Re: Question about linguistics

> Languages evolve far faster than genes so it is difficult to go back much
> beyond 8,000 years and still obtain meaningful results. English and Dutch,
> for example, were mutually intelligible until 1000 years ago.
Nevertheless,
> the data, however tenuous, suggest all languages in the world evolved from
a
> common ancestor, which supports the genetic evidence.

Since all languages in the world evolved from a common ancestor,  I would
expect it to be the African language of the people in the Rift Valley where
it is said to be the Origin of Mankind.

I find that  "Papa" and "Mama"  is the term for Father and Mother for  all
the Languages I know.  It is true for English ,  Mandarin, Hokkien and
Cantonese.
In Indonesian it is " "Bapa" for Father and  "Ema" for mother
In  Tamil India it is " Apa" for Father and " Ama" for mother.

Therefore  this is the evidence of  the evolution of Language from  the
Common
Ancestor.

The experience I find when bringing up a child  is that,  the first
vocabulary  a child will learn will be Father and Mother and only then come
body parts like  eyes, mouth,  hand  and leg etc.  So these vocabulary  are
deeply embeded into the memory of the infant and will not suffer any
distortion for the rest of her life.  Subsequently it will be passed on to
her offspring.

But what puzzle me is  that in the transmission from generation to
generation,  the structure of the sentence can be changed.  For example in
English  " The  hungry man eat his food"
In Japanese it is "  hungry that  man his food eat"
In Indonesian it is " man hungry that eat food his "
In Mandarin  it is "  hungry that man  eat  his that food"

So the arrangement of  Subject,  adjective,  verb and Object  got altered
and  rearranged.

Khoon.