A method in linguistics that estimates when two related languages diverged from a common ancestor by analyzing similarities in core vocabulary.
From Greek 'glotta' (tongue/language) + 'chronology' (time sequence). The methodology was developed in the 1950s by linguists Morris Swadesh and others seeking to date language family splits.
Glottochronology works because certain basic words (like 'water,' 'mother,' 'fire') change more slowly than others—by measuring how much they've drifted apart between languages, you can calculate how long ago they were one language.
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