Proto Indo-European

This is a forked discussion spawning from the Roman and Greek Civilization forum.

The topic is Proto Indo-European. What it is, how was it developed, and what common features exists among its languages.

Here are parts from the wikipedia entry on indo-european. For more information, please click on the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-european

Comparative Linguistics

See main article Indo-European studies.

The existence of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been inferred by comparative linguistics. The discovery of the genetic relationship of the various Indo-European languages goes back to William Jones, a British judge in India, who in 1782 observed the strong affinity of Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.

The language group was briefly referred to as "Indo-Germanic", until it became apparent that the group included most of the other languages of Europe, as well. "Indo-European", the term now current in English, was coined in 1813 by the British scholar Sir Thomas Young. Franz Bopp performed extensive comparative work.

At first, the related languages were simply compared, with no attempt at reconstruction. August Schleicher was the first scholar to compose a tentative text in the extinct "common source" Jones had predicted. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) represents, by definition, the common language of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

In the 20th century, great progress was made due to the discovery of more language material belonging to the Indo-European family, and by advances in comparative linguistics, by scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure.

This is the Heritage Dictionary Indo-European roots list. Unfortunately it just deals with English, but by clicking on the roots you will get the etymology of the root. The etymology is not comprehensive, but must work from the Heritage Dictionary isn't either.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html

This is the jackpot. This link from the University of Texas has an online Proto Indo-European (PIE) lexicon. You can search by PIE root, PIE phoneme, or English meaning.
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-ling/lexico n.html


To wet your appetite, look at the entry for the English word "eat."
PIE */h1ed-/ 'eat'
Glottalic *et'-

*et'-   English 'eat' = Food and Drink

NORTH EUROPEAN
Lithuanian edu 'I eat'

GERMANIC
Gothic itan 'to eat'         &n bsp;         
Old High German ezzan
English eat

ANATOLIAN
Hittite ed-mi 'I eat'

WEST EUROPEAN
Latin edo: 'I eat'
Welsh esu 'to eat'
Tocharian        &nb sp;         

SOUTH EUROPEAN
Greek �do:
Armenian        &nbs p;        
Sanskrit �d-mi 'I eat'
Avestan a�a:iti '3sg subj.'

[QUOTE]Greek �do/QUOTE]

That's wrong.

idw (iota, omega) = to see (Ionic form eidw)

hdw/hdwmai (hetta, omega) =  to enjoy

the correct 'form' is:

edw edwmai (epsilon, omega)= to eat .... in modern Hellinic we find the ancient edesma = dish/meal


pinw (iota, omega) = to drink

So where do the other words like the Hellinic word for drink and Cyrus' examples come from?? they are obviously not from that root

Sorry bout that forgot about the possible prob with the fonts.


Edited by Phallanx

Can you write Greek phonetically in Latin alphabet please?

Thanks, that's what I wanted.

Interesting. Arda/Arta means Earth in Persian and was a common prefix on names like Ardashir, Artaxerxes.

So where do the other words like the Hellinic word for drink and Cyrus' examples come from??

I don't know about Hellinic word for drink but Persian word for eat (Khvar) comes from "Vara" which means "Swallow/Devour".

"odontes"=teeth"

In Persian "dantan".

Would there be any need to invent the PIE language if there never was an invention of the 'Aryan' invasions?
I'd say definitely not.

If we accept the myth of an IE language we must accept that it had to come from somewhere and somehow spread into the areas it is used, but where and when?
Unfortunately for the supporters and promoters of this theory, no matter how much they strive to prove the unprovable, neither archeology nor genetics have given us finds nor any kind of admixture of this invisible 'race' of people, where they came from and when exactly they came into contact with the people that speak a language of this 'family'.

So this is nothing more than a hypothetical theory, based on speculations which are obviously unconvincing.

An interesting question would be, how were the words 'invented'?

Nature has obviously played a major role in forming language, humans must have adopted nature's sounds and turned them into words, but if so, we obviously have another problem.
If this is how it might have happened, why do we find totally different sounds to describe the same thing? Is it possible that other language family speakers, comprehended the exact same sound so differently?

Let's take the dog's bark. I do believe they make the same sound all over the world

I can understand the Hellinic word "bablizw" to describe a dog's bark, the VAV sound does make some sence, but what about the english word "bark" ?

An online etymologic dictionary gave me this:

bark = "dog sound,"
O.E. beorcan, from P.Gmc. *berkanan (cf. O.N. berkja "to bark"), of echoic origin.

I can't see why they'd give to this sound (dog's bark) any of the above names, they make no sence.

What's the word for bark in other languages?



Edited by Phallanx

Btw, Phalanx, how can you be so sure that edw comes from da? They are not only very different looking words but also the relation between earth and eat is not inmediate by any means. I've read philological nonsenses quite more plausible than that.

OK, since you probably didn't get it.

da = earth
we also find spelled in it's latinized form as "hedw/hedh" = edw = "land, seat, abode" (Hesiod Theogony)

Where does food come from? Land so we once again find edw = eat
(obviously refering to cultivation)

 what do we eat ? edwdh= food

with what do we eat our food??  "edontes",  later 'transformed' into "odontes"= teeth", 

What are we talking about?
"edafos = da=earth + afh= feel, touch" = soil, ground

It's simple logic, that is exactly how the Hellinic language 'works'. Why don't you point out exactly why you claim this to be nonsenses?

They've introduced a theory of an allegedly homogenous language, literally inventing every single root since there is absolutely no way to know exactly what it sounded like or how it would have been written since a writing system did not exist.

Here are a couple of sites I've came upon that support the 'theory' of this homogenous language.

http://www.friesian.com/cognates.htm

How does 'wid' which has an obvious 'v' sound as seen in all other language examples turn into 'idea' or what about inventing the 'gno' root in order to fit the Hellinic 'gignwskw' and the Latin loan 'gnocere' into the theory?

http://www.exploratorium.edu/exploring/language/related_la nguages.html

This one attempts to find a connection between numbers. I still fail to see how the Hellinic 'eis' / 'en' is connected to 'ekas' or what about that 'tettares' that in reality is 'tessera' connected to 'catvaras'. These people are inventing a connection where there is no such thing.

We could continue with alleged roots like, '
su'= 'to be born' that they connected to 'uios'= son
'n' = 'not (from one letter!!!) connected to 'agnwstos' = unknown

They have taken words from all 'forms' of Hellinic Linear B', Homeric  and late classical Hellinic where and when it suits them.
The way I see it, this is nothing more than a hypothetical theory based on no real facts, just  conveniently manipulated linguistic connections.

While there are some similarities the differences are far more striking. From originally giving the date of 1200 BC for these alleged invasions, the date has slowly but steadily risen to 2600, 3400, 4200, 5000 and now literally is left blank.
The latest theory suggests that these 'migration/invasion' took place approx the same time agriculture spread, which would be approx. 8000BC, totally ignoring that genetics prove this to be totally wrong.see:
�Semino et al. (2000) The genetic legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens in Extant Europeans�"
clearly states that :
 �Eu9 and Eu10, the origin of these lineages has been estimated to be about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago�

She later states :
"Various types of evidence suggest that the
present European population arose from the
merging of local Paleolithic groups and Neolithic
farmers arriving from the Near East after
the invention of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent"

http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publication...v290_p1155.pdf

But once again the problem that appears is that agricultural terms are quite different. So they obviously were not adopted from these alleged IE invading farmers but obviously pre-existed in the 'native' languages. So my 2cents is that the common words were probably adopted, quite similar to what has happened today with english and french. There is probably absolutely no language that hasn't adopted a word from these two languages.

If a handfull of words were enough to prove an 'invasion' then the ancient Hellines obviously 'invaded' S.America and Polynnesia, simply based on such similarities.
The Polynnesians say 'Mate kite rani' that means 'eyes looking at the sky'
this becomes interesting when you look at the Hellinic phrase 'Matia koitoun ton ourano' or the many similar place names all over S.America that are obviously Hellinic, like Ephyra, Fedra, Ipolitos etc. or the liguistic connections between Hellinic to Chuetsua and Hellinic to Hawaian as noted by Enrico Mattievich and N.Josephson.

Based on the same logic the IE has used, these are enough to prove the invasion/colonization of the entire world by Hellinic sailors.
This is just an example, you obviously  see exactly how far we can take it, by simply looking at linguistic similarities and discrediting, archeology and anthropology.