Monday, August 4, 2025

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"A Modest Proposal" (No, not that one) · Linguistic Related · More Linguistics Related

Q I
Was Proto-Indo-European a real language spoken by ordinary people or a theoretical language used only by experts or people interested in the topic today?
https://www.quora.com/Was-Proto-Indo-European-a-real-language-spoken-by-ordinary-people-or-a-theoretical-language-used-only-by-experts-or-people-interested-in-the-topic-today/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
amateur linguist
28.VII.2025
Proto-Indo-European is a reconstructed language.

It exists in several versions.

One sometimes speaks about “when they spoke Proto-Indo-European” and this actually means more like “when they spoke what our Proto-Indo-European is a stand in for” …

And presuming it was one language.

If ever it was one, it certainly had some differences from our reconstructions. These are made by a will to avoid filling in un-known details. Hence all the word stems ending in a hyphen. If such a word stem actually belonged to a single language of which both Danish and Bengali are descended, like in Danish and Bengali, it had endings. So, showing a stem followed by a hyphen with no ending is certainly not on the “real language spoken by ordinary people” side, it’s only the “experts today” side. Again, “fish” has one word in Latin with descendants, Irish and Germanic (while Welsh has borrowed from Latin, borrowings don’t count the same way). It has another word in Ancient Greek and Lithuanian and possibly some other language (was it Armenian?) and yet another word in Slavic. This could be explained by one of the sides borrowing from non-Indo-European, it could be explained from a variation within PIE (like Sweden has “hink” or “spann” for bucket, depending on region, or like English can call the same kind of drink “soda pop” or “fizzy drink” depending on region), or it could be that a language with the fish/piscis/iasc gloss and another language with the ichthys/zhuvis gloss were existing independently and borrowed other traits common to Indo-European (like personal endings of verbs) from each other.

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl
To compare. One source for Tolkien’s Quenya was the desire to fill in words in the languages of NW Europe and even to some extent NE Europe that are NOT supposed to come in PIE. Icelandic álft for swan “explained” by Sindarin possibly “alph” which corresponds to Quenya “alqua” … Balto-Slavic word for arm or hand, the Lithuania form is directly copied in Quenya, except the spelling difference “ranka” vs “ranca” (In Lithuanian the C would instead be pronounced TS, not what’s in the word).

But here, Tolkien was not just making a purely scientific reconstruction, he wanted a usable language, so, he filled in lots of uncertainties. In fact, digging for pre-Indo-European West of where Finno-Ugrians were would mostly result in uncertainties, not even enough to write poetry in, so Tolkien “filled in” artistically … PIE doesn’t.

II

28.VII.2025

Peter Park
Also, most actual languages spoken by ordinary people have clusters of near-synonyms with overlapping or only fuzzily distinct meanings. Thus,, in modern English, we have clusters like mountain-hill-peak-range, stone-rock-boulder-pebble, river-stream-creek-brook, woman-wife-lady-dame-girl-maiden, child-kid, teenager-adolescent, snake-serpent, bug-insect, urine-piss-pee, penis-cock-prick-willie-weewee, speak-talk-say-tell, bad-evil-wicked, etc. So, when a given language divides into increasingly different dialects that eventually become distinct separate languages, one daughter-language may prioritize one word of such a cluster while another daughter-language prioritizes another word from that cluster.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
That’s also one possible explanation.

Q II
Is it possible for a language that seems radically different today to have an ancient connection to Proto-Indo-European that we just haven't discovered yet?
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-for-a-language-that-seems-radically-different-today-to-have-an-ancient-connection-to-Proto-Indo-European-that-we-just-havent-discovered-yet/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
amateur linguist
28.VII.2025
I don’t think I really understand what you mean by “radically different” … several “branches of Indo-European” are radically different from each other, and we have still “discovered” that they are Indo-European.

Danish and Bengali are different.
Dansk og bengali er forskellige.
ড্যানিশ এবং বাঙালি ভিন্ন।
(=Ḍyāniśa ēbaṁ bāṅāli bhinna.)

Give me a fish, I’m Gollum.
Giv mig en fisk, jeg er Gollum.
আমাকে একটা মাছ দাও, আমি গোলম।.
(=Āmākē ēkaṭā mācha dā'ō, āmi gōlama.)


So, by now, a connection to Indo-European very probably would be discovered. I’d rather ask the opposite question: do all languages thought to be Indo-European really descend from the supposed Proto-Indo-European, or are they more like different languages influencing each other without total or sufficient assimilation? Sufficient for immediate understanding between monolinguals of each, that is.

I often take the Finnish verbal endings for the persons to say that, while Finnish isn’t Indo-European, it could have been a marginal member of the kind of Sprachbund I have in mind. There is still a reason why Finnish isn’t Indo-European. All Indo-European words seem to be borrowed from Iranian and Germanic languages, perhaps Baltic too, recently Slavic as well. Current reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European and sound law hypotheses for Finnish do not allow for Finnish to have inherited these words or the verb endings from PIE, as far as I know.

Q III
What archaeological culture did the first Indo-Europeans in Scandinavia belong to?
https://www.quora.com/What-archaeological-culture-did-the-first-Indo-Europeans-in-Scandinavia-belong-to/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Answer requested by
Collin Moore

Hans-Georg Lundahl
amateur linguist
1.VIII.2025
By “Indo-European” I suppose you mean Yamnaya.

Some recent studies in Spain have suggested the Yamnaya were rather speakers of Basque, which would explain the similarities between Basque and some Caucasus based languages. For those saying “no, Basque was a relict among Hunter Gatherers driven out by Yamnaya …” two observations from that study,[1] or, since I didn’t read it, from a youtube channel[2] the first[3] four videos of which are related to the study:

  • The admixture of WHG in Basques is comparable to the admixture of AAF in Corded ware.
  • If we compare Basques, not with Yamnaya, but with Corded Ware, the Corded Ware genome in Basques is comparable to the Yamnaya genome i Corded Ware.
  • The rest of Spain was not into WHG genome, but in pre-Roman times clearly spoke a language related to Basque, for which the only source possible is Yamnaya.


That was actually a third observation.

Now, to your question as reformulated. Yamnaya genes came to Scandinavia through the Corded Ware culture and therefore with that admixture of AAF. Here[4] is University of Gothenburg:

Then 5,000 years ago, the next population turnover occurred, when people of the Corded Ware culture, with their genetic background in Eastern Europe, entered the scene.

“Around 2800 BCE, people of the Corded Ware culture, also called the Single Grave culture, immigrated to Denmark,” says archaeologist Karl-Göran Sjögren.


Footnotes

[1] Origins and spread of Indo-European languages: an alternative view – Ancient DNA Era
[2] Yamokante
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J18e8jEMQU
[4] New study unearths our Scandinavian ancestors

Q IV
How did Latin's vowel system change in the move to the Romance languages, and why is it so tricky to reconstruct?
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Latins-vowel-system-change-in-the-move-to-the-Romance-languages-and-why-is-it-so-tricky-to-reconstruct/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University
1.VIII.2025
Latin’s vowel system on the front of the Classical language is simply NOT tricky to reconstruct, we already know it from grammarians.

The vowel system changed indeed, in different ways depending on different parts of the Empire, but grammarians didn’t note this, back then, other than as faults to be corrected. So, reconstructions have to be done, but they are by and large already made, not very tricky any more at least.

Latin had, apart from diphthongs, ten vowels. A, E, I, O, U times LONG / SHORT. On the way to Romance in most places the distinction long / short was lost, but replaced by other distinctions. So, before we get to Italian, Spanish, French, we find seven vowels. A, I and U as in Latin, A from both long and short, I and U from long only. Short I and long E become closed E. Short U and long O become closed O. Short E and O become open E and O. This is a simplification, not taking into account diphthongs and unaccented vowels. Italian basically keeps this, Spanish diphthongises open E and O, French diphthongises both open and closed E and O, in different ways, unless the syllable ended in a consonant (if that was it) and this preserved the original vowel (“sol” from “solum”) or it was unaccented (“sol-” in “soleil” from “solículum”). Spanish also refrains from diphthongising unaccented vowels (tiempo / temporal).

Sardinian and East Romance (Romanian and Dalmatian) had different simplifications of the Latin vowel system.

Joseph Foster
Rumanian diphthongizes those “open” or long /e:/ and /o:/ too when they have the word stress. But the actual phonetic details are different, e.g. Latin nokte-, Rumanian noapte ‘night’, so they happened independently of each other.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
I think that’s when they were close … not open.

Joseph Foster
May be. I’m not fluent in the close / open distinction and need to review it. Unstressed /o/ became /u/ in Rumanian.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
I’m mostly concerned with the stressed vowels. In each, unstressed vowels is an even other chapter, so I left that alone, I think the front vowels from Latin go to Proto-Romance like in Italian, French and Spanish, the back vowels like Sardinian.

In English, “hair” has a more open E sound and “bed” a more close one.

It’s possible the rule I am discussing also only applies to vowels in open syllables, which puts noctem / noapte outside this dicussion.

Aud-i-tum (long i) > ouï (i is preserved)

S-i-tem, r-e-gem (short i, long e) > soif, roi (diphthongisation of close e).

p-e-dem (short e) > pied (diphthongisation of open e).

I recall sth from a Spanish historic grammar about open or closed syllable being more relevant … but forget the details.

Q V
What is the language that is closest to Basque according to phonetics only?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-language-that-is-closest-to-Basque-according-to-phonetics-only/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Answer requested by
U Un

Hans-Georg Lundahl
amateur linguist
1.VIII.2025
Not sure if it’s Gascon or Castilian.

Unlike Basque they are both Romance, but they have phonetic changes that Basque also has. Leading to phonetic configurations that Basque also has.

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