The Swadesh word list is a list of basic words for the purposes of historical and comparative linguistics. It was compiled by the American linguist Morris Swadesh. He compiled several versions, but his final one has only 100 words.
Morris Swadesh believed that a comparison of the basic vocabulary of related languages could be used to establish the degree to which they were related and to determine when they diverged from one another. He determined the list on the basis of intuition. Here are some of the words from his final list:
I
you
we
this
that
not
many
one
two
sun
moon
star
water
eye
nose
mouth
drink
eat
see
sleep
red
green
yellow
white
black
The words on the list have what Morris Swadesh considered the core vocabulary of a language. He selected vocabulary which was unlikely to be borrowed from other languages. Other linguists have published similar lists, but they aren't as widely used as the Swadesh list.
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