#indo european languages

[tower-of-hana]

Indo-Europeans be like what do you mean you can't conjugate this verb? It's a regular i-stem verb of the ua subclass of the eu sub-sub class of the ye sub-sub-subclass that nazalizes, palatalizes, and undergoes anywhere from 17 to 30 different forms of umlaut simultaneously depending on what conjugation you're using and gets replaced with a completely different verb when it's passivized!

[loki-was-framed]

Today's Old Norse Word in English:

loft

noun

a large, usually unpartitioned floor over a factory, warehouse, or other commercial or industrial space; such a floor converted into an apartment or artist's studio.

Old Norse: lopt, air, sky; upper room.

Note: Lopt is also another name for the Norse god Loki, which is why he's sometimes called "Skywalker" or "Sky Traveler."

[lukaszmichal]

My Indo-European ass pronouncing Semitic emphatic consonants as retroflex

[grymm-gardens]

the language nerd in me is fucking screaming and crying about the fact that Cassandra Pentaghast has what i believe may be the most accurate impression of the extinct gothic germanic accent we have, and the fact that they didn't even try to give anyone else from Nevarra the same accent is fucking criminal

yes i know it is an entirely made up accent that miranda developed herself, she unintentionally hit the nail on the fucking head with the accent of a dead language that would even be lore accurate with the placement of Nevarra relative to orlais and the other neighboring countries

also im sorry using Gothic as the language inspiration for nevarran??? is that not like too fucking perfect??

like yeh i get it accent training people for a fake accent is ridiculously hard

i do not care

give me gothic nevarrans in the truest sense of the word

i might post the notes find the notes here i have on the actual linguistic comparisons if anyone cares because i studied her pronunciation to compare to historical texts when i made the connection

[yvanspijk]

Wool & lana

The word lana (wool) in languages such as Spanish is etymologically related to English wool. For words to be related, they don't have to look like each other. Instead, you have to be able to trace them back to the same ancestor through regular sound changes - and that's what linguists managed to do with wool and lana. The infographic shows the Germanic and Romance family trees of these words.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I'm all for the use of non-gendered language and options for non-binary people, I just want them to make linguistic sense. "Nibling" sounds dumb. If you want a gender-neutral word for niece/nephew, it should share etymology with them. They both descend from the Proto-Indo-European root *nepot-, so there are a ton of plausible sounding options for derivations that don't call attention to themselves as neologisms.

Nepot is too visually similar to nephew, and sounds too much like the derivative nepotism, so maybe drop the p like Spanish did and go with something like nete or niete. Niete is too close to niece; nite, maybe? Or neti? Neit, neiti, neite, nit. These all look like real words, not clumsy 21st century portmanteaus like "nibling." If p and t are no good, we can go with another unvoiced stop like k. Nik, neik, nike (probably not that one), niki, neki, neke, nekie, so many possibilities, anything but "nibling."

Same thing with aunt/uncle. I've never heard a non-gendered term that sounds like something a layperson would use.

Hewhos became ewos, became avus, became avunculus, became uncle. Aunt is derived from words that mean mother; amma, amita, ante, aunt. I thought the word parent derived from the same root as paternal meaning father, but no, it's from the PIE root *pere-, mening to bring forth or produce. Sibling ultimately derives from the PIE root for self/oneself (*swe-), literally meaning same blood, related to myself, kin. "Parent's sibling" could be derived from swepere, swepar, suepar, supar, maybe something like sempar, "same parent/same source," simpar (maybe avoid anything with simp in it). Or "one source," onpar, honpar, paron, paroin, peron, peroine (from PIE *hoinom for one). I'm not thinking of germanic soundshifts, how these roots would evolve directly into English, I'm thinking broader, like how they would evolve in Latin or French to be loaned into English. If you want a neutral word that looks like it belongs with aunt and uncle, maybe something like umpar, umper, ompar, onpar, onper, onter, anything like that.

[canisalbus]

I want you to know that your art is very important to me, and I'm very invested in all of the characters I have seen from you. Also, the discussion about Finnish and other languages having gendered words or not has been the last little push to get me to start learning Finnish which I think is fun.

I'm making this a little compilation post of all the language asks I got. Thank you for sharing, this was genuinely really interesting!

[renegade-hierophant]

Sanskrit and Greek cognates

mind - मनस् (mánas) - μένος (ménos) great, big - मह (mahá) - μέγας (mégas) knee - जानु (jānu) - γόνυ (gónu) boat - नौ (naú) - ναῦς (naûs) water - उदन् (udán) - ὕδωρ (húdōr) winter, cold - हिम (himá) - χεῖμα (kheîma) a field - अज्र (ájra) - ἀ��ρός (agrós) house - दम (dáma) - δόμος (dómos) night - नक्ति (nákti) - νύξ (núx) a foot - पद् (pád) - πούς (poús) mouse - मूष् (mūṣ) - μῦς (mûs) reward - मीढ (mīḍhá) - μισθός (misthós) donor - दातृ (dātṛ) - δώτωρ (dōtōr) lady - पत्नी (pátnī) - πότνια (pótnia) star - स्तृ (stṛ) - ἀστήρ (astēr) sleep - स्वप्न (svápna) - ὕπνος (húpnos) a month - मास् (mās) - μείς (meís) man - नर (nara) - ἀνήρ (anēr) name - नामन् (nāman) - ὄνομα (ónoma) door - दुर् (dúr) - θύρα (thúra) a fox - लोपाश (lopāśá) - ἀλώπηξ (alōpex) a bend - अङ्कस् (áṅkas) - ἄγκος (ánkos) bone - अस्थि (ásthi) - ὀστέον (ostéon) intestine - अन्त्र (ántra) - ἔντερον (énteron) a reproach - निन्दा (nindā) - ὄνειδος (óneidos) ray - अक्तु (aktú) - ἀκτίς (aktís) flesh - क्रविस् (kravís) - κρέας (kréas) to bite - दशति (dáśati) - δάκνω (dáknō) to tame - दाम्यति (dāmyati) - δάμνημι (dámnēmi) lifetime - आयु (āyu) - αἰών (aiōn) power - क्रतु (krátu) - κράτος (krátos) old - जरत् (járat) - γέρων (gérōn) a yoke - युग (yugá) - ζυγόν (zugón) wood, tree - दारु (dāru) - δρῦς (drũs) stick, tree - दण्ड (daṇḍá) - δένδρον (déndron) root, herb - मूल (mūla) - μῶλυ (mõlu) flower, leaf - फुल्ल (phúlla) - φύλλον (phúllon) fat, ointment - लेप (lépa) - λίπος (lípos) dust, particle - कण (káṇa) - κόνις (kónis)

[tower-of-hana]

You can break whatever rules you want to on twitter as long as you do it in Tocharian

[linguisticdiscovery]

Tocharian

Around 3,000 BCE, speakers of an early branch of the Indo-European languages decided to go for a little hike, and wound up all the way in South Siberia.

A few thousand years later, scholars discovered manuscripts in northwestern China dating to 500–800 CE that were shown conclusively to be written in a language from an early branch of Indo-European. They named this language Tocharian.

The discovery of Tocharian upset decades of research on ancient Indo-European languages and revitalized interested in them for two reasons:

Nobody even suspected that another branch of Indo-European existed, let alone in China’s Tarim Basin.

It was previously thought that the Indo-European languages were divided into eastern and western groups, based on whether the /k/ sound had changed to an /s/. The western languages that retained the /k/ were called centum languages (the Latin word for ‘hundred’, pronounced with an initial /k/), while the eastern languages with /s/ were called satem languages (the Avestan word for ‘hundred’). Yet Tocharian was a centum language sitting further east than almost any other language in the family. (Linguists later hypothesized that the centum-satem split wasn’t so much an east-west split as it was a spread of /s/ from the center of the language family outward, a change which didn’t reach the furthest members of the family).

Tocharian was written in a variant of Brahmi; here’s a sample of Tocharian script on a wooden tablet:

If you really want to challenge yourself, here’s a problem about Tocharian from the International Linguistics Olympiad:

[loki-was-framed]

Today's Old Norse Word in English:

ransack

verb

To search thoroughly; to plunder or pillage.

Old Norse: rannsaka, to search a house.

[blackcrowing]

Review of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

I will be upfront, it is a very technical book. If you are not well versed in the anthropological categorizing of cultures and time periods of the areas being discussed it can be very difficult to keep up with the more finite points the author is making. That being said, I had never heard of any of the specific cultures being discussed in the Danube Valley and was still able to enjoy this book and its well put together analysis of various aspects of language, culture, technological developments and shifts in behaviors and place.

If you are especially interested in any of the major themes this book discusses (which is in all honesty is an extensive list including but not limited to; the development of Indo-European language, the time periods and locations as well as likely motivation for domestication of various livestock types, the cultural effects of technological developments on the peoples of the Eurasian Steppes and their migration/trading patterns) I do highly recommend. It is heavy reading but extremely illuminating.

[victusinveritas]

Starkey comics: I've made a giant tree of Indo-European languages! 🌳🌸

Actually this was just intended a template with which I plan to make a bunch of images about related words in these languages, so stay tuned for that. And I'll probably put a HD version of this image on my site soon too.

This image shows 64 living Indo-European languages (around the outside), as well as many dead and extinct languages.

Moving into the image from the outside we travel back in time, until we reach the core of the image, wherein lies Proto-Indo-European. PIE was spoken somewhere around the border of Europe and Asia, and diverged into the 10 inner Proto languages shown here 4500+ years ago.

There are about 380 Indo-European languages missing from this image, although I've tried to pick representatives from as many branches as possible. The Indo-Iranian branch is the largest, actually accounting for around 2 thirds of Indo-European languages.

-⭐🗝️

[yvanspijk]

Nifts & neves

Niece and nephew aren't the original English words for children of your brothers and sisters. The original words were nift and neve, cognates of German Nichte and Neffe. Niece and nephew were borrowed from Old French and gradually supplanted nift and neve, until these became obsolete. The French words have the same Proto-Indo-European ancestors as Nichte and Neffe, so they're cognates, but very distant ones. Click the graphic to learn more.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

If there are any linguistics professionals reading this, I could use some help.

I'm doing research into Proto-Indo-European, the mother tongue of much of Europe and South Asia, and I recently discovered Schleicher's Fable, a short story about sheep and horses which has been translated into a dozen proto-languages to show how different branches envolved over the millennia.

My problem is that I don't know the word order or declensions (suffixes for different conjugations) of any of these languages, so I have no idea which words mean what throughout the text.

I know owis/hovis/avis means sheep (same etymology as modern English "ewe")

Ekwos means horse (equus, equestrian, etc.)

Wlna/wlana/vilno means wool

Oinom/aikam/enem means one

Krd/kart/sird means heart (cardio)

Widntei/widntbhos means see/seeing/sight (video/visual)

I think agnutai/egnutoi means hurt or pain (agony) but I don't know for sure

Same with megehm/megam for big (presumably like mega/magnum)

I can recognize a handful of other words from context, but some sentences completely confuse me. The phrase "heavy wagon" appears to be "woghom wegontm," both words of which look like they possibly share the same root, but I don't know which means heavy and which means wagon. All the variations of "dgmonm oku bherontm" mean "carry a man quickly," but I don't know which words corresponds to carry, man, or quickly. I think bherontm means carry because it has the -ontm suffix which I think marks a verb, but again, I just don't know.

I don't know the words for "the master makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself" or "the sheep fled into the plain." It's helpful that the story is broken down into lines, but it doesn't explain what each individual word means in order, so I don't know the proper translation.

Does anyone know where I can find an in depth breakdown of Schleicher's Fable with every word and declension annotated? I've tried looking up Proto-Indo-European glossaries/dictionaries online, but every corpus spells the words differently (lots of subscript letters and numbers and asterisks), some words have multiple PIE translations and no two sites agree on which to use when. It's not helpful at all.

I need a word-by-word translation, something like:

PIE: owis kwesjo wlna na est ekwoms speket

Literal: sheep which wool no have horses saw

English: a sheep which had no wool saw horses

Does anyone know where I can find the proper resources for this project?

[rotzaprachim]

there is no such thing as either “ a European language” or “European phonology” as a linguistic category btw. Europe is a physical entity but also a constructed idea with indefinite boarders; it is not a linguistic category