What is Indo-European?

Q I

Can you explain the meaning of the term "Indo-European"?
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-explain-the-meaning-of-the-term-Indo-European/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

18.X.2024

St. Luke, Evangelist

1. Linguistics:
   
   The term both has a definition rooted in a theory, and an extension, applying to languages in groups that are classed as Indo-European.
   
   The definition involves that they all stem from one proto-language, much as it is documented fact that the Romance stem from Latin. Those who contest this theory will usually still admit why Indo-European applies to a certain language group. It counts as Indo-European because:
   
   
   • it shares a sufficient part of its vocabulary from a supposed Indo-European origin (like Russian “kolo” meaning wheel or wagon with a pair of wheels, like English “wheel” and like Greek “kuklos” not forgetting Sanskrit “chakra”, meaning both wheel and level inside the human body (which is viewed in that theory of the Hindus as a lot of wheels stacked on top of each other);
   • and can trace those parts or much of them from the supposed Indo-European origin via repeatable processes of applying sound laws (apply to reconstructed *kwekwlom sound laws for Slavic, Germanic, Greek, Sanskrit, and it will in these languages yield “kolo”, “wheel”, “kuklos” and “chakra”).
   
   
   Whether or not the definition is true, this makes the claim “Germanic is Indo-European” and “Basque is not Indo-European” a testable one. Before we jump to the conclusion that Proto-Indo-European is therefore proven, consider Germanic was at least earlier considered as taking only 20 % of the vocabulary from Proto-Indo-European[1] and 80 % from a pre-Germanic presumably non-Indo-European language.
   
   It also means the parts of the language that are (on the theory mentioned) traced to Indo-European, like Greek “kuklos is Indo-European, thalassa is pre-Greek” or Germanic “father is Indo-European, but sword is pre-Germanic” …. or Latin “the primary ending of leg-o is Indo-European, but the ending in lex-i is of unclear origin” …
   
   
2. Archaeology and palaeogenetics.
   
   From the theory that there was a Proto-Indo-European language, this applies to varies cultures and ancient ethnicities, now mostly starting with the Yamnaya people, thought to have been speakers of Proto-Indo-European or to have brought it to later speakers of an Indo-European group (that might be Bell-Beaker culture), and obviously to their descendants who spoke different “groups of Indo-European” before they started writing any of the languages down.
   
   If you translate “Indo-European” to either “Yamnaya” or “Bell-Beaker” or “Chorded ware” but not to “Trypillian-Cucuteni” (on the now most usual view), you are likely to get some correct information from the paper.
   
   
3. Ideas about Indo-European original society and religion and mythology.
   
   “Indo-Europeans made a clear differentiation of the three functions priest-warrior-riches-maker” or “Indo-Europeans worshipped the Sky-Father” belong to this kind of theory. I would say it is very much less easy to trace different mythologies to common core than to do so with sounds or words. Norse is taken as a prime example, and its narrative content has more in common with Egyptian and Babylonian on the levels of divine myth, than with Celtic or Baltic neighbours, and on top of that Celtic and Slavic myths are on the one hand rich in known divinities, but on the other hand poor in old myths (it’s not clear that Irish, Welsh and Gaulish once shared the same myths, for instance, we don’t have the Gaulish ones, and the Irish and Welsh are different from each other and more different from Germanic than Egyptian myth is). For society, Celts lived as neighbours of Romans and Greeks, both of which had a threefold division of functions, and Germanic society which was separated from them by the Celts basically made very little distinction between priest and warrior, as a “gothi” was both. This kind of statement, very prominent in Georges Dumézil, is pretty much BS, taken over from similar BS in Sweden. To give him some due, he seems to be a decent linguist of Kaukasian languages.

Footnotes

[1] How much of English is Indo-European? (quora)

Q II

How can the theory of the Proto-Indo-European homeland being in the Pontic-Caspian steppe be reconciled with the fact that most Indo-European languages are spoken outside of that region?
https://www.quora.com/How-can-the-theory-of-the-Proto-Indo-European-homeland-being-in-the-Pontic-Caspian-steppe-be-reconciled-with-the-fact-that-most-Indo-European-languages-are-spoken-outside-of-that-region/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Answer requested by

Jessica Chan

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

20.X.2024

Expansion.

And, by the way, the alternative theory that Indo-European started as one or more Sprachbünder would also involve expansion.

On the theory you mention, PIE expanded to the region of Cucuteni-Trypillia, which had previously not spoken an IE language at all, on the Sprachbünder theory, that region may have even got sucked into the IE complex earlier, along the Anatolian Neolithic Farmer expansion earlier on, and the language of the steppes could have become Indo-Europeanised by contact with this Sprachbund.

But either way, expansions of actual peoples (and not just of their languages spreading to neighbours) did happen, and expansions are called for to explain the extent of the Indo-European macro-group today.