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To understand how linguists have been able to reconstruct relationships between different languages in the world we need to know something of cognates. Cognates are vocabulary words from two or more languages which sound similar and refer to the same thing. Cognates serve as preliminary clues that languages are related to one another since the languages share strong similarities in the form and meaning of certain vocabulary.
Each column below contains words from one language. The words in each row refer to the same thing (such as "hand") for each language. Move your mouse to each button and click on it to listen to each word in the four languages (move from left to right on each row).
1. Moving from left to right on each row, which words sound like cognates of one another (i.e., which words sound very similar) and which ones are distinct?
2. Based on this very short list of words can you decide which languages seem to be more closely related to one another?
3. Can you determine if there is/are "mystery" languages here - things that don't fit?
Exercise
Language #1
Language #2
Language #3
word #1
word #1
word #1
word #2
word #2
word #2
word #3
word #3
word #3
word #4
word #4
word #4
word #5
word #5
word #5
What did you decide? Do some languages on the chart appear to be more closely related to each other? Do any of them stand out as relatively different and unique from the others?
Aside from Language #1, which is obvious to you, do you recognize what languages are represented in Languages #2-4? In what ways do you see relationships?
Run your mouse pointer over the above boxes to determine if your guesses
were correct.
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