'A common misconception is the things that come from Neanderthals are generally bad,' Prüfer says, 'but that’s not entirely true.'
New Clues How Neanderthal Genes Affect Your Health
Speaking of the fossil record, what about the linguistic fossil record? The word Neanderthal is a compound German word: Neander + thal. "Neander" is the name of a river in Germany and "thal" means valley. But not any more. Modern German dropped the "th" spelling (and the "th" sound) [ed.: nice alliteration].
Neandertal is the modern German word. There's even a bit of linguistic residue in English: Tal is cognate with "dale" as in hill and dale.
3 comments:
When did that change? When I was but a wee Neanderer we were all "thal", but some time later, without anyone telling me, it became "tal". What is the tale?
@Sixty: Sometime after 1861. When a Thaler was still a dollar.
According to a reference I have at hand, the "th" spelling in German was used to distinguish a strongly aspirated or perhaps even affricated dental stop. Whatever that means. Goth in Himmel, I have no clue.
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