The Spanish word, which is more similar to the common ancestor, is more conservative than its French cognate, which is more innovative.
For example, Icelandic is, in some aspects, more similar to Old Norse than other languages that evolved from Old Norse, including Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish, while Sardinian (especially the Nuorese dialects) and Italian are regarded as being the most conservative Romance languages.
[2][3][4][5][6] A 2008 study regarding the stability of modern Icelandic appears to confirm its status as "stable".
Compared to closely related modern Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, which is not necessarily directly descended from it, Classical Syriac is still a highly archaic language form because it is also chronologically old.
[citation needed] A roughly analogous concept in biology is living fossil.