Academic/General Training Module by Adam Smith First Published in 2015

ENGLISH OLD GERMAN 
LATIN 
GREEK 
SANSKRIT 
JAPANESE 
ONE
TWO 
THREE 
FOUR 
FIVE 
SIX 
SEVEN 
EIGHT 
NINE 
TEN 
AINS
TWAI 
THRIJA 
FIDWOR 
FIMF 
SAIHS 
SIBUM 
AHTAU 
NIUN 
TAIHUM 
UNUS
DUO 
TRES 
QUATTOUR 
QUINQUE 
SEX 
SEPTEM 
OCTO 
NOVEM 
DECEM 
HEIS
DUO 
TREIS 
TETTARES 
PENTE 
HEKS 
HEPTA 
OKTO 
ENNEA 
DEKA 
EKAS
DVA 
TRYAS 
CATVARAS 
PANCA 
SAT 
SAPTA 
ASTA 
NAVA 
DASA 
HITOTSU
FUTATSU 
MITTSU 
YOTTSU 
ITSUTSU 
MUTTSU 
NANATSU 
YATTSU 
KOKONOTSU 
TO 
FIGURE 1
Words for numbers from one to ten show the relations among Indo-
European languages and the anomalous character of Japanese, which is not part of 
that family. Such similarities stimulated interest in the origins of Indo-European 
languages. 

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 IELTS
 JOURNAL 
 
164 
The Romance languages served as the first model for answering the question.Even to 
someone with no knowledge of Latin, the profound similarities among Romance 
languages would have made it natural to suggest that they were derived from a 
common ancestor.On the assumption that the shared characteristice of these 
languages came from the common progenitor (whereas the divergences arose later.as 
the languages diverged),it would have been possible to reconstruct many of the 
characteristics of the original proto-language. In much the same way it became clear 
that the branches of the Indo-European family could be studied and a hypothetical 
family tree constructed,reading back to a common ancestor:proto-Indo-European. 
This is the tree approach. The basic process represented by the tree model is one of 
divergence:when languages become isolated from one other,they differ 
increasingly,and dialects gradually differentiate until they become separate languages. 
Divergence is by no means the only possible tendency in language evolution.Johannes 
Schmidt,introduced a "wave" model in which linguistic changes spared like 
waves,leading ultimately to convergence;that is, growing similarity among languages 
that were initially quite different. 
Today, however, most linguists think primarily in terms of linguistic family trees. It is 
necessary to construct some explicit models of how language change might occur 
according to a process-based view. There are four main classes of models. 
The first is the process of initial colonization, by which an uninhabited territory 
becomes populated; its language naturally becomes that of the colonizers. Second are 
processes of divergence, such as the linguistic divergence arising form separation or 
isolation mentioned above in relation to early models of the Indo-European 
languages.The third group of models is based on processes of linguistic 
convergence.The wave model, formulated by Schmidt in the 1870's, is an example, but 
convergence methods have not generally found favour among linguists. 
Now,the slow and rather static operation of these processes is complicated by another 
factor: linguistic replacement. That factor provides the basis for a fourth class of 
models. In many areas of the world the languages initially spoken by the indigenous 
people have come to be replaced, fully or partially, by languages spoken by people 
coming from outside. Were it not for this large complicating factor, the world's 
linguistic history could be faithfully described by the initial distribution of Homo 
Sapiens, followed by the gradual, ling-term workings of divergence and 
convergence.So linguistic replacement also has a key role to play in explaining the 
origins of the Indo-European languages. 

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