Here I present: Herbert Cushing Tolman, “A Guide to the Old Persian Inscriptions”, 1893, PART TWO (2).
INTRODUCTION.
On page 174 (shown ABOVE) of Herbert Cushing Tolman, “A Guide to Persian Inscriptions”, 1983 is English “third” and Old Persian “tritiya”. The idea of three (3) is cognate between Old Persian and English.
Cognate words are part of the “core vocabulary” of every language and are called “Swadesh words”. The Swadesh word list is shown ATOP this blog post.
COMMENTS.
Morris Swadesh’ (1909-1967) proved in 1952 glottochronology’. Glottochronolgy’ is change in the lexicon similarity with time. The table BELOW is what linguist Morris Swadesh’ discovered.
Five centuries BP (before present) results in eighty-six (86) percent similarity. Five millennia BP (before present) results in twenty-two (22) percent similarity. Old Persian 2500 BP has a fourty-seven (47) percent similarity with New Persian.
Thus, half of the Old Persian is cognate with New Persian words. ABOVE is the script of the Old/New Persians which is what changed most.
| Dating Time | Similarity |
| 0 BP | 100% |
| 500 BP | 86% |
| 1000 BP | 74% |
| 1500 BP | 64% |
| 2000 BP | 55% |
| 2500 BP | 47% |
| 3000 BP | 40% |
| 4000 BP | 30% |
| 5000 BP | 22% |
