Dolgopolsky list


The Dolgopolsky list is a word list compiled by Aharon Dolgopolsky in 1964 based on a study of 140 languages from across Eurasia. It lists the 15 lexical items that he found have the most semantic stability, i.e. the 15 words least likely to be replaced.

List

The words, with the first being the most stable, are:
  1. I/me
  2. two/pair
  3. you
  4. who/what
  5. tongue
  6. name
  7. eye
  8. heart
  9. tooth
  10. no/not
  11. nail
  12. louse/nit
  13. tear/teardrop
  14. water
  15. dead
The first item in the list, I/me, has been replaced in none of the 140 languages during their recorded history; the fifteenth, dead, has been replaced in 25% of the languages. The twelfth item, louse/nit, is well kept in the North Caucasian languages, Dravidian and Turkic, but not in some other proto-languages.
The Leipzig–Jakarta list of 100 lexical items includes all but five of these words: two/pair, heart, nail, tear, die/dead.