Few years ago, i did this survey on FB: When you are on a toilet, constipated, and you are straining to push things out, what is the sound you are making? Does it sound like "nnnnn"? What about the sound you are making when you are pushing something away? The same? 🙂
Most people answered yes. The sound made was like "nnnnn". Made through closed teeth & mouth, tongue pressed against the back of the upper teeth and the roof of mouth...Interesting. Why? Well, why do words for "no" 🙂 in most IE languages start with "n"? Ever thought about this?
Is this an example of natural, involuntary sounds evolving into words? Is this maybe one of the oldest words in IE languages? I mean people recognised the meaning of "nnnnn" instinctively...From there to "no" is a very short step...
I would even go as far as to say that "nnnn" is the second oldest word in the word... 🙂 The oldest word in the world I think was "aaaa". You all know that word. You all used it and heard it being used 🙂...
I explained why I think so in my post "The oldest word in the world"...
I don't know which number in the top 10 oldest words in the world is "mmmm", but it is definitely close to the top 🙂. You know the word. When something is "mmmm". Like honey. The first truly "mmmm" thing humans tasted.
I have no idea where the word honey comes from, because in most IE languages the word for honey starts with "mmmm". I talked about this in my post "mmmmm"...
Anyway...
The only counter example I can think of is ‘nai’ in Greek for the word yes. What do you think caused this?
ReplyDelete:) Cause Greeks are weird...In Ancient Greek thee are negative prefixes which start with n. So they had the same association of n with no. But they lost it...https://www.jstor.org/stable/409539?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
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