h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Are they proto-Uralic words that seem to have remained largely unchanged for as long as anyone can tell?

Wasn't tin mined in China like ages before anyone else?

Anything to do with sino-tibetan langauges?

Well done HD very close

They seem to have remained largely unchanged for as long as anyone can tell +2 DGI

There is more

No Clive to far East

Sanskrit?

Sanskrit is part of the (insert answer here) language family which this language predates and is the ancestor this group.

Vedic - as in the vedic scriptures?

As in Vedic Sanskrit - no before that

Well they're all from Proto-Indo-European, but so is every other word in English, except Bazaar and a few others.

Yes these are also in a unique group

Are they words with no known derivation?

B

There's also the proposed early european, which is a bit wishy-washy, but might have as its last remnant the Basque language.

Early is something to do with it

Nah. To go any further I'd have to look in the books which, from where I'm sitting, I can actually touch. But to do so would spoil the fun.

Unless of course its the proposed proto-proto-proto language, derived from statistical analysis of words in lots of different languages, that supposedly repesents the first ever language, and includes the word "mother" and all the variations thereon. Would that really have "tin"?

I am outside the circumference of my ignorance.

Logically speaking, that implies that you know the answer.

B

>>I am outside the circumference of my ignorance.<<

Which is one of the best places to be. Start off with wild guesses and see what happens.