Heinz-Murray 2E.book

44 Part I: Land and Language

words were clearly cognates. If English “two” is also a cognate, we have to

account for two sound shifts: /v/ to /w/ and /d/ to /t/. Linguists know that

these are easy shifts for languages to make. /V/ and /w/ are made in similar

ways in the mouth, and easily shift from one to the other. (Try it and see). In

North Indian languages today, individual speakers vary in their pronunciation

of /v/ on a range from a good, hard /v/ to a soft and liquid /w/. Similarly

with /d/ and /t/, both are made with the tongue on the alveolar ridge (just

behind the teeth) and by stopping—then freeing—the breath; the only differ-

ence between the two is a lack of voicing on the /t/.

In the case of dva/duo/twai you can probably figure out which of these lan-

guages English is closest to. The “spelling” of the English word preserves a pro-

nunciation now lost. If we were to spell English “two” the way we pronounce it,

we would spell it “tu.” But once we pronounced it two, in that pronunciation the

similarity to Old German twai is apparent. The /d/ has already become /t/,

and the /v/ has become /w/. The vowels, /o/ and /ai/ are different, but vow-

els are a lot more slippery than consonants.

If you were to work out the relationship of the five languages just on the

basis of “two,” you would probably come up with:

The tree diagram in figure 2.2 orders the similarities by degree of closeness

and by generation. Greek and Latin are identical; between them and Sanskrit

there has been one consonant change. Between those three and Old German,

there have been two consonant changes. Of course, this is just one word. You

would want to take many words to discover repeating patterns or modify your

diagram as more evidence seems to require it. Notice, for instance, the /d/ to

/t/ shift shows up again in “ten”: dasa/deka/decem vs. taihum/ten. You would

probably want to be selective about what words you chose for comparison.

The word “motor,” for instance, has passed into a large number of the world’s

Figure 2.2 Relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Old German, and

English on the basis of “two.”

*[parent form]

Old German

twai

Sanskrit

dva

Greek

duo

Latin

duo

English

two