For a long time, Scientists and Experts have said that the Indo-European language family--the one that includes English--dates back about 9,000 years. Why 9,000? How did they get that number? I don't know, you'd have to ask them. But now some Super Linguists from England have determined that there are some words that are 20,000 years old! So if you went way, way back in time, and were talking to cavemen, and you said certain words that are in English today, the cavemen would understand you. Kind of. I imagine it would be sort of like that episode of Star Trek, where Captain Kirk said the Pledge of Allegiance to the Yangs and Coms. But somehow, the Super Linguists know about the words used by cavemen in the time before written language, and those words were I, thou, we, who, two, three, and five. And those are just the English ones, because the Super Linguists are English, I guess. I mean, maybe there are German Super Linguists who have found 20,000-year-old words in German: Handschu! Or Greek, or Indian.
But the Super Linguists also projected themselves into the future, and found the English words most likely to disappear in the next 1,000 years. Not even 20,000 years, but just 1,000--that soon! And of course you might think, like, telephone, or fax or minidisc. Newspaper. Pledge drive. There are a lot of possibilities, things you might think of--but the Super Linguists do not think, they KNOW. They know that the words most likely to disappear in the next 1,000 years are dirty, bad, stick, and wipe. And how am I gonna communicate with DJ Bryce without them?
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