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Today I Learned@lemmy.worldEnglish · 9 months ago

TIL the word 'lox' (smoked salmon) is the oldest word in the English language- unchanged in meaning and pronunciation for 8,000 years

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TIL the word 'lox' (smoked salmon) is the oldest word in the English language- unchanged in meaning and pronunciation for 8,000 years

NataliePortland@lemmy.ca to

Today I Learned@lemmy.worldEnglish · 9 months ago

The English Word That Hasn’t Changed in Sound or Meaning in 8,000 Years

The word lox was one of the clues that eventually led linguists to discover who the Proto-Indo-Europeans were, and where they lived.Photograph by Helen Cook / Flickr 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 […]

it’s also yummy

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9 months ago

Yep, 8,000 years ago laks meant any type of fish, living or prepared food.

Citation?

From what I’ve seen, 8000 years ago it meant salmon. Today, in English it means smoked salmon.

It’s a surprisingly minor shift for 8k years.

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