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The original mother of many tongues

The original mother of many tongues

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"One thing that's become abundantly clear from the ancient DNA revolution of the last 10 years is how important migration has been in the history of our species. So, of course, there has been hybridisation, cultural, genetic, linguistic. There is no such thing as a pure people, pure culture, pure language. Genes, culture and language do not map neatly onto each other. This book was a huge amount of work because the only way you can tell the story of Proto Indo European [the ancestor of Latin and Sanskrit and their daughter languages including English, German, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and many, many others] is by combing the fields of linguistics, archeology and genetics. It's very fast moving and the point of writing the story now is that it's had this huge impetus from genetics" - Laura Spinney, author, Proto; How One Ancient Language Went Global talks to Manjula Narayan about the ancestor of the Indo European family of languages, the Yamnayas, the birth and death of languages, the great migrations out of the Steppes, the Harappan script, multiethnolects and why AI might be great for predicting language change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.