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Before seeing this page, I had always assumed that PIE was a lot older. It’s amazing how much linguistic development has occurred in ~6,500 years!

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I mean, it's enough to look at French vs Spanish or other Romance language which separated just 1500 years ago. Or just look at Old English.

I just think, look at how much happens in a generation or two right now. No wonder languages can change quickly.

I do wonder if language change might start to slow down, however.

Now that we have so much written language from the past, won't that have a sort of fossilizing effect on the language? For example, prior to writing systems, people had no idea how their ancestors communicated. Now with written text and audio recordings, we know in great detail how our language used to be used.

Also it seems to me that modern borrowings and loan words are more faithful to the original version, while before widespread writing it was more butchered and twisted into the target language's phonology and only approximately imitated how it sounded. Because the loaners often didn't speak that language well and went by the ear, and third hand accounts.

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