Super challenging Proto-Indo-European concepts explained: S in parentheses and Hs with numbers 

I really didn't expect to see a batman meme in proto indo european but here we are

I used to be very passionate about linguistics in high school but couldn't pursue my dreams and study it in uni Keep doing these videos because I at least will be surely watching them!

I find myself complaining that linguistics videos on RU-vid are often very basic and I already know what they're teaching. Well, I can say that this one definitely taught me a lot about PIE that I *thought* I understood. It was brilliant, thank you! :D

"Hekweh" gave us the modern German word "Aue" meaning river or stream, but it's very rare today, albeit still alive.

Hekweh (Aqua)Latin and Ahwo(Proto-Germanic) has several words in Swedish that descends from it. Like the Swedish words for River, Island and Sandbank; Å Ö and Ör. There's also the English word Ea which means river, the last known use of it, that I know of is from the 1800s, Also the ending in placenames like Ey in Surrey, is derived from Ahwo. And the word Eddy aka as in an Eddy current, consists of Ed- which meant again, and Ea, which means river. So some descendants of Ahwo still lives on in English.

The usage of the US flag for modern English and the English flag for middle English kinda implies that England still speaks middle English or that England doesn't exist anymore.

11:13 also worth noting for hueso here is that the h here is not only silent, but also nonetymological, ie it is not derived from latin f. Hueso comes from latin ossum, and as h was already silent by this time (f would later become h in Spanish and then go silent again but that's a whole other thing) and they didn't like just writing uesso, they inserted a h at the start for some reason.

You forgot the most essential point that led to the discovery of laryngeals: ablaut patterns. By positing laryngeal consonants, Saussure was able to align roots formerly thought to end in vowels with more regular roots ending in consonants. The additional evidence (like the Hittite reflexes) only came in later and supported the hypothesis. On that note, ablaut is another one of those things that's probably hardest to understand about PIE. Also, your future English sound shifts are quite tame. I don't think you would need to go millennia into the future to see something like this. 1000 years could be enough.

I am so thankful that I'm doing science and not linguistics because how on earth did people ever come up with h1, h2 and h3 is going to be a mystery for me. But yet it makes so much sense when you used the analogy of modern English as the old language. Way to go!

Two things that I always thought were confusing about PIE are ablaut and stress. How do we know by what mechanism exactly stress shifts from one syllable to another? How exactly does a stem-syllable go from one ablaut grade to another? Maybe that could be a video idea.

Came to brush up on the linguistics degree I've used twice in the two years since I graduated, stayed because you sound exactly like Ryan Gosling

2:40 In Slavic languages the root sounds more like *krót(k)/*krát(k) (like in adjectives "krótki"/"короткий"/"кратак" meaning "short") with starting "s" only in some derived words like "skrót"/"сокращение" ("a short" / "an abbreviation"), "skrócić"/"сократить" ("to make short") etc. where the starting "s" is common Slavic prefix denoting a perfect form of verb (and thus is used in derived words of that form).

This is purely my opinion, but when explaining such complex concepts like these, you gotta talk a bit more slowly. As a non-English speaker it was quite hard for me to keep up with your explanations without having to slow down the video and rewatch some parts of it. It might just be a me thing, and since this is the first video I watched from your channel, I'm probably not used to the speed.

As a language enthusiast with no formal linguistic training this really helped me understand what the hell I was looking at in PIE, thank you for the excellent vid

Very cool, even though I've read about some of this on Wikipedia before, it's really hard to make sense of without examples like this

The more I learn about PIE, the more I appreciate the enormous collective intellectual accomplishment it is. To me, it's at a similar level as the development of quantum mechanics.

I think that the pie h₂ was more like a /ħ/ than a /χ/, since proto-Semetic have many words similar to proto-Indo-European no one knows if they are borrowed from one another or just have the same origins in both PIE and PS, like for example the word for planet Venus and Goddess of Venus, is *ʕatstar or *ʕatʃtar in PS which evolved to Akkadian /ˈiʃ.tar/ and Arabic /ʕaθtar/, which cognates with PIE word for star *h₂stḗr, it’s hard to explain the changing of χ to ʕ or viseversa unless if the h₂ was pronounced closer to a ħ sound, then the shifting from ħ to a ʕ is more reasonable, Other cognates from PIE and PS are words like wild bull;- Ps: *t̠awr (tsawr or tʃawr) -> Arabic /θawr/ & Hebrew /ʃoːʀ/ PIE: *(s)tawros -> English (steer) & Latin (taurus) how much, amount;- PS: *kawamat -> Arabic (kawma(t), kam, kammiya(t) PIE: *kʷímt -> Latin (quntus) English (quantity) Persian (čand) Kurdish (çend) Sanskrit (kiyat) love, care, desire (heart);- PS: *libb -> Arabic (libb) Akkadian (libba) Hebrew (lev) all meaning heart PIE: *lewbʰ- -> English (love) Russian (lyubov’) Hindi (lobh), surprisngly borrowed to Iraqi Arabic as (lyof) and Lebanese Arabic (wilf) all meaning love Many other examples too lazy to write all but if you needed I can tell you all on a chat or something, hope you make video about those weird cognates with Proto-Semetic and Proto-IndoEuropean many also exist in Proto-Turkic, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Iberian and Proto-Kratvelian and many more dead languages and might they have one origin? and if true is the Nostratic or Borean theories true by any chance? Or atleast closer to reality or if not what do explain these and thanks All support from Iraq 🇮🇶❤️🙏

3:16 minor correction: There was, as far as I'm aware, no regular sound change of dropping /s/ in the sound change from Latin to Spanish. What usually happens is terms being descended from the accusative form of the noun. Most Latin accusative forms ended in /m/, which _was_ regularly lost from Latin to Spanish.

Would love to see more videos regarding AAVE and conlanging

A nickname in Icelandic is auknefni, literally meaning “an additional name” Naðra is the word for adder

4:16 in fact, due to modern technology and higher literacy, it might take an even longer time for the language to change as much

A really great explanation of parts of PIE I hadn't fully grasped until now.

11:30 SOOO that’s why IA languages have voiceless aspiration. I’m been confused for some time how they came about when PIE didn’t have that distinction, but it’s quite unique or interesting to say the least that IA languages retained the breathy phonemes while the other IE language families lost them.

I don't mean to be rude, but that's not what [χ] sounds like, your pronounciation is more like [ʀ̥]

The laryngeals potentially had unstressed, reduced syllabic forms. I think the most common values proposed are [ə] for h₁ , [ɐ] for h₂, and [ɵ] for h₃. so, h₂stḗr could have been something like [ɐ'steːr] or more likely [χɐ'steːr] or both. While the theory that Greek gained an epenthetic vowel somewhen is possible, syllabic fricatives are rare outside of China, voiceless syllabic fricatives are even rarer, and syllabic [χ] is probably only found in Nuxalk. In my opinion, losing an unstressed vowel and back fricative is infinitely more likely than syllabic [χ].

Dope vid. Ultra-concise and followable explanation of some very difficult concepts. Really looking forward to more of your vids on PIE.

Fascinating tool to look forward in order to understand looking back. Really enjoyed this.👍

This was really neat! Greatly appreciate the examples. Those definitely helped me get a better grasp on these concepts. Thanks!

That does make sense. As a Cockney speaker the /h/ sound doesn't exist, especially in casual speech, so a word like 'hospital' becomes /oʰspiʔa:l/ but when I force myself to pronounce the /h/ the following vowel can sometimes sound like a /ə/ sound.

finally some good fucking linguistics content that isn't repeating the usual stuff but actually goes beyond. i'll be binging through all your vids tonight probably

Your style of explanation is lovely and engaging. Keep it up!

Hmm I'm surprised about the Dutch/German split for Adder/Natter being caused by the article, because in middle and early modern dutch (before cases were lost in the spoken language) the article is "eene" analogous to German "eine". The Dutch case system was officially abolished only in 1949, although had already not been in common use for a while at that point. I wonder if Dutch and German diverged long enough ago go explain this difference.

I wish I could give this more likes. Incredible work my man

you just answered my multiple questions on PIE with one video. thanks Man

The information density is so much appreciated. I can pause think pause think. It’s so good. :) :) I concur with gro in the comments. As a word nerd that didn’t get to be a certified word nerd thanks for this :)

Very cool! One of those videos about stuff you never thought you'd be interested in until you saw it.

Very good video! Good examples and analogies Knocked it out of the park

Very glad I found your channel

That was super nerdy and all I needed to find. Thanks

10:12 the e in αστέρα was not long but short. Actually phonemic vowel length was already lost around the 4th century AD. But despite that the epsilon letter shows a short e while the eta letter shows the long e sound. The nominative had an elongated e sound because it had no suffix

Thank you so much this has solved the one massive hurdle in PIE linguistics I never got despite my extensive formal schooling and self-teaching in Linguistics.

First of all, love your videos man, you seem to touch on some details that not many people do and that I wish they did, and your video on the possible descendant of American English is something that I had been wanting to see for a long time. This was an excellent video, and I hope it grabs the attention of more people, I just had one observation regarding a point you made, while I think it was a great idea to use examples of PG to demonstrate why there had to be a consonant not preserved in any of the languages, I don’t think you used the right example, or at least I think the detail given wasn’t precisely the right one, the example in question is the shift from PIE *eh2 to PG *ō, and how only the presence of a Laryngeal could explain that development in the vowel, when in Latin for example, the vowel developed into [a], just like in many other IE languages, I actually also used to believe that the Laryngeal had to do something with the outcome of ō instead of ā, but as it turns out according to linguists the vowel was at some point in the history of Germanic *ā, and eventually it merged with the *ō sound from PIE, similarly as *o merged with *a, way after the consonant had dissipated. That was my only observation, which actually wasn’t as big as some other I get from other videos from linguistics enthusiasts, and your convention for the laryngeals was also certainly a plus for me, a lot of people seem to settle for the most bizarre sounds without considering wether it seems to “fit” the language, and I think that set of consonants does. Keep the good work!

i was not actively looking for this video, but like i needed it.

Very interesting video! I find PIE and linguistics in general fascinating and your presentation and explanation in this video are great. However, I did find myself having to skip back a lot (probably due to me knowing next to nothing about linguistics coming in!) to chew over a few concepts as they were presented. Still subscribed though, would love to see more!

Very interesting video, and kudos for pronunciation of Kuryłowicz's name! Many thanks!

THIS IS THE CONTENT I ROAMED THE WHOLE INTERNET TO FIND! you made it understandable! you are AMZING!

10:03 omg Greek mentioned 🇬🇷😎 Great pronunciation by the way!

This was so interesting thank youu !!

good vid. love the over-the-top trilling of [χ]

Wow, this looks like exactly the type of channel that can make me nuts! New sub. Side note, I found you pushed sound acceleration a bit to far. A linguistic video like this one, with all those unusual sound details is not like an other one where you can just hear what is said semantically. To my ear, ~0.85 is ideal for here. :)

very interesting. thank you ❤

Nice video ! If you want to do a new video about french, one day, I would be glad to help you with that. And also Saussure is such a legend haha

11:14 Greek has: ἄργυρος (argyros) silver πῦρ (pyr) fire ἀστήρ (astēr) star ἄρκτος (arktos) bear ὀστοῦν (ὀστέον) (ostoun) bone ὄρνις (ornis) beard

Sorry about this, but your video is an eyesore, especially the contrasting blue & green also bright red & dark blue background. I suggest to mellow the colour a bit and maybe make the graphic smoother to the eyes. I like the video nonetheless. Really informational

Okay. Do it over but then at least TWO TIMES AS SLOW! This rattling speed fire talking? I just can't keep up!

I personally use the palatal pronunciation of *h1, just the parallels to the three velar series that such an analysis creates biases me to such a reconstruction.

Interesting. I've just discovered this channel.

i cant believe i actually understand the laryngeals now, thanks!

Something I want to learn more about ate the vowels in Germanic vowels. Specificaly how the mutation diffrent between languages, and more info about vowles silencing.

You should be graduating around this time, so congrats!

bro nerds out so fast i got a headache. but could understand what i needed anyway!

Thank you

I watched this while high

Because of my mexican spanish accent Ive always thought of words that end in Le like little or circle as having more of an /o/ sound (like the spanish o) so i tend to say something like /sɜɹko/, which i thought might be interesting

Funny thing, Greek also had rebracketing! For example οικοκυρά (ikokira) (mistress, housewife) which became νοικοκυρά (nikokira) due to the accusative article την (tin). And also the word τομάτα (tomata) which means tomato, and it became ντομάτα (domata) again due to nasalization of the t, because of the article tin. Tin tomata=>ti domata

Thanks for the presentation. But it was fast and a bit brushed. It would have been better if you had talked about each concept in separate videos, and spent some more time on each one. Anyway, I appreciate the content, I did get a basic understanding from this vid.

One thing more, often vowels preceed consonants when they are difficult to pronounce, especially sounds like s, as you said in the example of greek. Like in some areas in India, which is my country, the word school is pronounced as ískūl instead of skūl, same with scooter. Also, indigenous words like spasta (meaning 'clear', here the second s and t are Retroflex while the first is dental), are often pronounced as èspasta. They are my two cents, I am just an enthusiast.

great, thank you

Your h2's are making me loose my shit lmao

I am a worldbuilding writer so I made over 4 conlangs for my stories where I used Esperanto as a mother language applied slavic and germanic sound changes and created new languages.

Fascinating! By the way, after the yellow column was filled in, I guessed the original English words, except for "raid", which I thought was "red".

Dammm, this channel is like xidnaf but you're actually still uploading.

Could you not do the bright flashing colors

too fast but probably the best PIE video I've ever seen

I love this video

Interesting. I noticed when learning German the front vowel i caused a soft ch in "ich" - "I", and back vowels like a, o, u caused a hard ch like in "ochsen" - "oxen".

Cool video but DUDE please talk a little slower and give us a few more milliseconds per slide. Your script really explains these concepts clearly but then the video itself is hard to follow

Compared to the n at the start of some English words came from the end of the article "an", is there any consensus among linguists as to what the source/thief of the "S" at the start of PIE words was? You created six whole de facto conlangs just to demonstrate something about how PIE works, you mad lad. Was it worth it? Absolutely, that was a helpful explanation! I'm curious: With the English-descendent example, beyond english r and l how many other candidates are there for a "bunches the tongue" liquid and "potentially lateral liquid"?

3:37 The laryngeals are directly reflected in the extinct Anatolian branch (e. g. Hittite), which branched off before all living branches; however, the theory of them was proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure before documents written in Anatolian languages were discovered.

2:55 In Albanian is: "Shkurt" ( Latin: Skurtus) even the February month is called "Shkurt" because it is short and has 28/29 days.

Hey quick question do you happen to have an email for business/projects inquiries and the such? Great video btw, as always

very cool video, btw your pronouncation of Bedřich Hrozný made me laught for 5 minutes lmao

it might be an exclusively me problem but if possible could you slow down just a little bit in the future videos? thats a lot of information to take in, especially with all the scientific jargon and i think i just missed out a lot of important information. thanks in advance

surprisingly well-funded video, also very accurate pronunciations imo. only questions i have is whether werdhh1oy in the batman meme is supposed to be nom. dual (because it look like loc. sg.) and do kwód I assume means where to? is there any reflex such a construction? from what i can see on wiktionary the greek (and latin) forms derive from a locative and do is described as postpositional. i should look into the LIPPS... oh also did you know that some sort of analogical process is needed to derive latin nominative -a from *-eh2 because the regular reflex would be -ā

This is a stretch (hypothetic follows) : Phtr -- metathesis -- Prth -- eclipse of rhotic -- Pth ** drum roll ** Ancient Egyptian "Ptah"?? Cognates? Derivatives?? Any connection between these "cultures" across linguistic evolution? Makes for good Sci-Fi, even if it's wrong.

Thanks since you holp me.

Awesome.

when you misclick and have no idea what the hell is going on but you like it:

Great video! But understandable only in 0,8x speed :) Maybe you'll try to read some reconstructed PIE text next time?

I live in the Philadelphia area. I have observed a vowel shift in my lifetime. In the 1950s in Philadelphia, the 'a' sound in 'bad' was like the 'a' in 'sad'. Those words rhymed perfectly. Today the word 'bad' sounds like the word 'mad' (the way we pronounce it, not like how the British pronounce it). I think Fred Labov of the University of Pennsylvania detailed this years ago. Are you familiar with him? IN any case, thanks for a fun video.

This was great, thank you! I do get it might be part of your personal brand... but I wonder if you could slow it down a tiny bit? It wouldn't be patronising... ust easier for my aged brain to follow (!) [thumbs up emoji]

this is a fucking goldmine. good job

0:26 can u explain this definition of a Lemma? (psycholinguistics) The theoretical abstract conceptual form of a word, representing a specific meaning, before the creation of a specific phonological form as the sounds of a lexeme, which may find representation in a specific written form as a dictionary or lexicographic word. 0:58 “an” is the original indefinite article An ekename > a nekename *(s) s-mobile, rebracketing 3:03 Grimm’s Law - plosive fricative 3:25 h with subscript - PIE laryngeal h1 h2 h3

Great

An adder is a whole nother word!

9:19 *ahwō did survive in modern english as "ea" which means river or creek but it's so much rarely used or mentioned

Não entendi bulhufas, fantástico! Supostamente falamos a mesma língua, quer dizer, distorcida, mas talvez algum dia possamos nos entender por uma língua intermediária...?

7:25 That "British" transcription is more appropriate for code rather than cold. Code has something like [əw] while cold has [כw] in British (at least Southern) and Australian variants of English.

Can someone explain to me how h₂ after [e] shifts the preceding vowel to an [a]? What are some examples from modern languages of that process happening? I can imagine how h₃ can yield [o] due to the labialization, but I can’t wrap my mind around h₂ colors to [a].

Bro, PIE sounds like it was made by Klingons 💀