Hindi, Greek and English All Come from a Single Ancient Language

Cast of a Neo-Hittite relief, dating to the 10th Century BC. Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A mysterious mislaid connection spoken 8,000 years agone successful Eurasia is the hidden ancestor linking Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and English. But however bash we cognize it have existed?

By Mark W. Post

If you person studied astir immoderate European language, you volition person noticed words that felt oddly familiar. French mort (dead) recalls English murder. German Hund (dog) is simply a dormant ringer for hound. Czech sestra resembles English sister. No prizes for guessing the meaning of Albanian kau (OK, good – it’s really ox).

You mightiness person wondered: could these words beryllium successful immoderate mode related?

Of course, words tin look akin for assorted reasons. Unrelated languages get from 1 another: see English igloo, from Inuktikut iglu (house), oregon wok from Cantonese 鑊 wòk (frying pan). And determination are plentifulness of sheer coincidences: Thai ไฟ fai resembles its English translation occurrence for nary peculiar crushed astatine all.

But the preceding sets of words really are related to 1 another. They are cognate, which means they stock a communal root successful descent from a azygous ancestral language.

This now-extinct lingua was astir apt spoken determination successful Eurasia arsenic galore arsenic 8,000 years ago. Long predating the advent of penning systems, its words – and its name, if it had 1 – were ne'er written down. Lacking specified nonstop knowledge, linguists person truthful developed methods for reconstructing aspects of its structure, and notation to it utilizing the statement Proto-Indo-European – oregon PIE.

But however bash we cognize Proto-Indo-European indispensable person existed?

Shared ancestry of language

Our modern-day consciousness of the shared ancestry of Indo-European languages archetypal took signifier successful the Renaissance and aboriginal assemblage periods.

India-based European scholars specified arsenic Gaston Coeurdoux and William Jones were already acquainted with the ties among European languages.

But they were astonished to find echoes of Latin, Greek and German successful Sanskrit words specified arsenic mā́tṛ (mother), bhrā́tṛ (brother) and dúhitṛ (daughter).

Such words could not plausibly beryllium borrowings, fixed these languages’ deficiency of humanities contact. Sheer coincidence was evidently retired of the question.

Even much striking was the systematic quality of the correspondences. Sanskrit bh- matched Germanic b- not lone successful bhrā́tṛ (brother) but besides successful bhar (bear). Meanwhile, Sanskrit p- aligned with Latin and Greek p-, but with Germanic f-.

Comparative array of humanities etymology showing however definite words travel from a communal basal successful Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Credit: The Conversation.

There could beryllium lone 1 mentation for specified regular correspondences. The languages indispensable person descended from a azygous communal ancestor, whose past breakup led to their chiseled evolutionary pathways.

Philologists from the 19th century, specified arsenic Rasmus Rask, Franz Bopp and August Schleicher, aboriginal systematised these observations. They showed that, by comparing and reverse-engineering the changes each descendant language’s words had undergone, the words of the mislaid ancestral connection could beryllium reconstructed.

These insights not lone laid the foundations of modern-day humanities linguistics, but besides went connected to power Darwin’s conception of biologic evolution.

The Proto-Indo-European household tree

Proto-Indo-European household tree. Credit: The Conversation.

Forming a family

Like a biologic genus, the Indo-European languages became understood arsenic forming a family. At their basal was the PIE ancestor, portion the descendant languages branched retired (like species) to signifier a tree.

The Indo-European household includes Indo-Aryan languages specified arsenic Sanskrit and Hindi; Iranian languages (including Persian and Kurdish); Hellenic (including Greek and Ancient Macedonian); Italic (including Latin, Spanish and Italian); Germanic (including English, Dutch and German); Balto-Slavic (including Russian and Lithuanian) and Celtic languages (including Welsh and Breton), arsenic good arsenic Armenian and Albanian.

Extinct branches – attested lone done written records – see Anatolian (Hittite) and Tocharian. Languages similar Phrygian, Dardanian and Thracian look apt to person been Indo-European, but are not arsenic good attested successful humanities records.

Language locations and ancestor clades. Credit: The Conversation.

But not each Indian oregon European languages are Indo-European!

Non-Indo-European languages of India see Dravidian languages specified arsenic Tamil and Telugu, portion European languages extracurricular the household see Basque, Georgian, Maltese and Finnish. Compare with the supra array the rather antithetic Finnish words jalka (foot), isä (father) and viisi (five).

Learning astir those who spoke PIE

Reconstructed PIE vocabulary has besides yielded insights into the lives of its speakers: what their civilization whitethorn person been like, wherever they mightiness person lived, and what whitethorn person fuelled their language’s diversification and expansion.

Roots specified arsenic *rēg-, (tribal) king, and *pelə-, fortified precocious place, suggest a martial, hierarchical society.

Speakers knew atom agriculture (*agro, field; *grə-no, grain), carnal domestication (*ghaido, goat; *gwou, cattle), vehicular transport (*wogh-no, wagon; *aks-lo, axle), metalworking (*arg-, radiance oregon silver; *ajes, copper oregon bronze), commercialized (*wes-no buy; *k(a)mb-yo, exchange) and religion (*deiw-os, god; *meldh, pray).

From specified evidence, scholars specified arsenic V. Gordon Childe linked Proto-Indo-European to the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age Kurgan civilization of the Pontic-Caspian steppe (today’s Ukraine and confederate Russia).

The extinct Hittite language, arsenic seen connected his clay tablet, was a portion of the Indo-European family. Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

More caller studies person (somewhat controversially) employed phylogenetic methods derived from evolutionary biology to reason for a PIE root successful Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), suggesting that agriculture was astir most apt the motor of Indo-European expansion.

Alas, spoken languages bash not fossilise well. The existent words, ideas and identities of Proto-Indo-European speakers vanished into the aerial galore millennia ago.

Yet patterns successful their descendant languages sphere capable operation to alteration america to negociate astatine slightest a shadowy glimpse of them. The theories and methods pioneered done this enactment volition proceed to substance probe into the reconstruction of quality ethnolinguistic prehistories worldwide for galore years to come.

Mark W. Post is simply a Senior Lecturer successful Linguistics, University of Sydney. This nonfiction was published at The Conversation and is republished nether a Creative Commons License.