[Ipg-smz] The English Word That Hasn’t Changed in Sound or Meaning in 8,000 Years

[Gabe Goldberg]

One of my favorite words is lox,” says Gregory Guy, a professor of 
linguistics at New York University. There is hardly a more 
quintessential New York food than a lox bagel—a century-old popular 
appetizing store, Russ & Daughters, calls it “The Classic.” But Guy, who 
has lived in the city for the past 17 years, is passionate about lox for 
a different reason. “The pronunciation in the Proto-Indo-European was 
probably ‘lox,’ and that’s exactly how it is pronounced in modern 
English,” he says. “Then, it meant salmon, and now it specifically means 
‘smoked salmon.’ It’s really cool that that word hasn’t changed its 
pronunciation at all in 8,000 years and still refers to a particular fish.”

http://nautil.us/blog/the-english-word-that-hasnt-changed-in-sound-or-meaning-in-8000-years

Wish I had some now...

-- 
Gabriel Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, Inc.       gabe at gabegold.com
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