So Trump is actually more advanced than the rest of us. :-)
Languages also get more complex by borrowing words and concepts from
other languages.
Brent
On 8/25/2022 2:02 PM, Dirk Van Niekerk wrote:
On Thursday, August 25, 2022 at 12:05:52 PM UTC-7 [email protected] wrote:
The weird thing about "aryan" history (originally a linguistic
term) is that it is primarily a history of devolution. Classical
Sanskrit is already considerably less grammatically complex than
its predecessors. So the earliest human ancestors presumably spoke
a language that was far more advanced and complex than any
currently in active usage. Bizzare. Same thing with the
Blavatskyites and their theories of primordial loss.
Interesting podcast by John McWhorter about this. The short version,
there is no general rule that languages simplify over time:
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2017/09/do_languages_get_simpler_over_time.html
The most trivial refutation is that if languages always simplified
over time, the first humans 100,00 years ago would have been maximally
complex, and by now our languages should all be ridiculously simply.
Languages like Chinese and English have indeed simplified and one of
the reasons is that these imperial languages have added large numbers
of adult speakers who had to newly learn the language which tends to
lead to simplification. But he also give several counter examples.
Dirk.
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