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How we know languages like proto-Indo-European existed [video]
- h4zel 3y agoPIE is fascinating. I desperately wish we knew more about that culture
- bjackman 3y agoI read a book called The Horse, The Wheel, and Language by David W. Anthony after watching Simon Roper videos with great interest for the last couple of years. I can definitely recommend that if you're interested in the topic. A pretty detailed exploration of the Kurgan Hypothesis.
- edgyquant 3y agoThis book is currently free on audible
- troupo 3y agoIMO 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.
- inawarminister 3y agoYes, 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 three (Caucasians, language isolates, Tibeto-Burman, Andamanese, Turko-Mongol-Yeniseian Altaic* sprachbund etc) are much more obscure. Yeniseian (the originator of such words as Tengri, Kha(g)an, etc) being connected to Native American Apache language was pretty amazing and evidence of the importance of paleo-linguistics in finding out informations about our ancestors
- bradrn 3y ago> Yeniseian (the originator of such words as Tengri, Kha(g)an, etc) being connected to Native American Apache language was pretty amazing and evidence of the importance of paleo-linguistics in finding out informations about our ancestors This is a bit controversial, though. I haven’t read through the original papers, but one person who did so informed me that they found this relationship not very convincing at all. Still, it’s fascinating stuff!
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago> 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.
- qwytw 3y agoThe 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.
- jpmoral 3y ago> all non-PIE languages besides Basque have been lost Do you mean non-PIE European languages?
- qwytw 3y agoYes of course (I would generally expect most European linguists and anthropologists to be more interested in studying European languages due to obvious reasons).
- jpmoral 3y agoThanks. I asked because this is a topic that interests me that I don't know a lot about. I wasn't sure whether there was a theory that (almost) everything is PIE or whether there was an Asian component to your comment or something else that was in my unknown unknowns.
- edgyquant 3y ago[flagged]
- jpmoral 3y agoWow. I asked because this is a topic that interests me that I don't know a lot about. I wasn't sure whether there was a theory that (almost) everything is PIE or whether there was an Asian component to the comment or something else that was in my unknown unknowns. Don't jump down people's throats based on uncharitable readings of what they wrote.
- hzay 3y ago
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- Chiba-City 3y ago[dead]
- borissk 3y agoIs 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.
- turndown 3y agoHe mentions his credentials(or lack thereof) as the first thing in the video. Did you even look at the video for a second?
- SoftTalker 3y agoPerhaps he's trying to decide whether it's worth the time. Video is not a good format for skimming around to get a quick overall impression.
- jjallen 3y agoThey evidently made no attempt at all and want others to do the work for them
- turzmo 3y agoThe question is reasonable, it’s often not a good time to watch a video and one might want to know if it’s worth coming back to. The problem is that the tone is abrasive.
- isaacfrond 3y agoI agree entirely. I would applaud a ban on video posts for HN.
- iamflimflam1 3y agoUsed to be very unusual to see any videos make it to the front page. But it seems to be happening more often recently.
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- bobinux 3y agoRecently found this video https://youtu.be/bzRxSVK7qIU https://youtu.be/bzRxSVK7qIU where Sanskrit was being compared to Lithuanian. To think, that such geographically distant languages are so similar, as Lithuanian is one of the most well preserved languages in Europe. To get a grasp of what PIE sounded, the closest you can get in Europe is by listening to Lithuanian (especially the older dialects of it)
- jakderrida 3y ago> as Lithuanian is one of the most well preserved languages in Europe Just to elaborate on the confusing phrasing here... Lithuanian, among PIE languages, is regarded by linguists as having preserved the most archaic features of PIE. So it basically resembles the first branches of PIE (like Sanskrit, but more Proto-Balto-Slavic) more than any other modern PIE language today. So as linguists trace back systematic transformations from other Proto-Balto-Slavic derived languages back to their root words, it resembles Lithuanian more. Btw, I'm not a linguist. I just worked really hard for a 4.0 GPA, even for electives.
- qwytw 3y ago> the closest you can get in Europe is by listening to Lithuanian (especially the older dialects of it) I'm not sure that's true. I mean Baltic languages are generally considered to be one of the last to diverge from PIE but that doesn't mean the sound that similar. They preserve many archaic features but there has also been a lot of innovation over thousands of years (especially considering that modern standard Lithuanian is to some degree a constructed language). While certain grammatical features like almost the whole case system have been preserved too a higher degree than in other IE languages. Lithuanian has still lost laryngeals, aspirated stops etc. which means it sounds very differently to what proto Indo-European might have sounded.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago> To get a grasp of what PIE sounded, the closest you can get in Europe is by listening to Lithuanian No you can’t. Especially not the “sounded” aspect. Lithuanian is conservative in some matters of lexicon and morphology, but modern Baltic phonology is very different from PIE. The ancestral stages of Lithuanian after PIE lost the PIE laryngeal sounds, then the distinction of three classes of velars and aspirated/non-aspirated stops, and in more recent centuries there has been some palatalization processes and loss of nasal vowels (though the latter are still denoted in writing). The developments in Baltic-Slavic tone after PIE are also an infamous mess. All in all, when you listen to Lithuanian, you are listening to just any IE language instead of gaining special insights into PIE.
- astrange 3y agoI think all the focus on PIE derivatives is boring and we should get Europeans some better languages without pointless features like noun genders.
- AlexanderDhoore 3y agoFeature creep is a real problem with language design nowadays.
- misja111 3y agoIf you don't like noun genders, you should check out Finnish
- littlestymaar 3y agoEnglish is already a good progress in that direction, in many (most?) European languages we have gendered nouns for everything, no matter how nonsensical it is. (la baguette / le pain).
- totetsu 3y agoI heard this was down to Viking raiders moving into the anglish isles and not wanting to be bothered with all that complicated stuff
- littlestymaar 3y agoGiven that the Viking's language was itself fairly complex pronoun-wise[1] I suspect that this is an urban legend. [1]: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_Norse/Pronouns https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_Norse/Pronouns
- vidarh 3y agoAnd indeed, modern Scandinavian languages have retained gendered nouns. Though it's gradually being watered down. Eg. in Norwegian Bokmål (there are two official variants of Norwegian, Bokmål is the dominant one) you can now mostly choose whether to use feminine or masculine forms for a noun if a word takes either (but you can't do this for neuter), e.g. en sol (masculine; a sun) vs. ei sol (feminine; a sun) are both valid as long as you're consistent (combining "en sol" (m; a sun) with "sola" (f; the sun) in the same text, mixing genders, is frowned upon, though some of us do that intentionally - "solen" (m; the sun) sounds to stuffy/posh to me, but I prefer "en sol" to "ei sol").
- verytrivial 3y agoI thought this might be a Simon Roper video! I really enjoy his deep, humble and creative views on these topics, even though he still describes himself as only an enthusiast. Speaking of creative, check out his "A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Century"[1] for a frankly enchanting 18 minutes of viewing. [1] https://youtu.be/3lXv3Tt4x20?feature=shared https://youtu.be/3lXv3Tt4x20?feature=shared
- lacker 3y agoEnglish, 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-1-10.html https://l-lingo.com/free-lessons/en/learn-german/numbers-1-1... https://www.mindurhindi.com/basic-words-and-phrases-in-hindi/hindi-numbers-1-10/ https://www.mindurhindi.com/basic-words-and-phrases-in-hindi...
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- dvh 3y agoJeden, dva, tri, štyri, päť, šesť, sedem, osem, deväť, desať - Slovak
- panick21_ 3y agoLets 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.
- misja111 3y agoYep, Finnish is not considered a Indo European language.
- edgyquant 3y agoIt isn’t but it has a ton of influence thanks to Swedish.
- retrac 3y agoAh, 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.)
- dang 3y agoRecent and related: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930321 - July 2023 (148 comments)
- ughitsaaron 3y agoThe 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).
- largolagrande 3y agoThe 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-indo-european-discovery-2/ https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2012/06/25/episode-2-the...
- Curzel 3y agohttps://youtu.be/Cgku-koMiLM?si=ng0GFBrXZcRAtDiR https://youtu.be/Cgku-koMiLM?si=ng0GFBrXZcRAtDiR This is a good channel
- acadapter 3y agoIt would be fun to see a video going into depth about the various speculations on how the laryngeals sounded like. I personally think of them as /h/, /x/, /x^w/, but there are so many arguments for the different sounds that people speculate about.