Tracing English as far back as possible

Comments · 3.7K

• RO

  @RobWords · 2 years ago · pinned

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• AT

  @athulprakash4447 · 2 years ago

  As someone who lives in India and speaks Hindi/Malayalam, being educated in English and after taking Sanskrit as a subject in school.. it was stunning to know that words like Father (Pitr), Mother (Maatr), Seven(sapta) and so many others were the same for what I thought were totally separate European languages. Gotta love linguistics and the people who put this together!

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• TA

  @Taka_baka · 2 years ago

  Indo-Europeans: we are a big family!<br>Finns and Hungarians: Who are you people?

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• HC

  @hcilliers · 1 year ago

  I speak Afrikaans (from the Dutch language family) as my first language and English as a second language. I recently learned Russian and was blown away by word similarities. But what truly shocked me was watching a Danish film recently and being able to understand large amounts of the dialogue without reading the subtitles. A completely unintelligible language to me in the past. Russian and Danish are nothing alike, and Dutch and Danish are very dissimilar, but when the witch&apos;s brew of Russian and Afrikaans combined in my head, the Danish suddenly started making sense. &nbsp;It was an incredible feeling to suddenly understand large bits of a language you&apos;ve never studied. Like alchemy or magic.

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• EC

  @economics12 · 2 years ago

  i come from teh remote mountains of northern Pakistan where we speak an old hindi accent and when i listen to the very old people they say words like; Hithar (here) huthar (there) Gars (grass) Madar (mother) Is (this) Nak (nose) bund (behind) ma (I) chan (moon) suraj (sun) darya (river) tu (you) vo (he/they) nasa (nostril) mun (mouth) ladna (loading) marg (death/morgue) khunee (knee) ga (cow) and i could go on forever. &nbsp; i see so many similarities with the European words.

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• CH

  @charlesp.kalina4162 · 2 years ago

  Law school memory: &nbsp;Professor mentions in class that the word “testimony” comes from Roman men swearing an oath by reference to their testes. &nbsp;So I got to explain that this was a common misconception, that Romans didn’t do that, and that the word actually comes from PIE roots meaning “third person standing” (i.e. a disinterested bystander or witness). &nbsp;The anatomical term for male gonads comes from an unrelated PIE root meaning “dry”, via terms for baked clay containers. &nbsp;(Same root as &quot;thirst&quot;, incidentally.) <br> <br>Didn’t do that well in the class, but at least I got to sharpshoot some etymological misconceptions. &nbsp;Good times…

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• KO

  @kolab5620 · 1 year ago

  It’d be funny if we found a village on top of a mountain in some random place in Eurasia that spoke a language that sounded suspiciously like what we think Proto-Indo-European sounded like.

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• SA

  @sanebooks · 2 years ago (edited)

  My grandfather (Vittore Pisani, 1899-1990) was a world-renowned glottologist who taught linguistics at the university of Cagliari first and then at the university of Milan. &nbsp;I grew up knowing these notions in part because all of his children (he had 14) had to learn Latin and ancient Greek and so did a lot of his 30 grandchildren (me included) and basic word histories were passed down. &nbsp;I never realized how not normal this was, as a kid. &nbsp;I thought everyone knew these &quot;basic notions&quot; growing up! &nbsp;You can look him up in the Italian Wikipedia. &nbsp;He was a brilliant mind, but a very distant grandfather. &nbsp;He spoke 12 languages, most of them self-taught.

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• MR

  @mrharvest · 2 years ago

  As a Finnish speaker, I enjoyed the discussion of Proto-Uralic. I would have also been keen to hear about Proto-Turkic and why seemingly PIE just missed that whole chunk of land.

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• RE

  @RetroChani · 1 year ago

  This was so fascinating, thoroughly enjoyed! As an Australian, it also left me wondering where Austronesian languages fit in and how those groupings work. Something for me to look into!

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• PU

  @purplemarsmotionpictures · 2 years ago

  Growing up with Norwegian, English, Hindi, and Punjabi THIS has been the most obvious thing my whole life. I also learnt Norse, Latin, and Sanskrit as a teenager, and the words are one thing but the grammar takes this to the next level. Sentences in Latin make more sense translated into Hindi for me. And some Sanskrit idioms make more sense in Norwegian.

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• LI

  @LithelyUnshod · 2 years ago

  My favourite PIE root is *bhel-, &quot;shine, flash, burn&quot;. It&apos;s the root of the English word &quot;black&quot;, as well as the French word for &quot;white&quot;, &quot;blanc&quot;, and thus the English &quot;blank&quot;. English &quot;white&quot; comes from PIE *kweit-, which also meant &quot;shine&quot;. I guess the PIE-speakers liked talking about shiny things a lot.

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