Please don't hate on me for including controversial fringe theories. I know all the hatred against Nostratic, Altaic, Eurasiatic and even Khoisan. Keep in mind that semantic change can happen; like if you're Arabic and you notice that the word إِنَاس (ʔinās) doesn't mean one, but means a human, that's right, but it evolved from proto semitic ʔināš-, which also means a human, but could've gone through a semantic change of "one" to "one (who...)" to "person". Even if you were to comment how much you're against all of this there are probably several other people demonstrating their opinions on that. Thank you for understanding.
Incorrect. Languages degrade, they do not "evolve". It is a tool for thinking, not communication, it is what seperates other lifeforms from humans. The mere fact that translation is even possible underlies a common origin for all languages, orca whales seperated from their birth pod are unable to communicate with other whales if they get adopted, they are only able to track the others visually. Arabic is the only corollary to proto-semitic, infact the whole semitic classification is nonsensical for anyone with a somewhat functioning mass between their ears. hebrew, aramaic, rest of madeup dialect continua only have 22 letters of the 29 protosemitic letters Arabic has all 29. The difference betweeen Arabic and the other creoles and Pidgin is the same as that between Latin and pig latin or italian. Arabic is written in an alphabetic script that consists of 28 consonants and three long vowels. For example: قرأ زيد كتابا qaraʾa zayd-un kitāb-an Zayd read a book This sentence is composed of three words: qaraʾa (he read), zayd-un (Zayd), and kitāb-an (a book). The word order is verb-subject-object, which is different from English but similar to Proto-Semitic and Akkadian. The word zayd-un has a suffix -un that indicates the nominative case, which is equivalent to "the" in English or "-u" in Akkadian. The word kitāb-an has a suffix -an that indicates the accusative case, which is equivalent to "a" in English or "-a" in Akkadian. Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed ancestor of all Semitic languages. It is not written in any script, but linguists use a system of symbols to represent its sounds. For example: ʔanāku bēlīya ʔašū I am his lord This sentence is composed of three words: ʔanāku (I), bēlīya (my lord), and ʔašū (he). The word order is subject-object-verb, which is different from English but similar to Arabic and Akkadian. The word bēlīya has a suffix 'ya' that indicates possession, which is equivalent to "my" in English or "-ī" in Arabic. The word ʔašū has a prefix ʔa- that indicates the third person singular masculine pronoun, which is equivalent to "he" in English or "huwa" in Arabic. I'll compare Arabic with Proto-Semitic and show how Arabic preserves features that are lost or changed in other Semitic languages. Classical Arabic has largest phonemic inventories among semitic languages. It has 28 consonants (29 with Hamza) and 6 vowels (3 short and 3 long). Some of these sounds are rare or absent in other semitic languages. For example, - Classical Arabic has two pharyngeal consonants /ʕ/ (ع) and /ħ/ (ح). These sounds are found only in some semitic languages (Hebrew and Amharic), but not in others (Akkadian and Aramaic). - Classical Arabic has two emphatic consonants /sˤ/ (ص) and /dˤ/ (ض) These sounds are found only in some semitic languages (Hebrew and Amharic), but not in others (Akkadian and Aramaic). - Classical Arabic has two glottal consonants /ʔ/ (ء) and /h/ (ه), which are produced by opening and closing the glottis ). Akkadian has lost the glottal stop /ʔ/, while Aramaic has lost both the glottal stop and the glottal fricative /h/. - Classical Arabic has six vowel phonemes /a/, /i/, /u/, /æ /, /e/, /o/, which can be short or long. Akkadian has only three vowel phonemes /a/, /i/, /u/, which can be short or long, while Aramaic has only two vowel phonemes /a/ and /i/, which can be short or long. |Classical Arabic | 28 consonants, 29 with Hamza and 6 vowels; some consonants are emphatic or pharyngealized; some vowels are marked with diacritics | Complex system of word formation based on roots and patterns; roots are sequences of consonants that carry the basic meaning of a word; patterns are sequences of vowels and affixes that modify the meaning and function of a word | Flexible word order, but VSO is most common; SVO is also possible; subject and object are marked by case endings (-u for nominative, -a for accusative, -i for genitive); verb agrees with subject in person, number, and gender; verb has different forms for different moods and aspects | | Akkadian | 22 consonants and 3 vowels; some consonants are glottalized or palatalized; vowels are not marked | Similar system, but with different roots and patterns; some roots have more than three consonants; some patterns have infixes or reduplication | Fixed word order of SVO; subject and object are not marked by case endings, but by prepositions or word order; verb agrees with subject in person, number, and gender; verb has different forms for different tenses and aspects | | Aramaic | 22 consonants and 3 vowels (later variants have more); no emphatic or pharyngealized consonants (except in some dialects); vowels are not marked (except in later variants such as Syriac) | Simple system of word formation based on prefixes and suffixes; some roots or patterns exist, but are less productive than in Arabic or Akkadian | Let's start with a simple sentence: ## The house is big Arabic: البيتُ كبيرٌ al-bayt-u kabīr-un Proto-Semitic: *ʔal-bayt-u kabīr-u Hebrew: הבית גדול ha-bayit gadol Akkadian: bītum rabûm Amharic: ቤቱ ገደሉ betu gedelu As can be seen, Arabic and Proto-Semitic have the same word order (noun-adjective), the same definite article (al-), and the same case endings (-u for nominative). Hebrew and Akkadian have lost the case endings and changed the definite article (ha- and -um respectively). Amharic has changed the word order (adjective-noun) and the definite article (u-). But Arabic is not only similar to Proto-Semitic, it is also pre-Semitic, meaning that it is the original form of Semitic before it split into different branches. This is because Arabic preserves many features that are not found in any other Semitic language, but are found in other Afro-Asiatic languages, such as Egyptian and Berber. These features include: - The definite article al-, which is derived from the demonstrative pronoun *ʔal- 'that'. This article is unique to Arabic among Semitic languages, but it is similar to the article n- in Berber and the article p-, t-, n- in Egyptian. - The dual number for nouns and verbs, which is marked by the suffix -ān or -ayn. This number is rare in other Semitic languages, but it is common in other Afro-Asiatic languages, such as Egyptian and Berber. - The imperfective prefix t- for verbs, which indicates the second person singular feminine or third person plural feminine. This prefix is unique to Arabic among Semitic languages, but it is similar to the prefix t- in Berber and Egyptian. - The passive voice for verbs, which is marked by the infix t between the first and second root consonants. This voice is unique to Arabic among Semitic languages, but it is similar to the passive voice in Egyptian and Berber. Finally, a more complex sentence: The letter was written with a pen. Arabic: كُتِبَتِ الرِّسَالَةُ بِالقَلَمِ kutiba-t al-risāla-t-u bi-l-qalam-i Proto-Semitic: *kutiba-t ʔal-risāla-t-u bi-l-qalam-i Hebrew: המכתב נכתב בעט ha-michtav niktav ba-et Akkadian: šipram šapāru bēlum Egyptian: sḏm.n.f p-ẖry m rnp.t Berber: tturra-t tibratin s uccen Here, Arabic and Proto-Semitic have the same word order (verb-subject-object), the same passive voice marker (-t-), the same definite article (al-), and the same preposition (bi-). Hebrew has changed the word order (subject-verb-object), lost the passive voice marker, changed the definite article (ha-) and the preposition (ba-). Akkadian has changed the word order (object-subject-verb), lost the passive voice marker, changed the definite article (-um) and the preposition (bēlum). hbrew was considered dead by 0 C.E. time, hence "Aramaic" was spoken Now how is it that the Qur'an came thousands of years in a language that is lexically, syntactically, phonemically, and semantically older than the oldest recorded writing? Now how is it that the Qur'an came thousands of years later in an alphabet that had never been recorded before, and in the highest form the language had ever taken? God did bring down the Qur’an, Mohamed is his Messenger.
Officer Samson, may your cat Lexi rest in peace and may you reunite with her in heaven. Happy birthday to you and I hope all is well right now. Good luck on everything!!!
I am so sorry for Lexi. RIP. I can only imagine what you have went through. Please take your time to grieve her. God bless you, and her. Also, on a whole another note, happy birthday!
Indo-Hittite is hardly controversial. It's usually called Indo-European though, and what you call Indo-European is "Classical" Indo-European. Calling it Indo-Hittite is just a way of emphasizing just how early Anatolian (with its most prominent member the Hittite language) broke off and how important Hittite is for the reconstruction of PIE. Of course these fringe theories about Proto-World, Nostratic, Boreal, etc. are rather unscientific but it's an interesting thing to think about. The thing you mentioned about *t being strengthened or whatever to *a for instance is just wrong. One could imagine a chain of soundshifts that could make it look like it happened but the description is just incorrect. There are so many things that the Proto-World theory assumes didn't happen: No language could have used a synonym instead of continuing the original word, borrowing couldn't have happened, no compounding/derivation/inflection, no reanalysis (like how rien means "nothing" in French but originally comes from Latin res, rem "thing" reanalyzed in negative contexts like to mean "nothing", like non video rem "I don't see a thing" > "I don't see nothing (anything)") or any other language change or linguistic strategy that we know exist and regularly drive language change - just sound changes. Given all the time that must have passed since Proto-World was spoken, it's unlikely that any two modern words from these "North World" and "South World" branches would at all resemble one another. There are common words we can barely reconstruct in PIE or even just in the Germanic branch which is just a measely 2 millennia old.
The "strengthening" of the *n was supposed to be like *n -> *nd -> *nd and the *a appearing was from a final aspirate voicing itself and becoming a vowel. Most of the words appear different enough to be inherited through sound change, but Nivkh appears to have probably been borrowed from Altaic. The reason I chose the word one is because it seems like a word that would not easily be forgotten and borrowed from another language due to how important it is; like water and bone. But one thing I noticed from hours of looking at words for the word one in countless languages, is that they almost all appear to feature a velar consonant. You are right about this though, with compounding and inflection, and that this video is not intended for serious historical linguistic work.
Yes!!! You can see just over a decade how the meaning of some words can change. It’s simply impossible to account for all the semantic shift and sound changes over 10s or 100s of thousands of years and accurately reconstruct something like this. It’s still a neat little project
No we're not. All of what is presented in the video is very much proven wrong. First mistake was to put anatolian outside of indo-european. Everything from then forward is pure bullshit
Very interesting as a thought exercise. I've often thought of doing this before. While it's almost certainly not how language evolved, it is important to test the possible relatedness of different language families.
I often wander, if all language and all life for that matter really arose from one single ancestor. I think it's nearly confirmed that H. sapiens had spoken language before migrating out of Africa. So, yes, their lang can be the original ancestral lang of our species. But we also got stuff from Neanderthals, Denisovans etc and we definitely invented completely new words, even isolated groups might have invented (almost) completely new language. Say during the last ice age, various isolated human population in different geographical location became critically low. It's very difficult to believe that these groups didn't invent a large part of their language and culture from scratch. As a biologist, I got bigger objection against LUCA. But it's so confusing whichever direction you go. However, I'm not the only one who thinks LUCA might not be a single organism or single species.
@@Aresydatch Babel is indeed post-Flood, but, according to the Bible, languages did not diverge before that: Genesis 8:13 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Genesis 11:1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. So, if we're talking biblically (which I assume you are), and since Genesis 11 comes AFTER Genesis 8, languages diverged AFTER the flood. Of course, if we're not talking biblically, many will say there was no flood and there was also no Tower of Babel, so the question becomes irrelevant!
If you give credit to the biblical story, languages appeared all at once, so there is no need for an evolution of tongues. Before that, only one language is supposed to have existed, comprehensible by all (Hebrew?)
Not attacking or anything but using unlikely and controversial theories like Nostratic and Altaic is risky. I know this isn't an actual academic video and its more just for fun but people online could think its actually for education and end up thinking that stuff like Nostratic and Altaic area actually fact when in reality they are far from it.
Well writing was only developped five thousand years ago, in contrast to the first language, which might've existed before cooking. When different languages develop writing, it is almost never alphabetic, which actually only happened once with proto-Sinaitic, ancestor to all modern alphabets, abjads and (maybe) abugidas, and descendant of Egyptian hieroglyphs. But if some how this happened, they would maybe based the symbols for sounds by choosing words to represent the sounds (like in proto-Sinaitic, for the ' sound, they chose the word 'alp, meaning "ox", and is the ancestor to greek alpha.)
Many congratulations for the 5k subscriber milestone! You earned it! :) This was super awesome! You can definitely tell that this was an extremely well-researched video! I really liked the animations and filter effects… I thought it was only the Indo-European and Uralic languages that have a pretty solid relationship and could tentatively be reconstructed using the comparative method, but this was a really interesting experiment in how far back we could take the practice! Keep up the great work! I don’t know why I didn’t do this before, but now you have *kwina more subscriber! I also wanted to say that I'm very sorry for your loss... Lexi seemed like a great cat.
Thanks for watching, I'm a fan of yours! Really happy you understood the concept and idea of video and got the right end of it! So surprised and hono(u)red to see this name in my comment section!
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Wow! Now that's absolutely an hono(u)r! I really appreciate it! Of course! As soon as I saw the familiar name pop up in my recommended page I knew it'd be a good one! If you keep this up you'll be a big name in no time! You have me inspired in both creativity and depth of research, so hats off to you! Weeks of development for a video is definitely a mark of a great UA-cam linguist... Excited to see what more you have in store!
If someone hates, they can raise it up a place where it goes deep, history must be told as it happened without woke agenda or dumb disagreements and there is no way anyone will ever figure out this mystery, theories are good addition to it.
firstly, it's already impressive enough you did this in SCRATCH. secondly, i like your theory about a language where pretty much EVERY OTHER LANGUAGE comes from. thirdly, great work as always!
Reading the comments I find that if we delete the linguistic borrowings of the English language from the Greek language communication would be impossible. Your own conclusions about what the language of languages is. PS Not only from English but from all the European languages of the West and East if we delete the linguistic loans from the Greek language it will not be possible to make a constructive and scientific dialogue.
Let me be clear, I DO NOT hate you for this, you did a good job and it obviously took a lot of effort, and I applaud you for your dedication and passion, it's definitely obvious - but PLEASE be more clear about this being speculation, especially reiterating the debated nature of the families you're basing this on, in the video. DO keep reading though, KEEP DOING THIS!!! May Lexi rest in peace
Spent the first minute thinking of how the (Afroasiatic Cushitic) Somali "kow" would fit into this. You can imagine my shock when K'ona popped up on the screen. Scary.
strangely enough, since these languages are absolutely not related in *this* exact way, many "unrelated" language families appear to have some sort of "K" sound in them.
I thought the Altaic language family is a very controversial topic in the Linguistics field. A lot of Linguists and people who love languages in general don’t like it, because according to most scholars. The Altaic language don’t make sense.
Yes, it is a very unconvincing theory that I don't beleive and isn't true. Most of the resemblences are all from early contact, thus influencing each others languages. It *is* a very controversial topic and will never be widely accepted in this community
Didn't you include both Sumerian and the Kartvelian language twice? You put both into Nostratic, and I know they're also both included in Dené-Caucasian.
But the last common ancestor of existing language families isn't necessarily the 1st language. If it could be reconstructed reliably enough, the last common ancestor could have sister languages which have only left a few loanwords and anomalous forms.
Honestly, it is very likely that we'd never be able to prove if there was ever a single human language. I'm not certain if we can even determine when the first human language was developed. Were the first humans to leave Africa already speaking some proto-language or have they not developed that yet? Either way, if some of them had a language, it wouldn't mean all of them did. By the time a language developed, there could have been thousands of humans spread across Africa and even into Eurasia by this time. Meaning, only groups of humans would have had this 1st proto-language. Because of this, I find it very unlikely that every language spoken by humans can be traced back to one single languages. Basically, the first problem is the time frame and distance this language would have to develop in. It would need to be spoken early enough where it would be spread to the other continents as humans left Africa. Besides that, the other problem is just how diverse human language is. Most of us use sounds produced by our mouth by vibrating our vocal cords. However, there are languages from Africa that use clicks made with a person's tongue. Maybe it's possible for these languages to be part of the same family as every other language but it's hard to imagine since most languages I'm familiar with are void of any clicks. These are the main reasons I don't think there's one single proto-language. I find it far more feasible that multiple groups of separate humans have developed their own languages which have mixed and shared proto-words. Yet, there is a possibility that some words can be traced back really far in human history. Even if there was a Proto-World language, it would have only had a fraction of the word count that modern languages have. This means that the majority of the words in even languages as far back as Proto Indo European would have developed within that group of people.
This video was not mainly to prove that all languages are related, but just as a single step in the process to reaching a better understanding on the origin of all languages, related or not. Recent studies have shown that language could've existed for about 1.3 million years, almost the age of Homo Sapiens itself. These clicking languages are Spoken by the Khoisan people, and with my research, it does seem that the Khoisan are the only people to have developed this interesting phoneme inventory. But nearly all sounds in a language need the tongue to produce them, some exeptions would be labials (b, f) laryngeals (h, ') so your last point isn't so concrete as /p/ could've became an implosive, and then to a bilabial click.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Homo sapiens only go back a couple hundred thousand years. 1.3 million is firmly in the 'homo erectus' range as far as I understand 😁
@@azazelssprachen I stand corrected. The reason I thought this was from a search I did a long while ago, on how old humans were. Interesting that language (could be) older than us!
dunno mb some deep machine analysis of wear-and-tear patterns on teeth in these ancient remains would be able to tell us something about their phonetics one day, who knows
Perhaps 'one' is one of the only words to have survived into most languages. Even so, most words that have survived into most languages have probably become untraceable due to semantic and phonetic Chang over a very, very, very long time.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 You might as well just treat it like a constructed language, and not as a serious work, but rather as a thought experiment; rather than as a claim of prehistoric accuracy, this has been the problem with most macrofamilies; they seemingly claim accuracy in the eyes of most linguists, and they begin to be treated as a bulwark of a nation, people, or identity, or; they become antithetical to such an association in the eyes of many or most. I think taking the considerations necessary, criticism and praise; you should work on such a project in secret, but I for one know just how hard an endeavor like this would be, considering that I myself am a hobby conlanger, but specifically within the confines of preexisting worldbuilding; so for me it's really just a means to help me flesh out that which went unexplained, and so; for this I think if such a project were to be undertaken, it should be thought of like this; ultimately as just a hobby to scratch a niche itch, but with taking the utmost care possible to ask some very serious questions.
so basically, you've reconstructed the hypothetical sound changes for one word; is it meant to prove anything or just be a fun thought experiement? if the latter, nice work
This defo doesn't prove anything. The time gap is so vast that there's ample room for creative liberties. You could connect any two words is any two languages if you're allowed enough sound changes, especially since sound changes have occasional irregularities. EDIT: "one" is a good example of an irregular evolution. Comparing these German and Old Norse words to their English cognates Stein stein stone Heim heim home Bein bein bone ein ein one "one" breaks the patttern. Even the spelling matches, but through what is likely dialect-mixing, what survived into standardized formed of English was the "one" spelling, but the "wun" pronunciation (probably from the same dialect whence our pronunciation of "some" and "done" came)
It was mainly the latter, a bit like my old "what if all languages were related" video. If it were to prove anything, it would be to show that there is a chance to connect more languages than we have 400 years ago, and to give some fringe theories a try, they might not be true, but they're all trying to get somewhere we can hopefully one day reach.
@@rgfellaThe pronunciation of “some” and “done” aren’t dialectal; they happened to essentially every single English dialect with a clear degree of regularity. Long vowels very frequently shortened before some fricatives and stops; the closer to the front of the mouth the more likely. “One” being pronounced as [wʌn] is the result of some southwest and midwest English dialects pronouncing long initial “o” with a “w.” Compare “woak,” a dialectal variant of “oak.”
@@tfan2222 Thanks for the clarification! I should've made it clear the "some" "done" thing was just speculation on my part. Your explanation of "one" was what I was trying to get at.
Dude, this is unrealistically cool, my friend and I have a theory that the Uralic languages may be related to Austric and Sino-Tibetan, I don't know how true it is, but according to our assumption, they may be transitional between Austric and Nostratic. A similar theory was published by Jinyi Gao, but rather about kinship with the Chinese. Do you think Gao's theory or my friend's theory has a right to life?
I wish I had friends like that... But give your theory some more research, more strong proof and evidence, establish sound changes, then maybe one day, you'll be able to coin the name of a new language family!
Woah that was umm ambitious. But I do believe in Altaic, I have a friend from Turkey and she says there are many links with Mongolic culture/language. For instance one of her relatives is named after a son of Genghis Khan
Most of the resemblences in between mongolic and Turkic are because of repeated contact, in which their terms would be borrowed through each language, explaining the similarities.
The video topic looks very interesting, but I couldn't hear what was being said as it was drowned out by loud background music so I gave up. I'm sure you have something interesting to say, and I'd like to have heard your words. I don't understand why so many UA-camrs do information videos where the words are drowned out by music. So frustrating.
Where would the mysterious "Sentinelese" language fit in your hypothesis (spoken by the Sentinel tribes who are hyper-agressive to outsiders who get close to Sentinel Island), and the somewhat related neighbouring almost extinct Andaman Onge, Jarawa languages? Did the split occur before the proto-North-World and Proto-South-World or during the two protos? Keep in mind that anthropologists say that the Sentinelese migrated from Africa to the Sentinel Islands at least 50 to 60 thousand years ago, so likely even earlier than the Trans New Guinea Papuan migration to PNG.
And wanted to hate it... I really wanted... But your reconstruction sounds almost plausible 😅 Interesting that you resorted to some transformation tricks such as vowel-consonant swap in some branches. It's a known processus in Slavic languages, for instance. You're number kwina.
Hello! I believe having a map for that would be very helpful, as it looks incredibly cool. If possible, could you please add a link to the map in the video or on a website? Thank you! 😊
While I personally don’t think this is especially scientific or realistic, I do still find it interesting. For quite some time now, I’ve been working on constructing a fictional world, and a key part of that world is the Urazheeatic super-clade of languages. It’s not technically a language family, as Urazheeatic is an unranked classification, divided into 3 taxa called realms: Boreourazheeatic, Australourazheeatic, and Archaeourazheeatic. And I do detect a little inspiration for the reconstructions of the more basal members of the Urazheeatic clade. For example, the Melscene language is one of the key elements of this world, being an important literary language. It’s linguistic taxonomy looks something like this: (unranked): Urazheeatic, realm: Boreourazheeatic, domain: Pikanic, sphere: Anselanic, phylum: Solo-Mallorienic, subphylum: Mallorienic, class: Orientales, order: Melsceno-Rakeetanic, family: Melsceno-Hayatil, subfamily: Melscelenic, tribe: West Melscenic, clan: Melsceno-Šíbě, genus: Melscenic proper, language: Melscene. The proto-language of Urazheeatic is OUCA, the Original Urazheeatic Common Ancestor; not to be confused with MRUCA, the Most Recent Urazheeatic Common Ancestor. In-universe historical linguists have only reconstructed words from MRUCA, and its descendants, but have not yet been able to reconstruct words in the OUCA language. Going from Melscene all the way back to MRUCA, I will now show you the word for one. The word for one in romanised Melscene is čón, from Old Melscene ċān, itself from Classical Melscene kyæen. The word for one in Classical Melscene comes from Šínmiňazik *kaen, from Ancient Melscene *kajin, which is from Proto-Melscenic *kain, itself from Proto-Melsceno-Rakeetanic *kainaz. This word is derived from Proto-Orientales *káynas, from Proto-Mallorienic *kóynos, from Proto-Solo-Mallorienic *ʰkóynos. The word *ʰkóynos came from the Proto-North-Anselanic word *kʰóɲsa, from Proto-Anselonic *k’ontya. This word comes from Proto-North-Pikanic *k’onty, from Proto-Pikanic *k’inty, from Proto-Arcto-Pikanic *kʷˈin̥tʲ, which came from Proto-Boreourazheeatic *kʷintʲa, itself from MRUCA *kʷinda.
Interesting... Old Melscene ċān and Old English ān, Proto-Melscenic *kain and P-West-Germanic *ain Proto-Melsceno-Rakeetanic *kainaz and PG *ainaz, *kóynos and PIE h1óynos, Arcto-Pikanic *kʷˈin̥tʲ and Borean *kʷˈin̥th, MRUCA *kʷinda and Proto-World kwina?? Urazheeatic and Eurasiatic? Is it just me or is this just a tiny bit sus... I'm working on a fictional word and the word for one is uu.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Wow, I actually did not expect you to reply to this comment. Melscene is a conlang that I based a lot on English and Chinese languages, and I based the Mallorienic languages nearly entirely on the Indo-European family, in terms of the sound changes that characterise the linguistic phylum. I absolutely based the in-universe evolution of the word for one on the evolution you presented here, because I thought it was interesting. If it all appears sus, that would be the reason why it does. Funnily enough though, the parallel of Urazheeatic and Eurasiatic was entirely accidental. Urazheeatic is actually supposed to be pronounced as /jəˈɹɑː.ʒiɑtɪk/, and derived from the name of the main archipelago in this world and the country that takes up most of it, Urazhee, pronounced as /jəˈɹɑː.ʒiː/. The in-universe etymology of Urazhee is from Melscene Urážé /uˈɾaːʒeː/, meaning Urazheean (from the country of Urazhee); I don’t actually know how I came up with the name Urazhee. Also, the word for one in Melscenic languages is considered irregular, as it loses the nominative ending (*-az), instead of omitting the final z like they usually would. An example of an etymologically regular word in Melscene is Šíbě /ˈʃiːbɜː/, from Old Melscene Sċība /ˈʃˠiː.bɑ/, from Proto-Melscenic *skība /ˈs̠kiːbɑ/, from Proto-Melsceno-Rakeetanic *skībaz /ˈs̠kībɑz̠/, itself from Proto-Mallorienic *(s)kéybʰos /(s̠)kéj.bʰos̠/. Most of the vocabulary in Melscene is also quite different from that of English; for example, šâng /ˈʃæŋ/ means star. I apologise if this all comes off as a cheap knockoff of real life, or as some kind of insult to you. I legitimately poured much effort and passion into this project. Finally, I wish you a lot of fun on your project where the word for one is uu.
@@toubi4316 I was doing something extremely similar, where I made a conlang based on Onomatopoeias and I plan to evolve this language in countless ways across my world. For the Eurasiatic thing, I read it as /jɚɹeɪʒiætɪk/, the same way the narrator pronounced it in the video. And I'm also basing most of it on real life, like in the beginning they travel to the east side of the world, then to the Americas. (as "Amerind") Keep working on this world and I hope to see more of it!
@@toubi4316 But, I think your evolution is relied a bit too much on PIE and Germanic. I love this thing, but just a little constructive criticism to help you :)
Well, I connected Proto Afroasiatic *ʔîns- to k'intS, and *ʔîns- (" *one* , someone, person" (indef. pron.)) would probably be ancestral to proto semitic ʔināš- ("human") and then Arabic إِنْسَان (ʔinsān). Maybe I could be the origin of *ʔaḥad- one day...
@ oh that makes more sense. i speak hebrew so, to me, achad (אחד) is more common for one. excuse my forwardness, do you have a discord or anything you can talk on (if ur comfortable)?
Thanks for the video. Well, the first tribe that left Africa must have spoken something. Maybe one could follow another route and look for similarities in languages that have been isolated from the rest of the world for a long time. In East Tasmanian languages, frog is "rallah" while in the Great Andamanese Language, it is "phatkaa" Both seem to be onomatopoeic, imitations of a frog's call. So the first word for frog (assuming there was one such word) might also be so.
*Þiudiskōniz tungōniz isti ainanǭ skaunijammai tungōni... That's my terrible try to make a sentence in proto germanic. I wish I could understand nominatives, genitives and that stuff.
God, I do think that this makes sense. Hopefully more linguistic evidence arises to support your claim that the Indo-European language family is not its own isolate but is actually part of a hyper family.
so i've been trying to make some of my own reconstructions but it's kinda hard to see some parts of the tree especially when you uploaded this video in 720p so can you please link an image or the original scratch project so i can clearly view the tree?
ok: scratch.mit.edu/projects/1050272702/editor but what reconstructons are you making? Because I already made *one* for "two" "foot" and "water" as a heads up.
@@janmusi well here it is again I guess: scratch.mit.edu/projects/1050272702/ please note that I have already recontructed “two” “foot” and “water”. What are you planning on reconstructing?
I thought so, but North and South World undeniably point to *kwina. Maybe it could have been an onomatopoeia for hitting a single rock on something? Like klang?
Especially the various language charts are interesting among which the proto world is intriguing. However the video quality is low. Could you upload all the charts anywhere to watch them better?
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Please don't hate on me for including controversial fringe theories. I know all the hatred against Nostratic, Altaic, Eurasiatic and even Khoisan.
Keep in mind that semantic change can happen; like if you're Arabic and you notice that the word إِنَاس (ʔinās) doesn't mean one, but means a human, that's right, but it evolved from proto semitic ʔināš-, which also means a human, but could've gone through a semantic change of "one" to "one (who...)" to "person".
Even if you were to comment how much you're against all of this there are probably several other people demonstrating their opinions on that. Thank you for understanding.
Omg bro congrats on the 5k!!!!!
I love your vids and I hope you continue making them
Incorrect. Languages degrade, they do not "evolve". It is a tool for thinking, not communication, it is what seperates other lifeforms from humans. The mere fact that translation is even possible underlies a common origin for all languages, orca whales seperated from their birth pod are unable to communicate with other whales if they get adopted, they are only able to track the others visually.
Arabic is the only corollary to proto-semitic, infact the whole semitic classification is nonsensical for anyone with a somewhat functioning mass between their ears. hebrew, aramaic, rest of madeup dialect continua only have 22 letters of the 29 protosemitic letters Arabic has all 29. The difference betweeen Arabic and the other creoles and Pidgin is the same as that between Latin and pig latin or italian.
Arabic is written in an alphabetic script that consists of 28 consonants and three long vowels. For example:
قرأ زيد كتابا
qaraʾa zayd-un kitāb-an
Zayd read a book
This sentence is composed of three words: qaraʾa (he read), zayd-un (Zayd), and kitāb-an (a book). The word order is verb-subject-object, which is different from English but similar to Proto-Semitic and Akkadian. The word zayd-un has a suffix -un that indicates the nominative case, which is equivalent to "the" in English or "-u" in Akkadian. The word kitāb-an has a suffix -an that indicates the accusative case, which is equivalent to "a" in English or "-a" in Akkadian.
Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed ancestor of all Semitic languages. It is not written in any script, but linguists use a system of symbols to represent its sounds. For example:
ʔanāku bēlīya ʔašū
I am his lord
This sentence is composed of three words: ʔanāku (I), bēlīya (my lord), and ʔašū (he). The word order is subject-object-verb, which is different from English but similar to Arabic and Akkadian. The word bēlīya has a suffix 'ya' that indicates possession, which is equivalent to "my" in English or "-ī" in Arabic. The word ʔašū has a prefix ʔa- that indicates the third person singular masculine pronoun, which is equivalent to "he" in English or "huwa" in Arabic.
I'll compare Arabic with Proto-Semitic and show how Arabic preserves features that are lost or changed in other Semitic languages.
Classical Arabic has largest phonemic inventories among semitic languages. It has 28 consonants (29 with Hamza) and 6 vowels (3 short and 3 long). Some of these sounds are rare or absent in other semitic languages. For example,
- Classical Arabic has two pharyngeal consonants /ʕ/ (ع) and /ħ/ (ح). These sounds are found only in some semitic languages (Hebrew and Amharic), but not in others (Akkadian and Aramaic).
- Classical Arabic has two emphatic consonants /sˤ/ (ص) and /dˤ/ (ض) These sounds are found only in some semitic languages (Hebrew and Amharic), but not in others (Akkadian and Aramaic).
- Classical Arabic has two glottal consonants /ʔ/ (ء) and /h/ (ه), which are produced by opening and closing the glottis ). Akkadian has lost the glottal stop /ʔ/, while Aramaic has lost both the glottal stop and the glottal fricative /h/.
- Classical Arabic has six vowel phonemes /a/, /i/, /u/, /æ /, /e/, /o/, which can be short or long. Akkadian has only three vowel phonemes /a/, /i/, /u/, which can be short or long, while Aramaic has only two vowel phonemes /a/ and /i/, which can be short or long.
|Classical Arabic | 28 consonants, 29 with Hamza and 6 vowels; some consonants are emphatic or pharyngealized; some vowels are marked with diacritics | Complex system of word formation based on roots and patterns; roots are sequences of consonants that carry the basic meaning of a word; patterns are sequences of vowels and affixes that modify the meaning and function of a word | Flexible word order, but VSO is most common; SVO is also possible; subject and object are marked by case endings (-u for nominative, -a for accusative, -i for genitive); verb agrees with subject in person, number, and gender; verb has different forms for different moods and aspects |
| Akkadian | 22 consonants and 3 vowels; some consonants are glottalized or palatalized; vowels are not marked | Similar system, but with different roots and patterns; some roots have more than three consonants; some patterns have infixes or reduplication | Fixed word order of SVO; subject and object are not marked by case endings, but by prepositions or word order; verb agrees with subject in person, number, and gender; verb has different forms for different tenses and aspects |
| Aramaic | 22 consonants and 3 vowels (later variants have more); no emphatic or pharyngealized consonants (except in some dialects); vowels are not marked (except in later variants such as Syriac) | Simple system of word formation based on prefixes and suffixes; some roots or patterns exist, but are less productive than in Arabic or Akkadian |
Let's start with a simple sentence:
## The house is big
Arabic:
البيتُ كبيرٌ
al-bayt-u kabīr-un
Proto-Semitic:
*ʔal-bayt-u kabīr-u
Hebrew:
הבית גדול
ha-bayit gadol
Akkadian:
bītum rabûm
Amharic:
ቤቱ ገደሉ
betu gedelu
As can be seen, Arabic and Proto-Semitic have the same word order (noun-adjective), the same definite article (al-), and the same case endings (-u for nominative). Hebrew and Akkadian have lost the case endings and changed the definite article (ha- and -um respectively). Amharic has changed the word order (adjective-noun) and the definite article (u-).
But Arabic is not only similar to Proto-Semitic, it is also pre-Semitic, meaning that it is the original form of Semitic before it split into different branches. This is because Arabic preserves many features that are not found in any other Semitic language, but are found in other Afro-Asiatic languages, such as Egyptian and Berber. These features include:
- The definite article al-, which is derived from the demonstrative pronoun *ʔal- 'that'. This article is unique to Arabic among Semitic languages, but it is similar to the article n- in Berber and the article p-, t-, n- in Egyptian.
- The dual number for nouns and verbs, which is marked by the suffix -ān or -ayn. This number is rare in other Semitic languages, but it is common in other Afro-Asiatic languages, such as Egyptian and Berber.
- The imperfective prefix t- for verbs, which indicates the second person singular feminine or third person plural feminine. This prefix is unique to Arabic among Semitic languages, but it is similar to the prefix t- in Berber and Egyptian.
- The passive voice for verbs, which is marked by the infix t between the first and second root consonants. This voice is unique to Arabic among Semitic languages, but it is similar to the passive voice in Egyptian and Berber.
Finally, a more complex sentence: The letter was written with a pen.
Arabic:
كُتِبَتِ الرِّسَالَةُ بِالقَلَمِ
kutiba-t al-risāla-t-u bi-l-qalam-i
Proto-Semitic:
*kutiba-t ʔal-risāla-t-u bi-l-qalam-i
Hebrew:
המכתב נכתב בעט
ha-michtav niktav ba-et
Akkadian:
šipram šapāru bēlum
Egyptian:
sḏm.n.f p-ẖry m rnp.t
Berber:
tturra-t tibratin s uccen
Here, Arabic and Proto-Semitic have the same word order (verb-subject-object), the same passive voice marker (-t-), the same definite article (al-), and the same preposition (bi-). Hebrew has changed the word order (subject-verb-object), lost the passive voice marker, changed the definite article (ha-) and the preposition (ba-). Akkadian has changed the word order (object-subject-verb), lost the passive voice marker, changed the definite article (-um) and the preposition (bēlum).
hbrew was considered dead by 0 C.E. time, hence "Aramaic" was spoken
Now how is it that the Qur'an came thousands of years in a language that is lexically, syntactically, phonemically, and semantically older than the oldest recorded writing?
Now how is it that the Qur'an came thousands of years later in an alphabet that had never been recorded before, and in the highest form the language had ever taken?
God did bring down the Qur’an, Mohamed is his Messenger.
@@ranro7371 sallalahu alayhi wa sallam brother. I’m glad to see another person speaking about my language
Where can we read full chart? I barely saw anything in the end of the video.
If only the Finno-Korean Hyperwar didn't happen.
sending with love from uruk sumer, protectorate of the great hwan empire🍆🍆🍆
Ayo,is that real? 🤯🤯🤯
@@felixbonnet6639 Yes my 69th times great-grandfather died in the laser trenches of Lemuria
@@felixbonnet6639 my great-grandfather was an ambassador for kang wewuz I of three kangian states of wewuz, kangz, and shiet
@@santi2683 Mine was created for it. Some say super soldiers from those times could still be alive somewhere.
“Tell me master, is it possible to learn this dark hyperspeculative reconstructive art?”
“Not from Simon Roper.”
Protoworld neanderthal pidgin when?
Do you mean Basque-Icelandic pidgin?
@@Idkpleasejustletmechangeitno. What are you talking about
Why is the number 1 spelled one? No w sound in spelling .
@zeenohaquo7970 It used to be pronounced "own", as it is in words "only" and "alone"
@@psygamez7727 the Basque-Icelandic pidgin is shat they asked for
reconstructionism is one hell of a drug 😂
agreed, because ancient humans didn't wrote their actual language.
The type of video that will get 5-10 million views in the next 6 years or so.
I get that a bunch... 😅
Officer Samson, may your cat Lexi rest in peace and may you reunite with her in heaven. Happy birthday to you and I hope all is well right now. Good luck on everything!!!
Thanks, this means a lot to me. I’m doing fine, thanks for asking and watching my vids.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 of course bro, anytime!!!
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 anytime bro!!! :)
‘please don't get mad at me’ is the more extravagant part of the video. Barely believable.
Anyway
RIP Lexi.
Reconstructed Proto-World shall be the next lingua franca
That was a project of mine 5 years ago, reconstructing proto world and deform it
It shall be lingua Franca for the second time 😂
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@@angelcosta4383 how far did u get?.
@@MorrisJohn-vo2vn i had some grammar with 4 tenses and 3 cases, and 2000 ish words
This is just… so needlessly detailed and researched, just for one word…
And for that very reason, *I LOVE IT*
Thank you for your appreciation on the weeks of work I put into this!
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Of course! Love your channel, and glad to see more! :)
I am so sorry for Lexi. RIP. I can only imagine what you have went through. Please take your time to grieve her. God bless you, and her.
Also, on a whole another note, happy birthday!
Indo-Hittite is hardly controversial. It's usually called Indo-European though, and what you call Indo-European is "Classical" Indo-European. Calling it Indo-Hittite is just a way of emphasizing just how early Anatolian (with its most prominent member the Hittite language) broke off and how important Hittite is for the reconstruction of PIE.
Of course these fringe theories about Proto-World, Nostratic, Boreal, etc. are rather unscientific but it's an interesting thing to think about. The thing you mentioned about *t being strengthened or whatever to *a for instance is just wrong. One could imagine a chain of soundshifts that could make it look like it happened but the description is just incorrect. There are so many things that the Proto-World theory assumes didn't happen: No language could have used a synonym instead of continuing the original word, borrowing couldn't have happened, no compounding/derivation/inflection, no reanalysis (like how rien means "nothing" in French but originally comes from Latin res, rem "thing" reanalyzed in negative contexts like to mean "nothing", like non video rem "I don't see a thing" > "I don't see nothing (anything)") or any other language change or linguistic strategy that we know exist and regularly drive language change - just sound changes. Given all the time that must have passed since Proto-World was spoken, it's unlikely that any two modern words from these "North World" and "South World" branches would at all resemble one another. There are common words we can barely reconstruct in PIE or even just in the Germanic branch which is just a measely 2 millennia old.
The "strengthening" of the *n was supposed to be like *n -> *nd -> *nd and the *a appearing was from a final aspirate voicing itself and becoming a vowel. Most of the words appear different enough to be inherited through sound change, but Nivkh appears to have probably been borrowed from Altaic. The reason I chose the word one is because it seems like a word that would not easily be forgotten and borrowed from another language due to how important it is; like water and bone. But one thing I noticed from hours of looking at words for the word one in countless languages, is that they almost all appear to feature a velar consonant. You are right about this though, with compounding and inflection, and that this video is not intended for serious historical linguistic work.
Yes!!! You can see just over a decade how the meaning of some words can change. It’s simply impossible to account for all the semantic shift and sound changes over 10s or 100s of thousands of years and accurately reconstruct something like this. It’s still a neat little project
nice to see a kid interested in linguistics
5:54 Rip legend will all miss you
We're starting to decode the language of the Paleolithic
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No we're not. All of what is presented in the video is very much proven wrong.
First mistake was to put anatolian outside of indo-european. Everything from then forward is pure bullshit
Finally, someone that did a proto world trace
Exactly. And they called it a pipe dream.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 i love this
Very interesting as a thought exercise. I've often thought of doing this before. While it's almost certainly not how language evolved, it is important to test the possible relatedness of different language families.
Exactly what I meant. Thank you for understanding.
I often wander, if all language and all life for that matter really arose from one single ancestor. I think it's nearly confirmed that H. sapiens had spoken language before migrating out of Africa. So, yes, their lang can be the original ancestral lang of our species. But we also got stuff from Neanderthals, Denisovans etc and we definitely invented completely new words, even isolated groups might have invented (almost) completely new language. Say during the last ice age, various isolated human population in different geographical location became critically low. It's very difficult to believe that these groups didn't invent a large part of their language and culture from scratch.
As a biologist, I got bigger objection against LUCA. But it's so confusing whichever direction you go. However, I'm not the only one who thinks LUCA might not be a single organism or single species.
when this video finished, my computer crashed and restarted itself..?
uhh
Mine does that too with YT sometimes, but mostly when I unpause videos.
prob its destiny telling y 'tis videos ++true'
Lol
It's rebooting with proto-world installed
This video totally blows my mind. When I saw Boreal, I started shout: stop it, stop it, this is insane! But it was not the end…
Very happy to provide that feeling to you. Thanks for watching!
Perhaps, based on the "Tower of Babel" story in the Bible, Proto-World should be called "Pre-Babel"?
What about babble?
Babelic
Babel is post flood, languages diverged before that
@@Aresydatch Babel is indeed post-Flood, but, according to the Bible, languages did not diverge before that:
Genesis 8:13
By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth.
Genesis 11:1
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
So, if we're talking biblically (which I assume you are), and since Genesis 11 comes AFTER Genesis 8, languages diverged AFTER the flood.
Of course, if we're not talking biblically, many will say there was no flood and there was also no Tower of Babel, so the question becomes irrelevant!
If you give credit to the biblical story, languages appeared all at once, so there is no need for an evolution of tongues. Before that, only one language is supposed to have existed, comprehensible by all (Hebrew?)
Not attacking or anything but using unlikely and controversial theories like Nostratic and Altaic is risky. I know this isn't an actual academic video and its more just for fun but people online could think its actually for education and end up thinking that stuff like Nostratic and Altaic area actually fact when in reality they are far from it.
Rest In Peace Lexi
rip lexi she was probably pretty cool
What would a proto language alphabet look like?
Well writing was only developped five thousand years ago, in contrast to the first language, which might've existed before cooking. When different languages develop writing, it is almost never alphabetic, which actually only happened once with proto-Sinaitic, ancestor to all modern alphabets, abjads and (maybe) abugidas, and descendant of Egyptian hieroglyphs. But if some how this happened, they would maybe based the symbols for sounds by choosing words to represent the sounds (like in proto-Sinaitic, for the ' sound, they chose the word 'alp, meaning "ox", and is the ancestor to greek alpha.)
Many congratulations for the 5k subscriber milestone! You earned it! :)
This was super awesome! You can definitely tell that this was an extremely well-researched video! I really liked the animations and filter effects…
I thought it was only the Indo-European and Uralic languages that have a pretty solid relationship and could tentatively be reconstructed using the comparative method, but this was a really interesting experiment in how far back we could take the practice!
Keep up the great work! I don’t know why I didn’t do this before, but now you have *kwina more subscriber!
I also wanted to say that I'm very sorry for your loss... Lexi seemed like a great cat.
Thanks for watching, I'm a fan of yours! Really happy you understood the concept and idea of video and got the right end of it! So surprised and hono(u)red to see this name in my comment section!
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Wow! Now that's absolutely an hono(u)r! I really appreciate it!
Of course! As soon as I saw the familiar name pop up in my recommended page I knew it'd be a good one!
If you keep this up you'll be a big name in no time!
You have me inspired in both creativity and depth of research, so hats off to you! Weeks of development for a video is definitely a mark of a great UA-cam linguist... Excited to see what more you have in store!
There's something about presentation which makes this video feel like it should've come count like a decade ago or something
It's my style :)
Never mind if it can't be accepted as a solid theory, it's damn interesting nonetheless!
Rip Lexi we love you
Also amazing vid
I thought Hittite was agreed to be Indo-European.
Altaic has been debunked so many times, that makes this impossible.
It is agreed to be IE. But what actually isn't agreed is to call the language it split off of ''Indo-Hittite''
If someone hates, they can raise it up a place where it goes deep, history must be told as it happened without woke agenda or dumb disagreements and there is no way anyone will ever figure out this mystery, theories are good addition to it.
"Vowels are infamous to be unstable". Meanwhile this guy😭😭
One small correction 1:55 Samogitian (Žemaičių) did not descend from Latvian, it is a semi separate language/dialect of Lithuanian
The proto-worldic for ONE is the word for kitchen in Valencian hahaha
kwina>kwichna>kwichnia>kuichnia>kuchnia
bro really be trying to communicate with homo erectus with this one😭
Important Video! This is the Actual Etymology of Proto-World Language!
O'kid, How did i Get 5 Likes?????
WOW am I glad I found this video. I love this. Can you do more? What other 'Proto-World' words are there? :)
firstly, it's already impressive enough you did this in SCRATCH.
secondly, i like your theory about a language where pretty much EVERY OTHER LANGUAGE comes from.
thirdly, great work as always!
@@naps_878 The theory was already thought of, but I organized it into two splits (north & south world).
Reading the comments I find that if we delete the linguistic borrowings of the English language from the Greek language communication would be impossible. Your own conclusions about what the language of languages is.
PS Not only from English but from all the European languages of the West and East if we delete the linguistic loans from the Greek language it will not be possible to make a constructive and scientific dialogue.
The word language itself also comes from Latin origin.
I know what you're going through, I lost one of my cats too (and also oddly enough had a birthday not that long ago). Great work on the video!
Rip cat, happy Bday, good video
Let me be clear, I DO NOT hate you for this, you did a good job and it obviously took a lot of effort, and I applaud you for your dedication and passion, it's definitely obvious - but PLEASE be more clear about this being speculation, especially reiterating the debated nature of the families you're basing this on, in the video. DO keep reading though, KEEP DOING THIS!!!
May Lexi rest in peace
@@TheGribblesnitch back when I made this video, I did kinda believe in most of these theories but now I understand (and agree) to the speculation.
Spent the first minute thinking of how the (Afroasiatic Cushitic) Somali "kow" would fit into this. You can imagine my shock when K'ona popped up on the screen. Scary.
strangely enough, since these languages are absolutely not related in *this* exact way, many "unrelated" language families appear to have some sort of "K" sound in them.
I thought the Altaic language family is a very controversial topic in the Linguistics field. A lot of Linguists and people who love languages in general don’t like it, because according to most scholars. The Altaic language don’t make sense.
Yes, it is a very unconvincing theory that I don't beleive and isn't true. Most of the resemblences are all from early contact, thus influencing each others languages. It *is* a very controversial topic and will never be widely accepted in this community
you should link the image of the entire tree in the description
...but where does Basque fit in this? 🤔
Under Dené-Caucasian. But there is no burushaski.
Didn't you include both Sumerian and the Kartvelian language twice? You put both into Nostratic, and I know they're also both included in Dené-Caucasian.
@@ribozyme2899 *Śóméťíméś* (?) íńćľúďéď íń D’éńé/Ćáúćáśíáń.
thank you for doing this work
R.I.P. Lexi and Happy birthday 🎂
But the last common ancestor of existing language families isn't necessarily the 1st language. If it could be reconstructed reliably enough, the last common ancestor could have sister languages which have only left a few loanwords and anomalous forms.
I know, but I named it "THE FIRST ONE", as it sounds a bit better than "THE ANCESTRAL WORD TO ALL WORDS FOR ONE".
I loved it! We need more reconstructions in this project.
Honestly, it is very likely that we'd never be able to prove if there was ever a single human language. I'm not certain if we can even determine when the first human language was developed. Were the first humans to leave Africa already speaking some proto-language or have they not developed that yet? Either way, if some of them had a language, it wouldn't mean all of them did. By the time a language developed, there could have been thousands of humans spread across Africa and even into Eurasia by this time. Meaning, only groups of humans would have had this 1st proto-language. Because of this, I find it very unlikely that every language spoken by humans can be traced back to one single languages.
Basically, the first problem is the time frame and distance this language would have to develop in. It would need to be spoken early enough where it would be spread to the other continents as humans left Africa. Besides that, the other problem is just how diverse human language is. Most of us use sounds produced by our mouth by vibrating our vocal cords. However, there are languages from Africa that use clicks made with a person's tongue. Maybe it's possible for these languages to be part of the same family as every other language but it's hard to imagine since most languages I'm familiar with are void of any clicks.
These are the main reasons I don't think there's one single proto-language. I find it far more feasible that multiple groups of separate humans have developed their own languages which have mixed and shared proto-words. Yet, there is a possibility that some words can be traced back really far in human history. Even if there was a Proto-World language, it would have only had a fraction of the word count that modern languages have. This means that the majority of the words in even languages as far back as Proto Indo European would have developed within that group of people.
This video was not mainly to prove that all languages are related, but just as a single step in the process to reaching a better understanding on the origin of all languages, related or not. Recent studies have shown that language could've existed for about 1.3 million years, almost the age of Homo Sapiens itself. These clicking languages are Spoken by the Khoisan people, and with my research, it does seem that the Khoisan are the only people to have developed this interesting phoneme inventory. But nearly all sounds in a language need the tongue to produce them, some exeptions would be labials (b, f) laryngeals (h, ') so your last point isn't so concrete as /p/ could've became an implosive, and then to a bilabial click.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Homo sapiens only go back a couple hundred thousand years. 1.3 million is firmly in the 'homo erectus' range as far as I understand 😁
@@azazelssprachen I stand corrected. The reason I thought this was from a search I did a long while ago, on how old humans were. Interesting that language (could be) older than us!
dunno mb some deep machine analysis of wear-and-tear patterns on teeth in these ancient remains would be able to tell us something about their phonetics one day, who knows
Perhaps 'one' is one of the only words to have survived into most languages. Even so, most words that have survived into most languages have probably become untraceable due to semantic and phonetic Chang over a very, very, very long time.
Albanian “një” or “nji” only resembles some pre-Altaic form that’s connected to Etruscan? 🧐
RIP Lexy, Happt birthday to you, and good video!
RIP Lexi
man can do first proto marcofamily translation just need more time
yet, every time people try to get closer, they get shut down by so many linguists.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 You might as well just treat it like a constructed language, and not as a serious work, but rather as a thought experiment; rather than as a claim of prehistoric accuracy, this has been the problem with most macrofamilies; they seemingly claim accuracy in the eyes of most linguists, and they begin to be treated as a bulwark of a nation, people, or identity, or; they become antithetical to such an association in the eyes of many or most.
I think taking the considerations necessary, criticism and praise; you should work on such a project in secret, but I for one know just how hard an endeavor like this would be, considering that I myself am a hobby conlanger, but specifically within the confines of preexisting worldbuilding; so for me it's really just a means to help me flesh out that which went unexplained, and so; for this I think if such a project were to be undertaken, it should be thought of like this; ultimately as just a hobby to scratch a niche itch, but with taking the utmost care possible to ask some very serious questions.
What is the song that starts playing at 0:50?
Great Video!
so basically, you've reconstructed the hypothetical sound changes for one word; is it meant to prove anything or just be a fun thought experiement? if the latter, nice work
This defo doesn't prove anything. The time gap is so vast that there's ample room for creative liberties.
You could connect any two words is any two languages if you're allowed enough sound changes, especially since sound changes have occasional irregularities.
EDIT: "one" is a good example of an irregular evolution.
Comparing these German and Old Norse words to their English cognates
Stein stein stone
Heim heim home
Bein bein bone
ein ein one
"one" breaks the patttern. Even the spelling matches, but through what is likely dialect-mixing, what survived into standardized formed of English was the "one" spelling, but the "wun" pronunciation (probably from the same dialect whence our pronunciation of "some" and "done" came)
@ i'm aware it doesn't prove anything, i'm just hoping the video's creator isn't saying that it does
It was mainly the latter, a bit like my old "what if all languages were related" video. If it were to prove anything, it would be to show that there is a chance to connect more languages than we have 400 years ago, and to give some fringe theories a try, they might not be true, but they're all trying to get somewhere we can hopefully one day reach.
@@rgfellaThe pronunciation of “some” and “done” aren’t dialectal; they happened to essentially every single English dialect with a clear degree of regularity. Long vowels very frequently shortened before some fricatives and stops; the closer to the front of the mouth the more likely.
“One” being pronounced as [wʌn] is the result of some southwest and midwest English dialects pronouncing long initial “o” with a “w.” Compare “woak,” a dialectal variant of “oak.”
@@tfan2222
Thanks for the clarification! I should've made it clear the "some" "done" thing was just speculation on my part.
Your explanation of "one" was what I was trying to get at.
Dude, this is unrealistically cool, my friend and I have a theory that the Uralic languages may be related to Austric and Sino-Tibetan, I don't know how true it is, but according to our assumption, they may be transitional between Austric and Nostratic. A similar theory was published by Jinyi Gao, but rather about kinship with the Chinese. Do you think Gao's theory or my friend's theory has a right to life?
I wish I had friends like that... But give your theory some more research, more strong proof and evidence, establish sound changes, then maybe one day, you'll be able to coin the name of a new language family!
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Bro, please make a dis cord server for those who love linguistics, it would be a great idea
Now do a full sentence in proto world
RIP lexi
Can you make those maps and the like more easily available for viewing? Also, did you do a full lexicon or just one?
at the moment, only *kwina and *(ba)dwa ("two") have been reconstructed.
@theofficeroliviersamson4498 cool, can you please upload the trees and everything plox?
Upload this image as PNG to see full languages descending from Proto World
So sorry for your loss. Thanks for the video.
Woah that was umm ambitious. But I do believe in Altaic, I have a friend from Turkey and she says there are many links with Mongolic culture/language. For instance one of her relatives is named after a son of Genghis Khan
Most of the resemblences in between mongolic and Turkic are because of repeated contact, in which their terms would be borrowed through each language, explaining the similarities.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Ah that makes sense as an explanation. Thanks for replying!
Proto-Vietic?
'One' in proto-world: Kwina
The video topic looks very interesting, but I couldn't hear what was being said as it was drowned out by loud background music so I gave up. I'm sure you have something interesting to say, and I'd like to have heard your words. I don't understand why so many UA-camrs do information videos where the words are drowned out by music. So frustrating.
Try subtitles, they might not say the exact same thing, but I hope it helps :)
Where would the mysterious "Sentinelese" language fit in your hypothesis (spoken by the Sentinel tribes who are hyper-agressive to outsiders who get close to Sentinel Island), and the somewhat related neighbouring almost extinct Andaman Onge, Jarawa languages? Did the split occur before the proto-North-World and Proto-South-World or during the two protos? Keep in mind that anthropologists say that the Sentinelese migrated from Africa to the Sentinel Islands at least 50 to 60 thousand years ago, so likely even earlier than the Trans New Guinea Papuan migration to PNG.
And wanted to hate it... I really wanted... But your reconstruction sounds almost plausible 😅
Interesting that you resorted to some transformation tricks such as vowel-consonant swap in some branches. It's a known processus in Slavic languages, for instance.
You're number kwina.
Thanks so much for this support! 💜 But yeah, the Proto Nostratic, Dené-Daic and Amerind are so similar! :D
Hey I don’t know if you are still replying, but can you link the linguistic tree chart you used in the video? I would like to see it in more detail
Hello! I believe having a map for that would be very helpful, as it looks incredibly cool. If possible, could you please add a link to the map in the video or on a website? Thank you! 😊
@@saraaquino7469 here: scratch.mit.edu/projects/1050272702/editor
Very interesting reconstructions, most realistic theory I've seen yet though of course it doesn't confirm anything
I need that phylogeny tree bro :)
this is epic
MORE!! I WANT MORE CONTENT LIKE THIS!!! MOOOOOORRRREEEEEEEE!!!!
Thanks for the video - very interesting ideas here I hope you go on to make more videos - perhaps looking at the other numbers next?
While I personally don’t think this is especially scientific or realistic, I do still find it interesting. For quite some time now, I’ve been working on constructing a fictional world, and a key part of that world is the Urazheeatic super-clade of languages. It’s not technically a language family, as Urazheeatic is an unranked classification, divided into 3 taxa called realms: Boreourazheeatic, Australourazheeatic, and Archaeourazheeatic. And I do detect a little inspiration for the reconstructions of the more basal members of the Urazheeatic clade. For example, the Melscene language is one of the key elements of this world, being an important literary language. It’s linguistic taxonomy looks something like this: (unranked): Urazheeatic, realm: Boreourazheeatic, domain: Pikanic, sphere: Anselanic, phylum: Solo-Mallorienic, subphylum: Mallorienic, class: Orientales, order: Melsceno-Rakeetanic, family: Melsceno-Hayatil, subfamily: Melscelenic, tribe: West Melscenic, clan: Melsceno-Šíbě, genus: Melscenic proper, language: Melscene.
The proto-language of Urazheeatic is OUCA, the Original Urazheeatic Common Ancestor; not to be confused with MRUCA, the Most Recent Urazheeatic Common Ancestor. In-universe historical linguists have only reconstructed words from MRUCA, and its descendants, but have not yet been able to reconstruct words in the OUCA language. Going from Melscene all the way back to MRUCA, I will now show you the word for one. The word for one in romanised Melscene is čón, from Old Melscene ċān, itself from Classical Melscene kyæen. The word for one in Classical Melscene comes from Šínmiňazik *kaen, from Ancient Melscene *kajin, which is from Proto-Melscenic *kain, itself from Proto-Melsceno-Rakeetanic *kainaz. This word is derived from Proto-Orientales *káynas, from Proto-Mallorienic *kóynos, from Proto-Solo-Mallorienic *ʰkóynos. The word *ʰkóynos came from the Proto-North-Anselanic word *kʰóɲsa, from Proto-Anselonic *k’ontya. This word comes from Proto-North-Pikanic *k’onty, from Proto-Pikanic *k’inty, from Proto-Arcto-Pikanic *kʷˈin̥tʲ, which came from Proto-Boreourazheeatic *kʷintʲa, itself from MRUCA *kʷinda.
Interesting... Old Melscene ċān and Old English ān, Proto-Melscenic *kain and P-West-Germanic *ain Proto-Melsceno-Rakeetanic *kainaz and PG *ainaz, *kóynos and PIE h1óynos, Arcto-Pikanic *kʷˈin̥tʲ and Borean *kʷˈin̥th, MRUCA *kʷinda and Proto-World kwina?? Urazheeatic and Eurasiatic?
Is it just me or is this just a tiny bit sus...
I'm working on a fictional word and the word for one is uu.
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Wow, I actually did not expect you to reply to this comment. Melscene is a conlang that I based a lot on English and Chinese languages, and I based the Mallorienic languages nearly entirely on the Indo-European family, in terms of the sound changes that characterise the linguistic phylum. I absolutely based the in-universe evolution of the word for one on the evolution you presented here, because I thought it was interesting. If it all appears sus, that would be the reason why it does. Funnily enough though, the parallel of Urazheeatic and Eurasiatic was entirely accidental. Urazheeatic is actually supposed to be pronounced as /jəˈɹɑː.ʒiɑtɪk/, and derived from the name of the main archipelago in this world and the country that takes up most of it, Urazhee, pronounced as /jəˈɹɑː.ʒiː/. The in-universe etymology of Urazhee is from Melscene Urážé /uˈɾaːʒeː/, meaning Urazheean (from the country of Urazhee); I don’t actually know how I came up with the name Urazhee. Also, the word for one in Melscenic languages is considered irregular, as it loses the nominative ending (*-az), instead of omitting the final z like they usually would. An example of an etymologically regular word in Melscene is Šíbě /ˈʃiːbɜː/, from Old Melscene Sċība /ˈʃˠiː.bɑ/, from Proto-Melscenic *skība /ˈs̠kiːbɑ/, from Proto-Melsceno-Rakeetanic *skībaz /ˈs̠kībɑz̠/, itself from Proto-Mallorienic *(s)kéybʰos /(s̠)kéj.bʰos̠/. Most of the vocabulary in Melscene is also quite different from that of English; for example, šâng /ˈʃæŋ/ means star. I apologise if this all comes off as a cheap knockoff of real life, or as some kind of insult to you. I legitimately poured much effort and passion into this project. Finally, I wish you a lot of fun on your project where the word for one is uu.
@@toubi4316 I was doing something extremely similar, where I made a conlang based on Onomatopoeias and I plan to evolve this language in countless ways across my world. For the Eurasiatic thing, I read it as /jɚɹeɪʒiætɪk/, the same way the narrator pronounced it in the video. And I'm also basing most of it on real life, like in the beginning they travel to the east side of the world, then to the Americas. (as "Amerind") Keep working on this world and I hope to see more of it!
@@toubi4316 But, I think your evolution is relied a bit too much on PIE and Germanic. I love this thing, but just a little constructive criticism to help you :)
As cool as this is it is almost certainly complete BS. The creator likely knows this though XD. I enjoyed the video.
i study semitic languages. how does *kwina become *ʔaḥad- in proto semitic?? 😭😭i love this video
Well, I connected Proto Afroasiatic *ʔîns- to k'intS, and *ʔîns- (" *one* , someone, person" (indef. pron.)) would probably be ancestral to proto semitic ʔināš- ("human") and then Arabic إِنْسَان (ʔinsān). Maybe I could be the origin of *ʔaḥad- one day...
@ oh that makes more sense. i speak hebrew so, to me, achad (אחד) is more common for one. excuse my forwardness, do you have a discord or anything you can talk on (if ur comfortable)?
Even the subparts of the chart must have taken an insane amount of work! Any way you'd br willing to share it?
@@Dominik-lc4pl it was made in scratch here: scratch.mit.edu/projects/1050272702/editor/
Thanks for the video. Well, the first tribe that left Africa must have spoken something.
Maybe one could follow another route and look for similarities in languages that have been isolated from the rest of the world for a long time. In East Tasmanian languages, frog is "rallah" while in the Great Andamanese Language, it is "phatkaa" Both seem to be onomatopoeic, imitations of a frog's call. So the first word for frog (assuming there was one such word) might also be so.
They called you a madman.
what
Love the idea of connecting all humans through language.
But for the sake of simplicity and practicality, i'll stick with proto-germanic... for now...
*Þiudiskōniz tungōniz isti ainanǭ skaunijammai tungōni...
That's my terrible try to make a sentence in proto germanic. I wish I could understand nominatives, genitives and that stuff.
God, I do think that this makes sense. Hopefully more linguistic evidence arises to support your claim that the Indo-European language family is not its own isolate but is actually part of a hyper family.
Sorry about Lexi, mate.
Cool a rune guy! I taught myself to write in the elder futhark, and the basics of the Anglo-Saxon futhark.
so i've been trying to make some of my own reconstructions but it's kinda hard to see some parts of the tree especially when you uploaded this video in 720p so can you please link an image or the original scratch project so i can clearly view the tree?
ok: scratch.mit.edu/projects/1050272702/editor
but what reconstructons are you making? Because I already made *one* for "two" "foot" and "water" as a heads up.
What are the reconstructed terms for those
@SkyNrtTheAI i'm definitely thinking there's a eurasiatic root ti- "you"
hey, what's your scratch account?
@@Red_F super_thingy
You earned a subscriber.
bro is just trolling me at this point
what
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 when you heart the comment to let me know that you saw it and then proceed to do Nothing
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 or maybe i just can't see it for some reason
@@janmusi well here it is again I guess: scratch.mit.edu/projects/1050272702/ please note that I have already recontructed “two” “foot” and “water”. What are you planning on reconstructing?
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498 oh jeez this comment has been here for three days
Don’t you think the first 1 would be something sompler?
I thought so, but North and South World undeniably point to *kwina. Maybe it could have been an onomatopoeia for hitting a single rock on something? Like klang?
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498
"Bonk"
you forgot Austronesian and Austro-asiatic
look closely at the middle bottom when it comes to borean. And no, I didn't (:
@theofficeroliviersamson4498 Oh, I can't see it in my phone because of blurriness 💀
but thanks for clarrifying
@theofficeroliviersamson4498 what timestamp also)
@@ItsSeated It's a filter I put in the video that I'm starting to regret... Sorry D:
@@theofficeroliviersamson4498Do you have the full-resolution 4K file?
Especially the various language charts are interesting among which the proto world is intriguing. However the video quality is low. Could you upload all the charts anywhere to watch them better?
A great video, though I'd like to see a more readable version of the animation you made
4:05 Vsauce horror music starting :C Kinda :D
happy birthday
It would be cool if you tried to reconstruct the grammar of this language!
PS: RIP Lexi
3:05 what is that thing in front of t?
pls I need more of this