The ancient etymology of �give� and �take�

The rudimentary blocks of language, and in particular the now-lost universal language we once spoke as early as the Neolithic era, involves a few basic words that convey a sense of coming or going, thus ‘give’ and ‘take’.

These key words tend to repeat across many terms (and of course many languages) and have given rise to a remarkable array of morphologies.

I have unearthed a sufficient number of terms that cut across ‘genetically unrelated’ language families to make nonsense of the conventional linguistics view that any words across such families that exhibit similarity in both sound and meaning must be deemed to be purely coincidental. Indeed, my findings agree with Genesis 11 that such a universal mother language was scrambled by God (read: ‘the gods’) following the Tower of Babel incident in Shin’ar (Sumer), Mesopotamia. This week we look into vestiges of that ancient protolanguage in the specific context of the acts of ‘giving’ and ‘taking’.

Editor's Comment
Routine child vaccination imperative

The recent Vaccination Day in Motokwe, orchestrated through collaborative efforts between UNICEF, USAID, BRCS, and the Ministry of Health, underscores a commendable stride towards fortifying child health services.The painful reality as reflected by the Ministry of Health's data regarding the decline in routine immunisation coverage since the onset of the pandemic, is a cause for concern.It underscores the urgent need to address the...

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