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From: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey)
Subject: Re: Nova
Message-ID: <hubey.788739079@pegasus.montclair.edu>
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References: <3drvp1$109d@darwin.nbnet.nb.ca> <3dv7q1$5hu@medici.trl.OZ.AU>
Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 22:11:19 GMT
Lines: 33

jbm@newsserver.trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) writes:

>cormierf@nbnet.nb.ca writes:


>>Did anyone else see Nova last night (December 27, 1994) on PBS? It dealt with 
>>linguistics, specifically with efforts to reconstruct the "original" language 
>>of humanity.

>>Any comments?

>Yes, we've been through all that before. The original language of humanity
>consisted of one single word: *ana "womb, hole", still amply attested in many
>languages:

>Japanese  ana "hole"
>Tahitian  ana "hole, cave"
>Latin     anus "anus", and: anus "crone"
>Chinese   an   "peaceful, safe"


From which we can find;

yana = mother (Circassian)
ana = mother (Turkic)
anak[?] = mother (Eskimo)

Wow..

--
						-- Mark---
....we must realize that the infinite in the sense of an infinite totality, 
where we still find it used in deductive methods, is an illusion. Hilbert,1925
