Link (in Swedish): https://sprakkonsulterna.se/julkalender-2016-lucka-1/
The bad linguistics in question:
>Varför kallar vi de vita flingorna som faller från himlen för just snö?
>
>Jo, snö är ett gammalt germanskt ord. Det har massor av släktingar, till exempel engelskans snow och tyskans Schnee. Det går att spåra ända till sanskrit, som är vårt indoeuropeiska urspråk. Där heter det sneha, som betyder något i stil med ”klibbighet”. Vi använder alltså samma ord som alla andra!
My translation:
>Why do we call the white flakes that fall from the sky snö?
>
>Well, snö is an old Germanic word. It has many relatives, e.g. the English snow and the German Schnee. It can be traced all the way back to Sanskrit, which is our Indo-European proto-language. There it is called sneha, which means something along the lines of "stickiness". We use the same word as everyone else!
Descendants of Proto-Indo-European *swéḱs (6) that still sound like Turkish sekiz (8) include:
- Most Germanic words for 6, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sehs:
- English: six
- Scots: sex, sax
- North Frisian:
- Saterland Frisian: säks
- Alemannic German: sächs, saks, säks, säksch
- Bavarian:
- Central Franconian: sechs, sähs
- East Central German:
- Vilamovian: zachs
- German: sechs
- Rhine Franconian: sechs
- Frankfurterisch: [z̥εks]
- Pennsylvania German: sechs
- Yiddish: זעקס (zeks)
- Icelandic: sex
- Faroese: seks
- Norn: siks
- Norwegian Bokmål: seks
- Norwegian Nynorsk: [seks]
So, you may be aware that I am now better-than-native and have a Ph. D. in Russian and vodka flows through my veins.
Yesterday I couldn't sleep so I started doing a bit of duolingo and I completed basics for every language in the world and now I can't think in a single language. I had to translate to write that. I cannot express myself in a single language. I can understand every single language but now I can only speak with a mix of all the languages in the world! Please help me fix my large polyglot brain.
I once found this page that had lists of related words across languages. it was similar to this but it containd my native Polish. the format was a table filled with lists like "Lith. gyventi, Pol. żywić, Lat. gignere." or "Gr. gyne, Pol. żona, Rus. жена ..." and so on. I can't find it anymore. it was cool to see Polish words where you wouldn't expect them.
Just a thought exercise that's been on my mind ever since I read The Reconstruction of Proto-Romance (Hall 1950).
Forget the laryngeals of Hittite, the comparably complex case systems of extinct Indo-European languages, the nearness of the most ancient languages to the proto-language... Forget even the conservative orthographies that lets one figure out a lot of Old Norse off Icelandic and Faroese, or that stops French from looking too removed from Latin. Forget the historical registers that allow us to clearly distinguish widespread Latin, Greek and Sanskrit loans from cognates or Wanderwörter. Forget even the fact that in this hypothesis the mere religious survival of Old Avestan and Rigvedic Sanskrit would make us so many steps near to the proto-language, or analogically that the religious survival of Church Slavonic would still make the reconstruction of Proto-Slavic pretty easy.
Let's just imagine that only living spoken Indo-European languages exist. This would obviously make the job of reconstructing Proto-Indo-European much harder, but how much do you guys think a hypothetical linguistics community with the same methodological tools as ours would be able to reconstruct with reasonable consensus?
To make this thread more stimulating, let me make two questions: 1) which PIE features that are well established IRL might never be fully acknowledged in this scenario; 2) which theories that don't or wouldn't make sense IRL might at least be considered reasonable in this scenario?
In many Slavic languages (such as Polish, Czech, Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian etc), the words for "beginning" and "end" have a common origin, however they don't sound similar because of many shifts in pronunciation as these words evolved. For example, beginning/end is początek/koniec in Polish, začetek/konec in Slovenian, nachalo/konets in Russian etc. I verified this trivia in wiktionary (see конец, Proto-Slavic:konъ) and in a thread on the etymology subreddit.
Let's take Russian as an example: the word nachalo "beginning" comes from Proto-Slavic *načędlo, the root of this word is *čę-, which comes from Proto-Indo-European *ken-. The word konets derives from this root too: through Old East Slavic коньць meaning "edge, border", from Proto-Slavic konъ, which in turn stems from Proto-Indo-European *kon-, a different grade (o-grade) of *ken-. (as explained by u/luoravetlan8 on etymology subreddit).
Also, u/2020___2020 noted that the English word "end" comes from the root *ant- meaning "front, forehead". This etymology probably applies to other Germanic languages, such as German with its word "das Ende".
So yeah... the beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning.
Here are a few clarifications to my question.
- I'm aware that the current state of the region isn't representative of its history, and that PIE languages like Greek were used popularly around the Levant, I'm more concerned with the languages as they emerged/we became aware of them in the early early bronze age/near the end of the neolithic era.
- I'm assuming that PIE descendent people had to push out people that they encountered on their migrations. I'm assuming that in places like France and the Indus River Valley and Anatolia, there were already people there who spoke some languages that weren't PIE languages, but that PIE peoples overcame them.
- Why? Why were they able to overcome the people in ancient India, Iran, and Western Europe? Was "Arabia" just a harder target? Were Semitic Language speakers just better positioned to take the region? Just coincidence? Shouldn't the fertile crescent been prime real estate? Why dodge it? Is Afghanistan a more welcoming climate than Mesopotamia?
- Are my assumptions fundamentally flawed? How does that effect the overall picture of how things progressed in the region?
Thanks!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/IE2500BP.png/307px-IE2500BP.png
As we know, Armenians, in the South Caucasus, speak an Indo-European language, and north of Caucasia, we find Slavic speakers. Yet, in-between, the languages aren’t Indo-European, what could explain that gap? Why would have PIE assimilated the south, the north, but not what is in-between?
Has There Been Any Reconstructive Techniques Applied Or Inferences Made To The Proto-Dravidian Language Or Proto-Dravidian People Like What Has Been Done To The Proto-Indo-Europeans?
We know so much about the PIE people, their culture, and how they evolved. Has the same been applied to the Dravidian people?
Through the PIE course on Duolingo and the power of my Sherlock Holmes brain, I now can speak all languages from the Indo-European branch and you can do too!
A little knowledge of historical and comparative linguistics* helps also!!!
*a langfocus video
My knowledge of Hinduism is near non-existent, but I know cows are held to be sacred in it. I thinks this applies to the ancient Zoroastrian religion as well. So my question is was the irregular declension in Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Old Irish, Probably Proto-Germanic preserved due to being held sacred in the PIE religion?
I know some of you have discussed this topic before.
I have not yet seen any research papers on the subject. I have heard that it has been speculated about in blogs.
What have you guys read or seen on the subject?
Can you guys help catch me up to speed?
Proto-Indo-European is known to have been last spoken around 4500 years ago. Are there estimates for when proto languages for other super-families such as Afro-Asiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Dravidian, Turkic etc. were last spoken? I know that Afro-Asiatic has by far the oldest date for divergence (earlier than 10,000 BC by some estimates) and also that Sino-Tibetan is believed to have existed as a unified language until 6000 years ago. I have very little knowledge about other language families though.
Apparently this question wasn't allowed on ELI5 because it's a "loaded question".
I've been taking a linguistics class online and they talk about how they reconstruct proto-Indo-European. How do they know what it sounded like, when there were no written records? How can they even be sure that there was a single P.I.E. language, as oppose to two, three or four?
I have read about Proto-Indo-European but I'm confused. Apparently, all languages in the Indo-European region derive from this single language which was spoken around the Caucuses. However, humans were widespread throughout Indo-Europe before this. Are there traces of the languages they spoke? Why did Proto-Indo-European spread across half the world and form the basis of every modern language? How did one group spread a single language so far and wide? Surely there must've already been thousands of Indo-European languages at this point, because there were presumably thousands of human settlements already throughout Eurasia.
I am looking for good books that trace the history of Eurasian languages to their indo european roots, in a comparative linguistic-cognition fashion, providing a historical perspective on indo-european cognition and languages. I am also interested in mythological analysis, anything that can help understand the evolution of thought and ideas and its differentiation in subsequent cultures.
I had automatically assumed that, bar a few scattered tribes throughout Europe and South Asia, the Indo-Europeans were essentially the first to "settle" those places. Is there any evidence about where these other groups came from? Were the Indo-Europeans moving into largely unsettled land?
I’ve heard the Anatolian branch split early, what about late?
“Senta nogwom seue”
