Written in Stone

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Half the world s population speaks a language that has evolved from a single, prehistoric mother tongue A mother tongue first spoken in Stone Age times, on the steppes of central Eurasia 6,500 years ago It was so effective that it flourished for two thousand years It was a language that spread from the shores of the Black Sea across almost all of Europe and much of Asia It is the genetic basis of everything we speak and write today the DNA of language.Written in Stone combines detective work, mythology, ancient history, archaeology, the roots of society, technology and warfare, and the sheer fascination of words to explore that original mother tongue, sketching the connections woven throughout the immense vocabulary of English with some surprising results.In snappy, lively and often very funny chapters, it uncovers the most influential and important words used by our Neolithic ancestors, and shows how they are still in constant use today the building blocks of all our most common words and phrases. Read Written in Stone By Christopher Stevens – kino-fada.fr This is not a popular science book on Proto Indo European language, as I hoped it would be Very little is said about how we know what we know about Proto Indo European and how historical linguistics works There is one sentence about Grimm s law well, maybe two sentences, but that s all The author begins from a short introduction about ancient Arian people and how their language had sprung out of onomatopoeic roots This is followed by an extra short overview of scientists who contributed to This is not a popular science book on Proto Indo European language, as I hoped it would be Very little is said about how we know what we know about Proto Indo European and how historical linguistics works There is one sentence about Grimm s law well, maybe two sentences, but that s all The author begins from a short introduction about ancient Arian people and how their language had sprung out of onomatopoeic roots This is followed by an extra short o...Disappointing I was expecting a journalistic overview of linguistic reconstruction Nothing doing You get a pretty shallow introductory chapter full of unexamined assumptions and unchallenged assertions about the proto indo europeans and what they may or may not have been like Very problematic, by the way, which I will not go into here However, if you d like to have a...I think I was expecting something different from this book There was probably less fact and research in these pages, andopinion and conjecture And while I enjoyed some of this book, and found parts quite interesting, overall, it just wasn t my favourite investigation into the origins on language.I am always fascinated by the origins of language This book examines the evolution of Indo European, language that has underpinned many disparate languages throughout the world, identified by back engineering taking a modern concept and tracing it s evolution in reverse to arrive at the origin Origin comes down to us from Gn to beget, for instance it is involved in beginning, Genesis, genes, generate, homogeneous, genealogy etc In French we have gens, in Latin genus, in Greek gnosis Wh I am always fascinated by the origins of language This boo...I see this hasn t been loved by readers I admit, it s not exactly a read straight through book, butof a browse a few minutes at a time book And the author will walk a long ways to make a pun or funny wordplay And it s kind of like a drive by shooting method of explaining how our words are related to certain basic proto Indo European roots But I still liked it, and had a lot of fun reading and sharing We have a number of languages spoken by someone in the family and we found it lots of I see this hasn t been loved by readers I admit, it s not exactly a read straight through book, butof a browse a few minutes at a time book And the author will walk a long ways to make a pun or funny wordplay And it s kind of like a drive by shooting method of explaining how our words are related to certain basic proto Indo European roots But I still liked it...Interesting topic but the book is mostly a relentless instant gratification list of random facts explaining little and annoyingly peppered with awkward jokes and pop culture references I m also surprised how the etymologie...Interesting, without being particularly entertaining or enlightening It is not looking at recent origins to words, but rather trying to source everything back to a VERY ancient proto language And I think it s pretty speculative A lot of guessing g...The search for the Mother Tongue has been going on for a long time.Babel is an attempt to explain the diversity of languages spoken by man Linguists and anthropologists have been especially intrigued by the subject.Indo European, the language addressed in Written In Stone, is not the one and only original language But it is one believed by many to be the root of most European languages, save for a few exceptions such as Basque.Stevens gives a brief history of the search for the origin of this The search for the Mother Tongue has been going on for a long time.Babel is an attempt to explain the diversity of languages spoken by man Linguists and anthropologists have been especially intrigued by the subject.Indo European, the language addressed in Written In Stone, is not the one and only original language But it is one believed by many to be the root of most European languages, save for a few exceptions such as Basque.Stevens gives a brief history of the search for the origin of this language and the people who spoke it, then plunges right into examples of the language and how it relates to others, going right from ak to wid.A majorit...Since when menas in Lithuanian is understanding The closest meaning to Latin mens probably is m stymas , so it s probably farcomplex than you think, where understanding supratimas or mind protas have somewhat different word roots with m stymas.And since when rabota Russian Ukrainian is forced labor It s still just labor.Memetics, unlike genetics, probably can t be reconstructed from information available today Not enough data, just some coincidences or severa Since when menas in Lithuanian is understanding The closest meaning to Latin mens probably is m stymas , so it s probably farcomplex than you think, where understanding supratimas or mind protas have somewhat different word roots with m stymas.And since when rabota Russian Ukrainian is forced labor It s still just labor.Memetics, unlike genetics, ...Full of incorrect folk etymologies.I stopped reading when Stevens claimed Ephesus derived from the old IE word for to suckle Reality It probably comes from the Greek ephesos, or overseer, though that may be folk etymology In any case, it does NOT come from where Stevens claims.

Written in Stone
  • 15 April 2018
  • Hardcover
  • 272 pages
  • 160598907X
  • Christopher Stevens
  • Written in Stone