Okay, this one is not directly related to any science that I teach, but I have been thinking about it recently. Cdza (an experimental music group) has come out with a video where they put the lyrics to the "Fresh Prince" theme song through Google Translate and then back to English. It's pretty amusing.
One thing that caught my eye (ear?) is that some words stayed the same even at the end. Not many, but "mama" and "home" were still there. Why is this interesting? Well, these words were easy enough for a computer to translate that they must be pretty basic in a number of languages. They are also fairly basic words. Could it be that these are some of the oldest words in the world? What other words might be as ancient?
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