Exploratorium Magazine: Language: Related Languages

Volume 23, Number 1

E ach column in the table below represents the numbers 1 to 10 in a different language. Read the words and decide which languages you think belong to a common family. Then decide which two languages are the most closely related.

A	B	C	D	E	R
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten	unus duo tres quattuor quinque sex septem octo novem decem	ichi ni san shi go roku nana hachi kyu ju	heis duo treis tettares pente heks hepta okto ennea deka	um dois tres quatro cinco seis sete oito nove dez	ekas dva trayas catvaras panca sat sapta asta nava dasa

T he languages, from left to right, are English, Latin, Japanese, Classical Greek, Portuguese, and Sanskrit. (Japanese, Greek, and Sanskrit have been transliterated — written in the Roman alphabet.) You probably noticed some similarities among all of the languages except Japanese. In fact, all except Japanese belong to the Indo-European family. Latin (column B) and Portuguese (column E) are the most closely related; Portuguese is one of the Romance languages that's derived from Latin.

U sing the comparative method, linguists examine words from two or more languages, concentrating on words that are likely to endure over time. Numbers, personal pronouns, basic verbs such as to be , and basic nouns such as milk are the beginning of any comparative study. Linguists look for similarities - but they also look for regular differences. In the table, for example, notice that the t in the English "two" and "ten" corresponds to d in the other Indo-European languages. It turns out that this change from d to t is part of a consonant sound shift that distinguishes the Germanic languages, including English, from their Indo-European relatives.



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