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How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

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Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#61

Post by OfSanguineFire »

inawarminister wrote: post #15
troupo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO we know too much (though obviously still too little) about PIE and not enough about non-PIE languages, and I find those much more interesting.

Yes, though it makes sense as majority of Europe and Europe-descended cultures are Indo-Europeans, with Indians and Iranians as the other major cultures. We know much about Proto-Semitic AND Proto-Afro-Asiatic, thankfully, due to the antiquity of recorded Semitic languages in the Near East. Proto-Austronesian seems to be clear too with the 600+ languages we have access to. Unfortunately the languages between the thre…

> Yeniseian (the originator of such words as Tengri, Kha(g)an, etc) being connected to Native American Apache language was pretty amazing.

Vajda’s theory is still regarded as very tentative by the community, and even Vajda himself suggests in his most recent book on the subject that work towards proving a connection has barely begun. It is definitely not settled science.

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#62

Post by largolagrande »

ughitsaaron wrote: post #40

The first couple of episodes of the podcast “The History of English” about PIE are fascinating. I’d highly recommend it for anyone interested in a quick intro to PIE (or the rest of the podcast in general, if you’re interested in the history of the English language).

The whole podcast series is a gem. One of my favourite podcast of all time ! Highly recommended : https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2012/06/25/episode-2-the...

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#63

Post by misja111 »

panick21_ wrote: post #57
lacker wrote: post #24

English, German, and Hindi counting from 1 to 10. one, eins, ek two, zwei, do three, drei, teen four, vier, chaar five, funf, paanch six, sechs, chhah seven, sieben, saat eight, acht, aaath nine, neun, nou ten, zehn, das Seems related to me! Source: https://l-lingo.com/free-lessons/en/learn-german/numbers-1-1... https://www.mindurhindi.com/basic-words-and-phrases-in-hindi...

Lets go to Finish, quite different: 1 – yksi 2 – kaksi 3 – kolme 4 – neljä 5 – viisi 6 – kuusi 7 – seitsemän 8 – kahdeksan But it almost feels as if its related a little. Or its my brain playing tricks.

Yep, Finnish is not considered a Indo European language.

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#64

Post by OfSanguineFire »

misja111 wrote: post #22
astrange wrote: post #16

I think all the focus on PIE derivatives is boring and we should get Europeans some better languages without pointless features like noun genders.

If you don't like noun genders, you should check out Finnish

Meh, Finnish doesn’t have noun genders, but due to phonological changes obscuring what was, centuries ago, a regular declension, it now has a large number of different noun classes that have to be memorized as such. These are so laborious for foreigners to learn that a Finnish language workbook like Harjoitus tekee mestarin can spend 300 pages just on drills of noun classes.

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#65

Post by jpmoral »

qwytw wrote: post #45
troupo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO we know too much (though obviously still too little) about PIE and not enough about non-PIE languages, and I find those much more interesting.

The problem is that there is very little material to work with because all non-PIE languages besides Basque have been lost and what little we have of Tyrsenian (and to an even much lesser Tartessian and some others) is really insufficient to make any substantial claims about their origins or shared features.

> all non-PIE languages besides Basque have been lost Do you mean non-PIE European languages?

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#66

Post by diogenes4 »

borissk wrote: post #6

Is this guy a linguist, published in peer reviewed publications? It's so easy to make up stuff regarding language, that sounds reasonable, but has nothing to do with reality.

Good researchers are often bad educators, and vice versa. It doesn't matter so long as the information is good, and the credentials of the speaker are a poor signal for quality of information.

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#67

Post by rlpb »

mcv wrote: post #52
rlpb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be nice to have a language with sensible spelling/pronunciation I get the impression that this is impossible in the long term because pronunciation tends to drift, but spelling is more rigid, so over time they mismatch.

Yet there are languages that are much more phonetic than English. In fact, most probably are. But I've been told that Polish is perfectly phonetic without any weird pronunciation surprises. (I don't know Polish, though.) And spelling is only more rigid in English. Plenty of languages update their spelling over time. Only in English this is useless because there is already barely any connection between spelling and pr…

> But I've been told that Polish is perfectly phonetic without any weird pronunciation surprises.

I don't know about Polish, but I have had conversations where native speakers think that until exceptions are pointed out, because they are unaware.

There's also the issue of accents, where we expect spelling to be universal across the language, but pronunciation in some accents have drifted (ie. it's not a straightforward mapping).

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#68

Post by OfSanguineFire »

mcv wrote: post #52
rlpb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be nice to have a language with sensible spelling/pronunciation I get the impression that this is impossible in the long term because pronunciation tends to drift, but spelling is more rigid, so over time they mismatch.

Yet there are languages that are much more phonetic than English. In fact, most probably are. But I've been told that Polish is perfectly phonetic without any weird pronunciation surprises. (I don't know Polish, though.) And spelling is only more rigid in English. Plenty of languages update their spelling over time. Only in English this is useless because there is already barely any connection between spelling and pr…

Polish orthography – however bizarre it may look to foreigners at first glance – does map pretty closely to the spoken language, but it still isn’t perfectly phonetic. For example, the reflexive pronoun się is written with a nasal vowel, but whether the vowel is pronounced as a nasal vowel or as a non-nasal vowel differs across regions.

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#69

Post by retrac »

panick21_ wrote: post #57
lacker wrote: post #24

English, German, and Hindi counting from 1 to 10. one, eins, ek two, zwei, do three, drei, teen four, vier, chaar five, funf, paanch six, sechs, chhah seven, sieben, saat eight, acht, aaath nine, neun, nou ten, zehn, das Seems related to me! Source: https://l-lingo.com/free-lessons/en/learn-german/numbers-1-1... https://www.mindurhindi.com/basic-words-and-phrases-in-hindi...

Lets go to Finish, quite different: 1 – yksi 2 – kaksi 3 – kolme 4 – neljä 5 – viisi 6 – kuusi 7 – seitsemän 8 – kahdeksan But it almost feels as if its related a little. Or its my brain playing tricks.

Ah, but check out the personal pronouns:

English Russian Finnish Hungarian

me, menya, mina, en

we, my, me, mi

thou, ty, te, ti

he, on, hän, ő

What's very weird is that it is probably not because the languages are related, but because the same forces that create pronouns, work in a similar way across languages. It's important the sounds be very different, for example, to minimize ambiguity. And they're some of the first abstract words children learn. Something similar is seen with informal terms for "mother" and "father" which have a very strange similarity across languages (e.g. in Chinese, English and Swahili "baba" means father.)

Re: How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]

#70

Post by dontlaugh »

mcv wrote: post #52
rlpb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be nice to have a language with sensible spelling/pronunciation I get the impression that this is impossible in the long term because pronunciation tends to drift, but spelling is more rigid, so over time they mismatch.

Yet there are languages that are much more phonetic than English. In fact, most probably are. But I've been told that Polish is perfectly phonetic without any weird pronunciation surprises. (I don't know Polish, though.) And spelling is only more rigid in English. Plenty of languages update their spelling over time. Only in English this is useless because there is already barely any connection between spelling and pr…

There's quite a few languages with very good bidirectional mapping between written and spoken forms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography#Compariso...
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