cow and a pig, were loaned from Old Norman French sometime after the 10th Century, while farmers in England retained the English words cow and pig to refer to their livestock. This reflects the demographics of the social classes in 11th Century Great Britain where the aristocracy spoke Anglo-Norman French and the lower class spoke an older variety of English.
Words in different languages can also hint at the recent histories of different cultural groups. In Italian, for instance, the word pomodoro, “tomato,” comes from pomo d’oro, “apple of gold,” probably because people in Italy first received yellow tomatoes instead of red ones.
However, in using language to unravel cultural histories, historical linguists take this to the next level. The words we retain in our language, as well as how such words relate to other words in other languages, may actually enlighten us on cultural and traditional norms of the past!
Proto-Languages and Language Change
Historical linguists often create proto-languages, linguistic reconstructions of the ancestors of languages. As languages often evolve and diverge through sound changes, linguists often look for sound correspondences (similarities in sounds) in order to determine what languages most likely descended from the same ancestor. From there, linguists are able to make approximate reconstructions of such sounds to create the sound inventory (the sounds in a language) of a proto-language.
Let’s take an example. Below are the translations of the word “father” in four languages:
English: father
Latin: pater
Ancient Greek: πᾰτήρ (patḗr)
Sanskrit: पितृ (pitŕ)
By looking at these four words, along with the translations of “father” in a variety of Indo-European languages, we can tell that these are in some way related. Assessing what sound changes could have happened, historical linguists may determine that “father” in Proto-Indo-European (will be referred to as PIE onward), the reconstructed language of the prehistoric Proto-Indo-European people, might have been ph₂tḗr.
Because these four words are deemed related, we call these cognates. False cognates — words that seem like cognates but come from different sources, like English day and Spanish día — do often exist. Proto-languages are no exception to receiving loan words, so linguists often note ambiguities in such reconstructions as sometimes we may not have sufficient sources to trace a word back to its origins.
What Cognates Tell Us
Reconstructable words, along with archaeological evidence, allow historical linguists to assume an array of cultural aspects of prehistoric peoples. For example, by looking at PIE words such as *ǵr̥h₂nóm, “grain,” and *gʷṓws, “cow,” we may presume that the society back then was mainly agricultural, having words for livestock, farming tools, and domesticated plant life. Many masculine kinship terms in PIE and some other words denoting societal structures hint that the community was probably patriarchal and patrilineal.
Words that are retained are also often of cultural significance to the descendant peoples. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian — the reconstructed ancestor of the Malayo-Polynesian languages such as Tagalog, Malay, Malagasy, and Hawaiian — contains a multitude of reconstructible words for several aquatic species such as *bulan-bulan, “Indo-Pacific tarpon,” *tiqaw, “goatfish,” and *qutun, “green jobfish,” reflecting the maritime cultures many Malayo-Polynesian language speakers have today.
What the Past Says About Today
Understanding how languages evolve and how words are moved across different languages unveils a plethora of cultural nuances. For proto-language reconstructions, this may uncover undocumented cultural and societal configurations among prehistoric peoples. With thorough analysis and a variety of methods, studies in proto-languages and language evolution also allow us to unearth the possible cross-cultural relationships that prehistoric peoples had with others in their time.
Using some of the same methods in analyzing relationships between languages may also help us uncover today’s cultural nuances as we are provided with much more sociocultural context. The words we use today can tell us a lot about our prehistoric past as shown in the examples above. Observing the way our languages evolved in the past also tells us how today’s languages change and differ in relation to today’s societies, cultures, and their organization.
What can I do with this?
Aside from formal linguistic research, casual language learners can also use this in their learning process. For instance, identifying the relationships between languages can help with recognizing cognates, and in turn, understanding the cultural significance of certain words. But we’re curious about how you’ll apply this knowledge to your language-learning process. Let us know what you discover on our Discord server or Social Media!
About Jam Ham
22-year-old Filipino-American and enthusiast in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics. Speaks English and Tagalog, and is learning French at the moment. Likes hiking and traveling and would like to explore other countries someday.