jenifer daniels ♎ :verified:from reddit /TIL: #TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries
Scott D. Strader 😐@jentrification What an amazing--and amazingly rare (?)--opportunity for historical linguistics studies! Usually you can only study these changes across large groups over time and not from a single family's phonetic/phonological changes. I wonder where else there are similar examples. Maybe small Appalachian communities? neat