Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

hms.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 188 posts

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#41

Post by yorwba »

anon291 wrote: post #15
teleforce wrote: post #9

Related HN posts [1], [2]. Fun facts, the most common words of Indo-European Family are surprisingly very similar across Sanskrit (S) English (E) German (G) [3]. Pitara (S) Father (E) Vater (G) Matara (S) Mother (E) Mutter (G) Bhratara (S) Brother (E) Bruder (G) Duhitar (S) Daughter (E) Tochter (G) [1] New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages (147 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369…

Lots of verbs too. For example, 'to be' - French 'etre' (circumflex over the e indicates old 's' after the e), Marathi 'asane' (pronounced esnay) 'to go', German gehen, Marathi jana (when conjugated the j becomes hard) 'to give', french 'donner', Hindi 'danaa' (pronounced similarly) 'to mix', french 'melanger', Hind 'melaanaa' Other non-obvious ones: Vedas and Wisdom / Wit. Alternatively, Latin video (to see) Dyaus-p…

French être is from PIE h₁ésti https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... which also gave rise to Marathi आथि (āthi). Marathi असणे (asṇe) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%A3%E... appears unrelated. (But might be cognate to English at home?)

Not all similarities between mondern languages are inherited, coincidences do happen.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#42

Post by empath75 »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #30
macleginn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story with the Indo-Europeans is basically as follows: 1. By intersecting ancient word sets of ancient Indo-European languages using comparative phonetics we can try and reconstruct the words of the proto-IE language, both their approximate sounds and approximate meanings. This gives us some information about the society. E.g., the PIE language very likely had a word for wheel, which puts the common PIE community…

> the society of Rig-Veda I fail to understand how the Rigvedic society can be connected to this DNA research. Rigveda never mentions anything beyond the Punjab/Swat/Haryana region in any of the hymns. The flora and fauna mentioned in it is also exclusive to this region. Lastly there is no mention of an ancient homeland both in Rigveda and Avesta.

I think this comment is based on some confusion about how languages spread. Languages spread along with people, but while a local language may be replaced, the people are not generally replaced with the language. There may have been some genetic mixture, there may have been a time where they were conquered by them for a time, but there's no sense in which the people who wrote those works _were_ Yamnayan, any more than the Germans are. They wouldn't have a story about having a far away homeland because they wouldn't have had a far away homeland, and nobody would have remembered any previous language because that language had been replaced thousands of years before, and well before anybody started writing anything down. They gradually picked up the language of either invaders or their trading partners, just as has happened many other times in history.

Edited to add: there are basically no migration stories in _any_ indo-european mythological cycles or oral traditions. That's not evidence that there wasn't spread through, migration or invasion, but it does indicate that it was a gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#43

Post by dehugger »

yubblegum wrote: post #6

I love how they studiously avoid mentioning Iran in all these studies. There is a gap there between "Greece, Armenia, India and China". Hmm. Is this like the disappearing Persian Gulf syndrome?

The article focuses heavily on the Yamnaya people and identifies them as the progenitors responsible for the initial Indo-European spread.

Are you suggesting: A) the Yamnaya lived in present-day Iran and that this information was purposely left out B) the studies findings about the Yamnaya are incorrect C) the study should have mentioned Iran despite it not actually being historically relevant to the Yamnaya people D) something else entirely?

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#44

Post by richardfontana »

anon291 wrote: post #15
teleforce wrote: post #9

Related HN posts [1], [2]. Fun facts, the most common words of Indo-European Family are surprisingly very similar across Sanskrit (S) English (E) German (G) [3]. Pitara (S) Father (E) Vater (G) Matara (S) Mother (E) Mutter (G) Bhratara (S) Brother (E) Bruder (G) Duhitar (S) Daughter (E) Tochter (G) [1] New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages (147 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369…

Lots of verbs too. For example, 'to be' - French 'etre' (circumflex over the e indicates old 's' after the e), Marathi 'asane' (pronounced esnay) 'to go', German gehen, Marathi jana (when conjugated the j becomes hard) 'to give', french 'donner', Hindi 'danaa' (pronounced similarly) 'to mix', french 'melanger', Hind 'melaanaa' Other non-obvious ones: Vedas and Wisdom / Wit. Alternatively, Latin video (to see) Dyaus-p…

> Dyaus-pitar and Jupiter, Zeus-pater

This one is slightly more interesting than a mere cognate as it is believed that the Proto-Indo-European speakers worshipped a sky god with the reconstructed name *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr ("sky-father") which is the ancestor of these (also Tyr and the like on the Germanic side). See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Dy%C4%93us "*Dyēus is considered by scholars the most securely reconstructed deity of the Indo-European pantheon, as identical formulas referring to him can be found among the subsequent Indo-European languages and myths of the Vedic Indo-Aryans, Latins, Greeks, Phrygians, Messapians, Thracians, Illyrians, Albanians and Hittites."

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#45

Post by falaki »

I haven't read the papers in detail, but can someone explain how genetics can be used to trace spread of languages? For context, you don't need population movements for a language to spread (it is similar to religion). See this article for a logical explanation: https://medium.com/incerto/a-few-things-we-dont-quite-get-ab...

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#47

Post by adastra22 »

falaki wrote: post #45

I haven't read the papers in detail, but can someone explain how genetics can be used to trace spread of languages? For context, you don't need population movements for a language to spread (it is similar to religion). See this article for a logical explanation: https://medium.com/incerto/a-few-things-we-dont-quite-get-ab...

You can’t. But if population A and population B share a ancestor X years ago, and they also speak languages that appear to have drifted apart by X many years, the inference that their ancestor spoke a common proto-language is the simplest explanation.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#48

Post by trhway »

Hemospectrum wrote: post #36
gbuk2013 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad has literally just published a book (in Russian) with about 850 words with near identical sound and meanings in Russian and other Slavonic languages. :) https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2025/02/06/russian-sanskrit-... For my part I built the web based editing tool, DB and LaTeX generation system that he used to assemble this massive undertaking over the years. :) https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/first…

The complexity of natural human languages comes in different forms, but as a general rule, whenever you see something that's built into another language and "missing" from your own, you can express it by using more words. For example, PIE had a lot of noun cases that aren't in English, but you don't need the instrumental case to precisely express its purpose. You can say something like "by means of a forklift." Some…

>built into another language and "missing" from your own, you can express it by using more words. ... "by means of a forklift."

and that "more words" combination may be more precise, expressive and much simpler to handle in communication in some contexts (not necessary in all though) than say something like with -es being "juschij" and the likes (my past comment on that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40244902 )

An example: "Petr kicked Ivan" and "Ivan kicked Petr" - 2 opposite things in English while in Russian i can use all 6 combinations of the "Petr", "kicked", "Ivan" words while still saying the same thing just by utilizing necessary suffixes to express the case, and by switching suffixes i can use the same 6 combinations to express opposite ("Ivana pnul Petr" and "Petr pnul Inava" and "Pnul Ivana Petr" and so on - all is the same thing while "Ivan pnul Petra", "Petra pnul Ivan",... is the opposite - great for writing poetry, while not that good for the contexts where concise and precise communication is at premium, like for example in the tech world)

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#49

Post by adastra22 »

gbuk2013 wrote: post #39
Hemospectrum wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complexity of natural human languages comes in different forms, but as a general rule, whenever you see something that's built into another language and "missing" from your own, you can express it by using more words. For example, PIE had a lot of noun cases that aren't in English, but you don't need the instrumental case to precisely express its purpose. You can say something like "by means of a forklift." Some…

I get that part - I speak both English and Russian and the latter is more concise and nuanced due to the more complex grammar. It’s just interesting that the apparent trend is from complexity to simplification, like what I observed with English as grammar is not taught so much here in England anymore. It could well be (and likely is) an illusion stemming from my shallow knowledge of the subject of linguistics.

There is a relevancy bias here. From the perspective of a highly literate society we see fewer grammar rules as simpler. But is it, really? It is substituting one complexity for another. English has fewer noun cases, but a multitude of prepositional phrases that are really hard to keep straight.

The grammar of language tends swing back and forth on these factors, perhaps some guided by literacy and the rest a random walk, and what is “simpler” to us might be a subjective statement based on what we speak now.

Post reply on HN