So all the previous posts were written during a single long plane ride. What am I going to write about now?

I’m always somewhat interested in how many elements of ancient languages can be seen retained by modern ones. The ancient Near East god Mot was the god of Death, and his name is strikingly similar to the modern Arabic word موت (mowt) meaning death. The words Jesus said on the cross (eli eli lama sabachthani) are conjugated much in the way that modern Arabic is as well. If “el” means god then “eli” means my god, and any modern Arabic speaker would understand if even if they would use a different noun for god. I learned to say lematha for “why” but lama seems recognizable as لما which would also mean why, and sabachthani is conjugated just as a modern word would be, except with a “tha” instead of a “ta”.

It’s somewhat striking to be able to find little bits and pieces of old languages that are still legible in this way, and it shows us just how much languages stay the same even if they change. Perhaps it’s also interesting to me because as a native English speaker I feel like we’re used to thinking about our language as being very very “new.” The “English” of Beowulf seems almost unrecognizable to a modern and bored schoolchildren still struggle with Shakespeare. Yet occasionally some ancient bits of Latin, German or French can be seen to contain a word or two which is recognizable due to its English descendant.

It’s an idea I’ve toyed with but don’t have any data for: is it measurable how fast languages changed in the past and are changing today? Has English changed particularly quickly in the last millennium, or are we English speakers just filled with exceptionalism? And if it did change faster than other languages, has that change slowed due to global English? Or has it sped up? I would hazard a guess that all languages have slowed their rate of change since the invention of movable type and later the radio. Moveable type fossilized many spellings and letter shapes that had before been more fluid. And radio itself probably smoothed out the differences between accents as everyone heard many of the same songs, the same broadcasts, the same speeches no matter where they lived. Likewise the ability to record our speech gives us a link to the past that other generations don’t have, and those influences probably slow the changing of our language even more.

I’d like to know how the rate of change of languages is calculated, and how that rate has changed, and what changes it. When the Greeks conquered the Near East they brought with them a lingua franca that would later be known as “Koine.” Did an influx of Near Eastern speakers cause this language to change faster than if it had stayed in Greece? Or did its status as a language for everyone cause it to change more slowly, since everyone had to understand each other?

If anyone knows where I can learn more about this, hit me up.