Some of the oldest words in English have been identified, scientists say.
科学家们相信，他们找到了英文中最古老的文字。

Reading University researchers claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years.
雷丁大学的研究人员认为，“我”、“我们”、“二”和“三”是英文中最古老的词汇，它们的历史可以追溯到四万年前。

Their computer model analyses the rate of change of words in English and the languages that share a common heritage.
科研人员们通过一个计算机模型，对英文词汇变化和消失的几率进行了分析测算，并展现出语言的普遍发展历程。

The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct--citing "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" as probable first casualties.
研究预测，“挤”、“胆量”、“木棍”和“坏”将很可能成为最先被废弃和绝迹的词汇。

"We use a computer to fit a range of models that tell us how rapidly these words evolve," said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading.
雷丁大学进化生物学家马克•佩格尔说：“我们利用计算机模型测算出这些词的发展速率。”

At the root of the Reading University effort is a lexicon of 200 words that is not specific to culture or technology, and is therefore likely to represent concepts that have not changed across nations or millennia.
雷丁大学的研究进行的基础是一个包含约200个词汇的词汇库，库中的词汇大多是一些表达人类对事物共同感知、不易因习俗和科技而改变的词，而非那些随着科技和时代进步应运而生的新词。

"We have lists of words that linguists have produced for us that tell us if two words in related languages actually derive from a common ancestral word," said Professor Pagel.
佩格尔教授说：“我们开发这个词汇库首先需要让语言学专家来告诉我们，不同语系的两个词汇是否会存在一个共同的出处。”

"We have deｓｃｒｉｐｔions of the ways we think words change and their ability to change into other words, and those deｓｃｒｉｐｔions can be turned into a mathematical language," he added.
佩格尔教授补充说道：“我们掌握了词汇改变以及它们转变成其它词汇的信息，之后我们把这些信息转变成数学语言。”

What the researchers found was that the frequency with which a word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that the most common words tend to be the oldest ones.
研究人员还发现，词汇的使用频率和其生命力紧密相关，越是普通的词汇，存在的时间也越长久。
 

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