It's where a listener is from I suppose. To me he doesn't have a region-specific accent. Interestingly he pronounces the "H" in words like "when" ("hwen") which strikes me as an old feature.
@@RichardDCook i’m looking back on this a few years after the video was released, and Jackson has relax his pronunciation of the WH to the contemporary “wah” sound. I think he was self-conscious about pronouncing the HW sound as I think it resembles more closely the way it was pronounced in the Old English or old Norse periods.
@@mesechabe Though there are regions in the US that haven't undergone the whale/wail (or which/witch) merger. I have a friend born in California though his parents are both from New England (just where I don't recall) and they all do the "hw" sound.
Tho it pains me to say it modern latvian is different than the lavian of our folksongs. (I actually speak something closer to the older kind, when I say modern I mean the language of the capitol not my own very conservative dialect.) modern - old - written english akmens - akmenis - stone mēness - mēnesis - moon akmens - akmeņa - [on] stone halāts - rīta svārki - (I dont know) armija - pulks - army (By the gods! I just realized pulks is a cognate of folk! Pulks in its base meaning means many, does that mean folk also used to mean many? An army is made up of many men, a nation is made up of many people...) un - i - and bēbis - zīdainis - baby kara rati - kariete - chariot kariete - kungu rati - coach dēliņi - bāliņi - sons [deminutive] suns - sunis - dog Also folksongs have much grater variation since they where composed when people couldnt easily comunicate over long distrances and coulnt read or write so dialects where much more pronounced for example the song I just sifted trough for differences from modern capitol language uses the phraze "zobens grieza baltu smilti" which is incorrect according to the literary language as it should be "zobens grieza baltas smiltis" and here the literary language saying smiltis is always plural is more conservative where as my grandfather usually says smilts singular, but there is also a chance this isnt a dialect thing and the conjugation eludes to the fact that it is flesh not sand that is being cut by the sword. Anyways most of the language is still identical even in the capitol I just picked out differences for you.
I'm not sure how youtube recommended this channel, but it's one of the best channels I've seen. I chose science over linguistics for a career path, but have never lost my fascination with languages. I love your matter of fact explanations and the many references provided. I just got your audible books of The Poetic Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs and am happily listening to them.
The word for mom in Turkish is "Anne", but we do have the word "mama" which means baby food. I assume when baby's cried out "ma, ma!" people assumed they were crying for food.
There's an interesting exception to what you were talking about with "mama" being the word for "mother" in so many languages. In Georgian "მამა" (mama) is father and "დედა" (deda) is mother.
The amount of facts we can find out about the native speakers of Proto-Indo-European language just from words present in it is mind blowing! Thank you for the video.
In Modern Persian (An Iranian language): Pedar - Father Mâdar - Mother Dokhtar - Daughter Barâdar - Brother Bad - Bad Na - No Now - New Band - Band Berenj - Bronze Kimia - Chemistry Dandân - Tooth (Dental) Pardis - Paradise Dar - Door Abroo - Eyebrow Famil - Family Gerân - Great Gorouh - Group Narang - Orange ... and many more
You forget khuda, which is cognate with 'god'. Geran would rather be cognate with 'grand'? Band (music band) might rather be a modern import from English? (unless you mean band as in wristband, like Persian 'band' = closed).
@@hectorserna7950'daant' is tooth in Hindi (India) 'narinja' is orange in Telugu (India) True that similar sounds mean something in more than one language.
The Indo-European language family and by extension the Germanic and/or Celtic language families are often talked about in relation to people's ancestry and although languages carry cultural heritage, it's interesting that you separate language from genetic ancestry. I feel like a lot of people often mix up these two. So thanks for sharing!
genetic lineage is highly superfluous, especially in the modern era with heavy immigration and globalization. language is determined by the environment and culture one grows up in, not genetic origin.
@@MuddafukhingdisKUST hi, while I agree that languages are dependant on your environment and can change rapidly for groups of people, I don't agree on genetics being superfluous because of modern migration. I'm from the north of Belgium and most of my ancestors that I can trace back have been born in the same river valley for at least the past five to ten generations and the majority of the people here have that kind of ancestry. It's not that we don't want to intermarry with different people, but it just rarely happens, even today. So our genetic ancestry is very much its own subgroup, but the differences with other people from Europe and from around the world are very subtle and in that sense superfluous. The point about language still stands though 😉👍
Hungarians are pretty much genetically identical to other Europeans. Their culture has pretty much nothing to do at all with the culture of Uralic people. Of course there's similarities and influences but their culture is closer to German's than to other Uralic people from Siberia. It's ironic how Germanic people tried for centuries to revive the Roman empire, despite not even being descended from them. Germanic invaders conquered lots of roman provinces and named themselves kings and queens and started dinasties, but they all adopted the local variety of latin as their language and all adopted their Roman culture instead of trying to germanise places like Spain, France and Italy. Originally the people speaking Romanian in current day Romania were, as the name implies, descended from roman legionaries, but as the Slavs moved into those lands from the north they all adopted the latin language, which is why Romanians all look like any other Slavs, yet they speak a romance language, but their romance language is said to sound pretty much like a russian trying to speak a romance language. In fact I'm a native Romanian speaked, and a LOT of times I was walking down the street when I heard people having a conversation in what I assumed was Romanian, yet I was dumbfounded to find out that I didn't know a word of what they were talking, only for them to actually be Bulgarians, or Serbians. In fact all languages in the Balkan region exhibit a weird common characteristic, that being that regardless of whether they are a romance or a Slavic language, they all share a lot of common characteristics in their grammar. Which means that they have different words that sound nothing like each other, that are NOT cognates but they use their words in the same order and in the same way, and in a way that's different from any other Slavic or romance language. Like Slavic languages from the Balkan region, and Romanian, share grammar with each other, that they don't share with Russian or French or Spanish or Polish, which has lead many to believe that when Romans and Slavs moved into the area, they assimilated the people that were living there previously into their respective languages, but when those people learned latin/Slavic they learned it by mixing it with their own native grammar which sounded more natural to them, essentially forming a pigeon language. That means that the languages in the Balkan all share a common origin for their grammar but not for their words. All of this goes to tell you that this is a whole lot more complicated than genetics and language. Two related languages can be spoken by people.very genetically different from each other. Like Spanish spoken in the Philippines and on south America. Two languages can share a common "ancestor" language in their vocabulary but not in their grammar, or share common grammar but not vocabulary. When a language group moves to a new land, they don't genetically replace the other language, because the people that were already there, with their own genetic makeup can just adopt the language and culture if they like. Or the opposite can happen, where a new genetical group can move to a new area and since they're immigrants they can adopt their language and culture, maybe twist the language and culture a bit by mixing it with their own language. And like this, a whole lot of other things could happen. I love this.
@@MuddafukhingdisKUST what a load of nonsense you wrote. by ''modern migration'' you mean managed replacement of Whites in the lands of their ancestors?
Came here to say this - the mistakes make sense if you're coming mostly from familiarity with the Greek alphabet. I would transcribe it хамингбзрд to get the Cyrillic version even closer to pronunciation, though I guess it depends on your dialect of English.
This brings me back 30 years ago to my favorite subjects (History of the English Language, Univ of Seville, Spain; and Historical Linguistics, Indiana Univ, Bloomington). I'm an ABD (due to horrible family illnesses, and me being the caretaker) in English Philology. I completed all my courses, worked on my dissertation, but couldn't finish it. My dad's very premature Alzheimers took care of achieving my dream. So I specialized in English Linguistics, nd teaching English as a foreign language is my job in lovely Seville, Spain. However, I was really into Old English and its literature, so when I heard you talk about the P and the F, I immediately knew you were going to talk about Grimm's Law. Such good times!!! But unless you've got a Ph.D, forget about teaching historical stuff outside the University...
Obviously, credentials are important for academic and professional reasons, but you still "know what you know". Anyway, we should all attempt to keep expanding our knowledge and understanding throughout our lives. This channel provides such an opportunity.
You know, for a few years now I've seen people say things like "oh yeah, dr crawford, a very good educator, great content, also god he's so cool" but I never actually happened to watch any of your videos. Having had this randomly recommended to me by youtube I would just like to say: wow what a good video, very educational. Also god you're so cool (some pun intended)
I wish someone did a detailed analysis of Uralic languages- I can only hope Mr. Crawford has friends in the community who are Uralic language enthusiasts. He did do a video once on why Finnish is separate from Nordic.
I found a video lecture here on RUclips that is a general introduction to the Uralic language family. The lecture is presented by Sampsa Holopainen from the University of Helsinki, so it is all based on academic research. Too bad, he is not as eloquent as Mr. Crawford in this video, but if you can excuse the slightly awkward manner of presentation, I am sure his lecture contains the kind of information you are looking for. I can't put a direct link to the video here, but you can find it if you search for the title "Holopainen - Introduction to Uralic languages".
@@michabach274 I watched a bit of it and I could cut his anxiety from the air with a knife. He seemed so very anxious and jumpy, was he held at gunpoint in that presentation?
The relationships between languages has always been fascinating to me. You do a great job explaining these relationships and make for an interesting teacher. Glad yt recommended your channel.
An actual historical linguist on RUclips? Yes, please! An actual historical linguist with his own RUclips channel? That's doubly cool! An actual historical linguist from UW? That's downright inspiring!
Well if or when you get your PhD. Try not to fall into this guys absolutes. Knowledge grows and he states things as fact at a very high frequency. He may be right, but it’s not very scholarly, if I can use that word in that way, to state things as he does without support as often as he does.
I personally love your "sunburst" model; it manages to capture important distinctions between varieties while also showing how much the dialects influence each other in a family where the "tree" model breaks down.
Thank you, Professor Crawford! Many people, myself in the lead, have long been confused about the incredible distances in time, and proximity of relationships, between the various branches of Indo-European languages. To our good luck, you manage to give us an overview that, by nature, has to be sweeping, but that you also make engaging. Then you clarify and add color to the mist of that very large picture with discursive detail. I love this mode of learning! The relevant facts and connections stick with me more than with any other approach. So thank you, very sincerely. This video also left me wishing you might pair up sometime with an anthropologist from a mesolithic perspective, so we might follow other markers of advancement, as anatomically modern peoples emerged into a post-glacial but pre-settled world. Their diets, clothing, migration, ungulate domestication, pottery, patterns of engagement (ill-advised hand signals, hey-there winks?), etc-all these phenomena must have been permitted by-perhaps even helped propel-the evolution of language. I’m hoping to flesh out what I call our Mirumbilon-the world when wonder was the primary vehicle of efflorescence for human cerebration. Much as iron drives populations of marine plankton and nitrogen generates vigor in terrestrial flora, I’m intrigued by the idea that our impulse of wonder is a truly somatic, phenotypically evolved and alarmingly potent agent of cognitive/behavioral bootstrapping, the gear-train of sentience & volition that in our wee hours potentiated what we now (very generously) call civilization.
Not only is the topic fascinating, and the presentation and subsequent discussion at a satisfying intellectual level, but the presenter (Professor Crawford) is a hoot!! Kudos
@@mrjones2721 yeah he's pretty high up there. well he's in Fort Collins, so pretty far north, but they had a random cold front blow through and it dumped snow on them. It worked out though, because it suppressed that Cameron peak fire a bit.
On the other side of the world in rural Victoria, Australia we were just getting into warmer spring weather and now we have a snow storm that has turned the hills white again. Winter is not quite finished here.
I love that at 20:00 the diagram kind of reads like the west germanic languages actually descended from a "west norwegian". that would be a super interesting migration
I really really love and enjoy learning about this! literally I sit here excited like a little kid learning something new and amazing :D Especially the part when you explain how you can deduce from the existence of words for "snow", "beaver" and so on that the language must have been spoken more in the north and not too far south, or how you can show from the lack of a word for "writing" that there was no writing. That is so unspoeakably fascinating to me ^-^ Kinda reminds me of how in archaeology you can tell a lot about the age of findings just by comparative stratification with other dating evidence. Or also how you can tell the comparative age of walls (or similar) by looking at joints and intersections. I love it! Thank you so much :)
The whole f and p correspondence that he used as an example coincidentally characterizes all loanwords that transfered from Persian to Georgian. Fantastic discussion in this video, big thanks
It's so easy to forget when talking about this subject the incredible number of generations of people and long distances between these different splits. Incomprehensible
'How do you make a cat go "Woof"? Pour petrol over it and light it'. A bad playground joke - which do not change over generations, hence in the UK if we tire of playing chase games we say "Pax" and cross our fingers - it's Latin for 'peace', and our fingers simulate The Cross. Holy cow (if I can say that) :)
South of Romania was part of the Roman Empire and the province had the name of Dacia Felix at a certain point. Dacia was conquered by emperor Traianus and the immortalisation of the conquer is on display in Rome as Traianus' Collumn.
True but that doesn't explain compact areas of Romanian spoken well in the north of Romania all the way to Ukraine. There is now in circulation a new theory saying that Rome founded by defeated Trojans is the source of vulgar Latin . Trojans were Thracians and Dacians were Thracians as well. Same language. BTW Emperor Trajan who conquered southern Dacia in 106 told his troops before crossing Danube " We are going home". Another thing , according to ancient Greek writers Dacians didn't need translation when dealing with the Romans.
I am kurdish and live in Germany, the first Time i learned German i was supersized how much vocabulary's sounds the similar to each other like "Warm" (warm;english) in kurdish is Gwarm or Nase(Nose;english) is "Pose" in kurdish. and much more words.
@@Bjowolf2 Yes well you have one already, "Nu/Nuh" is the word for New and "Niha" is the word for "Now". Tim/Dem (depending on dialect) is the word for Time. Hêk is the word for Egg. Silav is the word for greeting like the latin Salve. Sipas is the word for thank you like the Russian Spasiba. Dêri is the word for Door. Kon is the word for tent, cognate with the english word Cone. Bira/Birader is the word for brother. Lev is the word for Lip, cognate with the french Levre. Kit/kitik is the word for Cat. Zor is trouble/difficult, cognate with the swedish word Svår. Perishan which means perish is almost identical to the english word. There are many many more, these are just some that popped up for me right now.
Jackson I can't tell you how happy I am to have found this! (Via the lovely Simon Roper's videos...) brief tangent but I'm an old school Doctor Who fan and "Grimm's Law" was discussed by the lead characters in The State of Decay (episode 2 at 10 min in) from 1980. I'd ALWAYS wanted to find out more about it but had no luck when I looked pre- and early internet days. This has made me very happy! :)
Great intro into historical linguistics and the Indo-European languages! I have to give you extra credit for knowing all the languages of the IE family and the differences between them from half the world away - USA (I'm in SE Europe, native speaker of Serbo-Croatian). Also, great explainer at the end that genes and languages are different things. And finally, as a history (and language) buff, I love how you put it very simply: "the past is as complex as the present and the future". I envy you for being payed to do what I love. Keep it up!
There is no Serbo-Croatian language. They are two languages, similar, but different. Serbian and Croatian. Serbo-Croatian (or Croato-Serbian) is the product of Yugoslavian policy to form Yugoslav nation and it was a failure. The great and tragic failure.
Jackson, your videos are a treasure trove. Thanks a million for sharing all this fascinating knowledge with us. I chuckle sometimes at the mix of Old Norse and cowboy
I find it very appropriate that an expert on ancient Germanic languages happens to speak a particular dialect of American English in which the wine-whine merger has not occurred. Thus, when speaking Old English, Jackson would pronounce the very first word in Beowulf, “hwaet”, much the same way as he pronounces its modern English cognate, “what” in his own native dialect. Certainly the two are much closer than they are in my (Western Australian) case, where not only has the wine-whine merger occurred, but the “a” has drifted even further backwards from its original “ae” pronunciation than it has in American English.
Like Stewie saying “Cool HWhip?” JC does have a wonderful accent, voice, and vocabulary. I’ve spent hours with him on The Great Courses on Audible. His most interesting accent is how he pronounces “…ing” without the “g.” Walkin, talkin, pronouncin, etc. He has such a magisterial and sonorous voice yet his western American upbringing still peeks through in an endearing way. Yet I mainly appreciate his deep expertise, something lacking on these channels and in today’s universities. The latter is, I’m quite sure, the reason he left the university and took up this position where he’s free to be excellent, unencumbered by plotting, tenured mediocrities.
Very interesting. Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx are 'Q' Celtic languages because of the sound at the beginning of some words, e.g. Ceann (Irish for 'head') whereas Welsh, Cornish and Breton are 'P' Celtic languages, e.g. Pen (Welsh for 'head').
Brilliant info. Just one thing I noticed at 18:35 is when you pronounced Manx it is like the 'a' in 'maul' or 'tall'. It should be pronounced like the 'a' is in 'Ate' or May' instead. I live close to the Isle of Man, in Northern Ireland, and a few days ago we were standing on the shore looking across the sea to Man. Beautiful place here and on the Isle. You should visit once travel restrictions are lifted.
@Klaupe Schnitzelinski Very good question. It is named after a sea-god in Irish mythology Manannán. (His full name Manannán mac Lir.) Also in Welsh mythology is known as Manawydan. (Manawydan fab Llŷr.) Shortened over the years to Mannen, to Mann, and now Man. I had a look on Wiki to make sure I got the spelling correct and it says that in 54BCE Julius Caesar referenced the island as Mona in Latin. Also in the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder records it as Monapia or Monabia, and Ptolemy (2nd century) as Monœda (Mοναοιδα, Monaoida) or Mοναρινα (Monarina), in Koine Greek. It is found in the Sagas of Icelanders as Mön. Like most things, once you do a little research, it is fascinating what information you find.
@@veritateminquirendam2403 Ive also found how grammatical genders works and changed on some websites indeed if u check extensively we'll find a lots of stuffs, tho the developments in chronological times and how it changes surely are a lots to understand as a whole. tho I would say numbers of contributors in a ratios of it and how many languages a language family has etc in other categories thus rankings are much more important or I should just reach out to the instutitions or scholars, hope I'll get into exchange or comparative studies later on my near last semesters...
20:53 "Harja" is the Finnish word for comb. It was probably something similar in the north germanic languages but over the years it has shortened down to just Hår. This is actually a common occurrence with germanic words in Finnish, Finnish is a very conservative language. Consider the word for "King" in Finnish, "Kuningas", in Swedish it is now "Kung". It was probably something like "Koningaz" in Proto-Germanic.
My Albania alfabet the Leter M ,is center Alfabet, the word is syllable Miter is uterus, . The word mam is mather. Don't forget my language albania 🇦🇱 my language has 2 dialects gheg and toske . And under dialects. .
17:10 Actually, the region of Dacia, inhabited by an Indo-European Thracian people, was annexed by the Roman Empire under Trajan in the 2nd century CE. The area largely corresponds to present-day Romania and Moldova. The Thracians of Dacia adopted Vulgar Latin and became Romanized, whereas Thracians in the Byzantine Empire became Hellenized. Thus, the gradual emergence of Romanian from Vulgar Latin in Dacia likely has its origins before the start of the Medieval period.
Dacia was under roman rule for much shorter than the rest of the empire. Especially Moldova is quite far out. There are (and were even more historically) peoples all over the Balkans, who speak dialects of Romanian or languages closely related to it. Some of them as far away as Greece, Montenegro and Croatia. Historically these peoples (usually called Vlachs by their neighbors) practiced seminomadic pastoralism and moved often, so it's not so inconceivable that some of them migrated east. This would also explain the strong influences of slavi c languages on Romanian, which suggest centuries of cohabitation.
Establishment of the current Romanian language from what I have read was more of a state program than a natural process, implemented by Greek Phanariotes by the rule of Ottoman Empire. There were Vlahs in the region of course, but the majority of the population spoke and wrote in Slavic. The Ottoman Sultan wanted to distance this population from Russia and the other awakening closer Slavic countries. Cheers!
@@luisromanlegionaire Romanian is based on vulgar latin spoke in northern part of Eastern Roman Empire, not a specific region like Dacia. The weight center of this language was south of Danube was more dense populated and romanised, then after slavs moved in translated to north of Danube (600-900), in the south romanians were pushed to the edges or assimilated by slavs
@@Bultras12-CA You talk nonsense. Romanian was very infuenced by slavic trough use in administration and church, but always remained latin in core. In larger vocabulary in medieval time were more slavic words used than today, but as slowly slavic was removed from administration as it was not known by lower and middle class and later (no link with ottoman empire) was relatinised by literature writtings giving priority to latin words over slavic words in larger vocabulary and later (after 1850) loans from french and italian, altough today most of loans are from english
@@cosettapessa6417 it's funny, Old Church Slavonic which is the ancestor of Bulgarian, has 7 noun cases that are all retained in modern Serbian but completely lost in modern Bulgarian. :)
Just had to contribute my thought about "you" being more variable as mentioned at 7:15. Maybe that's because invaders and conquerors would use their own form of "you" (especially the plural form) when speaking to the subjugated populace, and this would enter/alter the language as their presence and power strengthened. Have any language scholars discussed this idea?
Tocharian is very important. Before its discovery, i.e. languages were split in the middle in two groups, "kentum" languages and "satem" languages (kentum, written centum is the word for "hundred" in latin and satem the corrisponding word in sanskrit). Some languages (like the indo-iranian) had [s] where the others (like latin, greek and germanic taking into account grimm's law) had [k], but it was not understood which of the two was the original. Tocharian languages, even though they are more eastward than indo-iranian, are kentum languages. Since tocharian speakers and proto-italic or greek speakers were unlikely to have come up with the same innovation at that distance, it is safe to assume [k] is the original realization and [s] an innovation.
Theres a lot of reasons why this can be refuted. It is likeleh the palatovelars were Palatl plosives, or at leasted palatalized velar stops. Secondly we can see different languages shift back(velar) and forward(palatl or postalveolar affricates) throughout history. Finally the most conservative languages Sanskrit Avestan and Lithuanian are all Satem. And /ķ/> [s] only occured in Persian, in Sanskrit it became /ś/, and in PIE /ķ/ was likley [c]
I don't understand the Old West thing this brilliant person is laying down, but I will say he is right on with the material, and that he is a gifted lecturer. If you look, you can find a Proto Indo-European vocabulary in the back or front of some dictionaries.
9:35 - the words for gold, silver, lead, bronze, tin also have no shared cognates between the Indo European languages north of caucuses and south of caucuses. Even copper does not seem to share cognate between northern and southern [ayas (Vedic) /ayes (Latin)/aiz (perhaps Celtic stone or hard tool or perhaps copper) but Germanic and Slavic languages don’t share words with this cognate indicating very early Neolithic split between northern and southern Indo European before discovery of gold or even copper. Krushi in Vedic is agriculture (krushik = farmer) and does not appear to share cognate in northern or eastern branches showing a possible split between I do Iranian and other branches even before farming became common. Technology related words like wheel do not indicate date (just like common words for phone and computer are also useless in determining date of split)
31:48 just a quick note - hummingbird written in cyrillics would look like хаммингбёрд or something like this. your example would be pronounced as hoomingvnrd.
13:00 Vedic manuals tell of starting rituals soon after winter solstice which occur within 15 to 30 days after full moon at Regulus putting and telling to skip bathing in rivers or ponds due to extremely cold days when full moon is near Spica ( see Kaushitaki Brahmana 19.3) putting KAushitaki Brahmana before 2900 BCE. Also note Rigveda has only two metals mentioned Ayas and Hiranya/Harita (not bronze weapons for those mighty gods) making Rigveda Chalcolithic text. Bronze appears in later texts.
When I went to Afghanistan, I studied Dari. I found that about 10 or 15% of the ordinary, daily use vocabulary was different from the same words in Farsi. So I wonder if linguists consider Dari a difference language from Farsi, or a dialect of Farsi.
Similarities between English and Persian Persian / English Pedar / father Tu / you Dochter / daughter Mader / mother Brader / brother Daar / dor Shamshir / sword
From what I can tell there aren't too many cases of a full language switch in a population without some gene flow, so I understand people getting confused with genetic heritage and linguistic heritage. Hopefully we can get a vid on the Indo-Iranian branch of the family someday!
The stressing of that comes, I think, from a 19th/20th fetish for binding a "people" - language, customs, genetics as a bloc and assuming all change means replacement...as if every time these days someone in Asia learns English an American comes with a sword, kills him and moves into his house.
There's always some gene flow, but not often enough to, by itself, change the language of an area. The Romance languages are an example. Sure, some Italians moved to the provinces, but not enough to cause everyone in the empire to speak Latin. They did that because they were conquered by Latin speakers, and were ruled by Latin speakers.
A good example of the complete separation of genetics and language is Garifuna, which is a Native American language spoken along the east coast of Central America. Its speakers, however, are genetically African. This resulted from the Native American inhabitants of the island of St. Vincent resisting European conquest, and accepting massive numbers of escaped slaves from neighbouring colonies. Because the slaves spoke many different African languages, they adopted the language of their hosts, married in, and became genetically dominant.
As a Finnish linguist, I do not think that Proto Indo-European and Proto-Uralic are relatedbasic the basics of grammar and how the language system works are utterly distinct. I find more linguist connections between Finnish with Turkic and Coreo-Japonic languages than with Indo-European ones.
So, I was a translator for the military many years ago, and part of that training was trying to identify a language simply by hearing it. The actual language I was taught was Persian Farsi, but they played a clip of a language I hadn't heard before. The words and sounds felt familiar, but it felt like that one Italian pop song that intended to sound like English, despite containing no English words. It was Turkish. The sounds of the words are similar but the languages are so different that it sounded like I should understand it yet it came across as gibberish. Certainly a better experience, though, than when a buddy of mine was doing his listening homework without headphones. I was just laying there, passively listening, and slowly beginning to panic cause I didn't understand it. I was a week away from my final and terrified that I was gonna fail because it didn't make any sense all of a sudden. Then I hear "Anyong haseo" and it clicks: No wonder I don't understand it. It's Korean. It would've been more concerning if I did understand it lol
34:00 I'd say that parents pass both their genes and language to their children. Therefore it should be interesting to compare the development of the Indoeuropean language family with gene pools, how many generations ago gene pools seperated or merged. And then try to validate that information with archeological findings. I'm not an expert in either field btw, just an opinion.
France went from Gaelic to Roman (Italian) very fast. After that the upper class was Franconian, but that only survived in the Netherlands and Flanders. I just want to say, languages follow politics more than they follow genes.
@@ronaldderooij1774 It's very reasonable, due to some political ideology. If we can compare the presence of Arabs during the period they occupied many parts of North Africa we can understand there was an influence on the native Berbers for example, so we can clearly see that most of them speak Arabic. But don't forget that the genes had also some kind of influence as well. Something else, there are also some words which are still in use in French which either are from the substract language Gaelic or Franconian.
@@ronaldderooij1774 There is no need to impose some simplistic conceptual schema onto this. Both politics and blood are clearly an influence in this regard, as you can find examples for both. Depending on the circumstances things can turn out in different ways, but it is not rational to outright deny the influence blood has on language adoption. After all, it is our parents who we inherit our language from, together with our blood.
There's actually a whole new field of science, paleogenomics, that has thrown a lot of light upon this. Have a look at David Reich's "Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past"; he covers a lot of the recent groundbreaking discoveries about ancient human genetics. He doesn't go into languages much, but there are plenty of experts who think that a group of steppe pastoralists in the Pontic-Caspian region were the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European.
@@MaureenLycaon I see! The are also many things we have to understand about language shift as well. However, there are some issues that need to be resolved. I also tried to find a logical explanation of multilingualism in those areas, which show indeed a correlation, with social structure, if we take into account the presence of four languages which are used in Switzerland we can see that, an even now there are these languages, we can see that something similar might have happened since 7000 years ago, then we can see the interaction between people weren't always necessarily being war like. An other thing I wanted to point out it's about Armenian, according to experts they found out there was bilingualism between their original speakers of Armenian and people we now know Ugaritic.
Great introduction into a fascinating subject. I’ve noticed only one small error: at ca. 17:00 you said that “Romania is not a part of the Roman Empire, classically speaking.” It actually was, or large part of it at least. Most of the modern Romania is the ancient Dacia, the land of Dacians, a group of Indo-European tribes, certainly related to Thracians from the south of the Danube, that occupied the area between the Carpathian mountains and the west coast of the Black sea. In short, after several wars, Roman finally conquered the Dacians during the reign of Trajan (by 105 AD). Although they did not permanently occupied all of it, a vast province of Dacia was formed (divided in smaller provinces later on), that spread over much of the south and west of the modern-day Romania. In spite of many difficulties in holding these trans-Danubian regions, the Romans kept these territories for over a century and a half. During this period there was much movement of population, colonization, settlement and resettlement, entire new cities were built. Numerous inscriptions prove that usage of Latin became widespread - there is the ancestry of Romanian. The decision to abandon Dacia (“Romania”) was made only in 271 AD and even this was not fully accomplished until some years later. Anyway, keep up the good work!
There’s a lot of similarity between Sanskrit and Russian... like Nabaha in Sanskrit is Nebo in Russian, Chushk is same for cup in both the languages, and words like Devan(kinda sofa with no arms and back board), Dvar/Dver, Dham/Dom, Agni(fire)/ Agon... have same meanings... and so on.
Hey there :D I have a great example for you from a Ugric language, it was fun Im Finnish and I was working as a student in Hungary and I saw many similarities: Hungarian: Finnish: English: Morsza Murusia Crumbs (as in Breadcrumbs hűtőkamra Hyytävä kamari Freezing cabinet Víz Vesi Water Méz Mesi Honey Szarv Sarvi Horn the word refrigerator literally meant a Freeze cabinet, thats normally called a 'jääkaappi' but there are many more :D
Doesn't English also have the word 'morsel' which means small pieces (like crumbs). Is that related to Morzsa/Murusia?
4 года назад
@@oilslick7010 In Hungarian it comes from the verb morzsol which means to grind something with your palms, and in the end it just a form of morzsalék morzsolék that means crumbs, shreddings. The verb itself might have originated form the verb mar (bite) mimicking the verb forms dörzsöl (rub) and horzsol (bruise) . The Hungarian verb mar might me related to vogul verb mor- (breaks), Ostyak mori (cracks), finnic muru (morsel), samoyedic morei (breaks up).
4 года назад+1
Morsel comes from Old French, diminutive of mors ‘a bite’, from Latin mors- ‘bitten’, from the verb mordere
Dr. thank you so much for the video. Great content and presentation. You just answered what I was going to ask about the Mittani - Vedic connection, thanks! Keep up the great work.
Regarding the table Grimm's Law, 'heart': It's quite amazing how close PIE ḱḗr is to French cœr. It's almost as if thousands of years haven't happened.
Can we talk about "six"? Like, hello? The word is written the same in English and French, and it's pronounced almost the same, despite the fact the word doesn't come from borrowing? Even crazier in Quebec French, because the "i" in this word is pronounced pretty much like in English. (also, cœur*, you missed a "u")
I thought about Latvian and Estonian being completely distinct despite their near proximity last week, when I was discussing similarities between Latvian and Russian (Baltic and Slavic branch of Balto-Slavic language family). My anti-linguist Russian speaking opponent really refused to believe that there is any relation between Latvian and Russian, and if there is, it is because Latvians have assimilated Slavic vocabulary because of our near proximity. However, Baltics are quite isolated from the rest of the world in terms of its geography - this is a part of the reason why modern day Latvian and Lithuanian are well preserved and share similarities with Sanskrit. And I mean, any considerable contact with Slavic language speaking population would have started around 1710 when Russia took over modern day Latvia-Estonia. Okay, but back to the point, eventhough Latvian and Estonian are right next to each other and a Finno-ugric tribe (Livonians) used to live in modern day Latvian territory, Estonian and Latvian or Lithuanian are completely distinct. For the past 800 years Latvia and Lithuania have gone quite different paths historically. But despite that, I can still recognize certain roots in Lithuanian. However, Estonian, with which we have shared a large part of the territory and been in the same entity (Livonia=parts of modern day Latvia+Estonia) for centruries, we have very, very little vocabulary in common. For comparison, I'd like to present counting in Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian: Latvian: viens 1, divi 2, trīs 3, četri 4, pieci 5, seši 6, septiņi 7, astoņi 8, deviņi 9, desmit 10 Lithuanian: vienas 1 , du 2, trys 3, keturi 4, penki 5, šeši 6, septyni 7, aštuoni 8, devyni 9, dešimt 10 Estonian: üks [1], kaks [2], kolm [3], neli [4], viis [5], kuus [6], seitse [7], kaheksa [8], üheksa [9], and kümme [10] Spanish: uno (ooh-no), dos (dohs), tres (trays), cuatro (kwah-troh), cinco (seen-koh), seis (says), siete (syay-tay), ocho (oh-choh), nueve (nway-vay), diez (dyays) English: 1 one, 2 two, 3 three, 4 four, 5 five, 6 six, 7 seven, 8 eight, 9 nine, 10 ten. As you see, it is quite evident that all of the languages presented above share similarities but Estonian. This is truly striking. Anyways, let all the languages be preserved and cultural diversity to be cherished!
Despite Latvian and Estonian being from different lang families, Latvian has clearly been influenced by Uralic. In that sense, they definitely are neighbors. The same thing can be said about other so-called unrelated languages. Clearly more is going on than the typical family tree concept.
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For the weird way Proto-Indo-European gets written: ruclips.net/video/_k-io7GR2Zc/видео.html
You should do a video on lithuanian connection to PIE
I feel better knowing there are 4000 other people out there that find this information fascinating enough to watch the whole thing through.
84,000 as of the time I’m watching it
A lot more I believe, the online community of linguistics is huuuge.
Make that 180 000
200,000 as of 8/22 haha
202k and not surprised
Cowboy linguist ASMR.
... with the old fashioned soothing "wh".
@@dariuszb.9778 cowboy linguist says 'hwæt!'
@@andrewgould6689 Yeah, that old fashioned English (learnt from his grandma AFAIR) sounds really cool, doesn't it?
MrJones innit though!?!
Definitely Henglish!
The scenery, the accent, the hat, the learning... That's glorious.
It's where a listener is from I suppose. To me he doesn't have a region-specific accent. Interestingly he pronounces the "H" in words like "when" ("hwen") which strikes me as an old feature.
@@RichardDCook i’m looking back on this a few years after the video was released, and Jackson has relax his pronunciation of the WH to the contemporary “wah” sound. I think he was self-conscious about pronouncing the HW sound as I think it resembles more closely the way it was pronounced in the Old English or old Norse periods.
@@mesechabe Though there are regions in the US that haven't undergone the whale/wail (or which/witch) merger. I have a friend born in California though his parents are both from New England (just where I don't recall) and they all do the "hw" sound.
“The past is as complex as the present or the future.”
- Jackson Crawford
Tho it pains me to say it modern latvian is different than the lavian of our folksongs.
(I actually speak something closer to the older kind, when I say modern I mean the language of the capitol not my own very conservative dialect.)
modern - old - written english
akmens - akmenis - stone
mēness - mēnesis - moon
akmens - akmeņa - [on] stone
halāts - rīta svārki - (I dont know)
armija - pulks - army
(By the gods! I just realized pulks is a cognate of folk! Pulks in its base meaning means many, does that mean folk also used to mean many? An army is made up of many men, a nation is made up of many people...)
un - i - and
bēbis - zīdainis - baby
kara rati - kariete - chariot
kariete - kungu rati - coach
dēliņi - bāliņi - sons [deminutive]
suns - sunis - dog
Also folksongs have much grater variation since they where composed when people couldnt easily comunicate over long distrances and coulnt read or write so dialects where much more pronounced for example the song I just sifted trough for differences from modern capitol language uses the phraze "zobens grieza baltu smilti" which is incorrect according to the literary language as it should be "zobens grieza baltas smiltis" and here the literary language saying smiltis is always plural is more conservative where as my grandfather usually says smilts singular, but there is also a chance this isnt a dialect thing and the conjugation eludes to the fact that it is flesh not sand that is being cut by the sword.
Anyways most of the language is still identical even in the capitol I just picked out differences for you.
I'm not sure how youtube recommended this channel, but it's one of the best channels I've seen. I chose science over linguistics for a career path, but have never lost my fascination with languages. I love your matter of fact explanations and the many references provided. I just got your audible books of The Poetic Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs and am happily listening to them.
Im learning electrical engineering, but I really like linguistics, its always an amazing subject
Professor Crawford, the work you do is seriously underappreciated.
The word for mom in Turkish is "Anne", but we do have the word "mama" which means baby food. I assume when baby's cried out "ma, ma!" people assumed they were crying for food.
Ana Apa Ata
bana da eski Türkçedeki bu 3 kelime çok garip geliyordu. Aynılar sadece sessiz harf değişmiş, belki bunun açıklaması da benzerdir
😀
Makes sense since Mothers provide food by breast feeding the baby
Turkish is not indo european family.
@@rijutruthwarrior1128 They’re not saying it is, they’re just talking about their own language in a way that is relevant to the video.
There's an interesting exception to what you were talking about with "mama" being the word for "mother" in so many languages. In Georgian "მამა" (mama) is father and "დედა" (deda) is mother.
I mean it's a fifty fifty chance what ancient Georgians assigned to the sounds their babies babbled, quite amusing actually lol
Ah, btw i just now realised in Kurdish mother is "dê" lol
Yes, might be, but we must not exclude the Influence of neighbouring languages like armenian or other neighbouring indo-european languages
Deda, OK, Deeda is used in India for grannie in Bengali; it's a variation of Dadi (Hindi), and Dada (Hindi - Gramps).
In Hindi mama -"brother of mother", dada -" Father of Father"
The amount of facts we can find out about the native speakers of Proto-Indo-European language just from words present in it is mind blowing! Thank you for the video.
You have the best classroom, Dr. Crawford!
This video deserves a million views
Last time I was this early the horse was not yet domesticated
Good one!
Wow, you were very early!
big brain yamnaya joke
In Modern Persian (An Iranian language):
Pedar - Father
Mâdar - Mother
Dokhtar - Daughter
Barâdar - Brother
Bad - Bad
Na - No
Now - New
Band - Band
Berenj - Bronze
Kimia - Chemistry
Dandân - Tooth (Dental)
Pardis - Paradise
Dar - Door
Abroo - Eyebrow
Famil - Family
Gerân - Great
Gorouh - Group
Narang - Orange
...
and many more
You forget khuda, which is cognate with 'god'. Geran would rather be cognate with 'grand'? Band (music band) might rather be a modern import from English? (unless you mean band as in wristband, like Persian 'band' = closed).
pardis and paradise are not cognates from pie directly tho,paradise was borrowed from old irsnian or avestan (or something)pardayjah
@@aryyancarman705 Actually 'pairi daeza' = enclosed / fenced area
Naranja - orange in spanish
Diente- tooth
Interesting similarities
@@hectorserna7950'daant' is tooth in Hindi (India)
'narinja' is orange in Telugu (India)
True that similar sounds mean something in more than one language.
The Indo-European language family and by extension the Germanic and/or Celtic language families are often talked about in relation to people's ancestry and although languages carry cultural heritage, it's interesting that you separate language from genetic ancestry. I feel like a lot of people often mix up these two. So thanks for sharing!
genetic lineage is highly superfluous, especially in the modern era with heavy immigration and globalization. language is determined by the environment and culture one grows up in, not genetic origin.
@@MuddafukhingdisKUST hi, while I agree that languages are dependant on your environment and can change rapidly for groups of people, I don't agree on genetics being superfluous because of modern migration.
I'm from the north of Belgium and most of my ancestors that I can trace back have been born in the same river valley for at least the past five to ten generations and the majority of the people here have that kind of ancestry. It's not that we don't want to intermarry with different people, but it just rarely happens, even today. So our genetic ancestry is very much its own subgroup, but the differences with other people from Europe and from around the world are very subtle and in that sense superfluous.
The point about language still stands though 😉👍
Hungarians are pretty much genetically identical to other Europeans. Their culture has pretty much nothing to do at all with the culture of Uralic people. Of course there's similarities and influences but their culture is closer to German's than to other Uralic people from Siberia.
It's ironic how Germanic people tried for centuries to revive the Roman empire, despite not even being descended from them.
Germanic invaders conquered lots of roman provinces and named themselves kings and queens and started dinasties, but they all adopted the local variety of latin as their language and all adopted their Roman culture instead of trying to germanise places like Spain, France and Italy.
Originally the people speaking Romanian in current day Romania were, as the name implies, descended from roman legionaries, but as the Slavs moved into those lands from the north they all adopted the latin language, which is why Romanians all look like any other Slavs, yet they speak a romance language, but their romance language is said to sound pretty much like a russian trying to speak a romance language.
In fact I'm a native Romanian speaked, and a LOT of times I was walking down the street when I heard people having a conversation in what I assumed was Romanian, yet I was dumbfounded to find out that I didn't know a word of what they were talking, only for them to actually be Bulgarians, or Serbians.
In fact all languages in the Balkan region exhibit a weird common characteristic, that being that regardless of whether they are a romance or a Slavic language, they all share a lot of common characteristics in their grammar.
Which means that they have different words that sound nothing like each other, that are NOT cognates but they use their words in the same order and in the same way, and in a way that's different from any other Slavic or romance language.
Like Slavic languages from the Balkan region, and Romanian, share grammar with each other, that they don't share with Russian or French or Spanish or Polish, which has lead many to believe that when Romans and Slavs moved into the area, they assimilated the people that were living there previously into their respective languages, but when those people learned latin/Slavic they learned it by mixing it with their own native grammar which sounded more natural to them, essentially forming a pigeon language.
That means that the languages in the Balkan all share a common origin for their grammar but not for their words.
All of this goes to tell you that this is a whole lot more complicated than genetics and language.
Two related languages can be spoken by people.very genetically different from each other. Like Spanish spoken in the Philippines and on south America.
Two languages can share a common "ancestor" language in their vocabulary but not in their grammar, or share common grammar but not vocabulary.
When a language group moves to a new land, they don't genetically replace the other language, because the people that were already there, with their own genetic makeup can just adopt the language and culture if they like.
Or the opposite can happen, where a new genetical group can move to a new area and since they're immigrants they can adopt their language and culture, maybe twist the language and culture a bit by mixing it with their own language. And like this, a whole lot of other things could happen.
I love this.
@@MuddafukhingdisKUST what a load of nonsense you wrote. by ''modern migration'' you mean managed replacement of Whites in the lands of their ancestors?
@@norielgames4765 Insightful comment. Romanians are chill. I met one guy from Moldova but idk if they count as Romanians lol.
31:45 “Хуммингвнрд” would be “hummunvnrd”; maybe you meant “хуммингбирд” 🤓 Good point in that segment, though. @Jackson Crawford
Came here to say this - the mistakes make sense if you're coming mostly from familiarity with the Greek alphabet. I would transcribe it хамингбзрд to get the Cyrillic version even closer to pronunciation, though I guess it depends on your dialect of English.
This brings me back 30 years ago to my favorite subjects (History of the English Language, Univ of Seville, Spain; and Historical Linguistics, Indiana Univ, Bloomington). I'm an ABD (due to horrible family illnesses, and me being the caretaker) in English Philology. I completed all my courses, worked on my dissertation, but couldn't finish it. My dad's very premature Alzheimers took care of achieving my dream. So I specialized in English Linguistics, nd teaching English as a foreign language is my job in lovely Seville, Spain. However, I was really into Old English and its literature, so when I heard you talk about the P and the F, I immediately knew you were going to talk about Grimm's Law. Such good times!!! But unless you've got a Ph.D, forget about teaching historical stuff outside the University...
Obviously, credentials are important for academic and professional reasons, but you still "know what you know". Anyway, we should all attempt to keep expanding our knowledge and understanding throughout our lives. This channel provides such an opportunity.
That was strong of you to do what you did for your dad.
The intro, badass. The knowledge, fascinating. The channel, indispensable
You know, for a few years now I've seen people say things like "oh yeah, dr crawford, a very good educator, great content, also god he's so cool" but I never actually happened to watch any of your videos. Having had this randomly recommended to me by youtube I would just like to say: wow what a good video, very educational. Also god you're so cool (some pun intended)
I wish someone did a detailed analysis of Uralic languages- I can only hope Mr. Crawford has friends in the community who are Uralic language enthusiasts. He did do a video once on why Finnish is separate from Nordic.
I found a video lecture here on RUclips that is a general introduction to the Uralic language family. The lecture is presented by Sampsa Holopainen from the University of Helsinki, so it is all based on academic research. Too bad, he is not as eloquent as Mr. Crawford in this video, but if you can excuse the slightly awkward manner of presentation, I am sure his lecture contains the kind of information you are looking for.
I can't put a direct link to the video here, but you can find it if you search for the title "Holopainen - Introduction to Uralic languages".
@@michabach274 I watched a bit of it and I could cut his anxiety from the air with a knife. He seemed so very anxious and jumpy, was he held at gunpoint in that presentation?
I never dared the Finnic-Ugiric complex!
@@ebthedoc4992 A month in Budapest? A dreamland holiday, and a bash at one of the languages.
Non indo European= don't care
The relationships between languages has always been fascinating to me. You do a great job explaining these relationships and make for an interesting teacher. Glad yt recommended your channel.
An actual historical linguist on RUclips? Yes, please!
An actual historical linguist with his own RUclips channel? That's doubly cool!
An actual historical linguist from UW? That's downright inspiring!
Will be referring back to that. Great overview.
Im currently in school for Linguistics and Anthropology and this man is living my dream
I am not in school, Linguistics or Anthropology and this man is also my living dream.
Its every kids dream to be a cowboy!
@@Deckdisz you either wanna be a cowboy or a viking and this guy is basically a cowboy-viking soothsayer.
Well if or when you get your PhD. Try not to fall into this guys absolutes. Knowledge grows and he states things as fact at a very high frequency. He may be right, but it’s not very scholarly, if I can use that word in that way, to state things as he does without support as often as he does.
17:04 Much of modern Romania was a part of the Roman Empire, it was known as the province of Dacia.
I personally love your "sunburst" model; it manages to capture important distinctions between varieties while also showing how much the dialects influence each other in a family where the "tree" model breaks down.
This is an endlessly fascinating subject.
Boring!
@@StompingRabbits ok
@@StompingRabbits like your comment
Cowboy, snow, mountains, with a PhD I'm hooked you don't even need your lasso to r e i g n me in.
@Martin Cregan my bad I am French after all.
The video we've all been waiting for..
Thank you, Professor Crawford! Many people, myself in the lead, have long been confused about the incredible distances in time, and proximity of relationships, between the various branches of Indo-European languages.
To our good luck, you manage to give us an overview that, by nature, has to be sweeping, but that you also make engaging. Then you clarify and add color to the mist of that very large picture with discursive detail. I love this mode of learning! The relevant facts and connections stick with me more than with any other approach. So thank you, very sincerely.
This video also left me wishing you might pair up sometime with an anthropologist from a mesolithic perspective, so we might follow other markers of advancement, as anatomically modern peoples emerged into a post-glacial but pre-settled world. Their diets, clothing, migration, ungulate domestication, pottery, patterns of engagement (ill-advised hand signals, hey-there winks?), etc-all these phenomena must have been permitted by-perhaps even helped propel-the evolution of language.
I’m hoping to flesh out what I call our Mirumbilon-the world when wonder was the primary vehicle of efflorescence for human cerebration. Much as iron drives populations of marine plankton and nitrogen generates vigor in terrestrial flora, I’m intrigued by the idea that our impulse of wonder is a truly somatic, phenotypically evolved and alarmingly potent agent of cognitive/behavioral bootstrapping, the gear-train of sentience & volition that in our wee hours potentiated what we now (very generously) call civilization.
Not only is the topic fascinating, and the presentation and subsequent discussion at a satisfying intellectual level, but the presenter (Professor Crawford) is a hoot!!
Kudos
Is it already snowing there damn
It was snowing two weeks ago when I was there.
My brother said they had like a 60 degree drop or something like that a couple weeks ago.
Is he in the mountains? It snows earlier there than anywhere else.
@@mrjones2721 yeah he's pretty high up there. well he's in Fort Collins, so pretty far north, but they had a random cold front blow through and it dumped snow on them. It worked out though, because it suppressed that Cameron peak fire a bit.
On the other side of the world in rural Victoria, Australia we were just getting into warmer spring weather and now we have a snow storm that has turned the hills white again. Winter is not quite finished here.
I love that at 20:00 the diagram kind of reads like the west germanic languages actually descended from a "west norwegian". that would be a super interesting migration
This was an exceptionally informative video. Thanks for the sophisticated analysis, Dr. Crawford!
I came for the attractive man and stayed for the education.
Hahaha 💙
@Himanshu Bhatt or because he's clearly above average looking. Why are you so insecure about not being "white"?
@Himanshu Bhatt I think you and Jackson Crawford are both very attractive if that helps.
he's fine as hell
Mood
This is absolutely one of the best videos available on understanding related languages.
I really really love and enjoy learning about this! literally I sit here excited like a little kid learning something new and amazing :D
Especially the part when you explain how you can deduce from the existence of words for "snow", "beaver" and so on that the language must have been spoken more in the north and not too far south, or how you can show from the lack of a word for "writing" that there was no writing.
That is so unspoeakably fascinating to me ^-^
Kinda reminds me of how in archaeology you can tell a lot about the age of findings just by comparative stratification with other dating evidence.
Or also how you can tell the comparative age of walls (or similar) by looking at joints and intersections.
I love it!
Thank you so much :)
The whole f and p correspondence that he used as an example coincidentally characterizes all loanwords that transfered from Persian to Georgian. Fantastic discussion in this video, big thanks
I thank RUclips for recommending this to me. Great video, professor.
Wow, this is a really good summary of this topic. Includes all of the main interesting points, but still concise!
Agree absolutely 💙
Informative title, listing qualifications, and straight to the point. I'm already excited to watch!!
I like that I grew up speaking several languages.
Just got here. I'm very happy to see this kind of content.
Your content is infinitely valuable. Thanks Doc.
Thanks for giving your credentials right up front. It's very helpful.
It's so easy to forget when talking about this subject the incredible number of generations of people and long distances between these different splits. Incomprehensible
Wow, amazing video! Beautiful setting, too. Thank you for posting.
I believe the word “woof” is onomatopoeic.
😆
'How do you make a cat go "Woof"? Pour petrol over it and light it'. A bad playground joke - which do not change over generations, hence in the UK if we tire of playing chase games we say "Pax" and cross our fingers - it's Latin for 'peace', and our fingers simulate The Cross. Holy cow (if I can say that) :)
South of Romania was part of the Roman Empire and the province had the name of Dacia Felix at a certain point. Dacia was conquered by emperor Traianus and the immortalisation of the conquer is on display in Rome as Traianus' Collumn.
True but that doesn't explain compact areas of Romanian spoken well in the north of Romania all the way to Ukraine. There is now in circulation a new theory saying that Rome founded by defeated Trojans is the source of vulgar Latin . Trojans were Thracians and Dacians were Thracians as well. Same language. BTW Emperor Trajan who conquered southern Dacia in 106 told his troops before crossing Danube " We are going home". Another thing , according to ancient Greek writers Dacians didn't need translation when dealing with the Romans.
I am kurdish and live in Germany, the first Time i learned German i was supersized how much vocabulary's sounds the similar to each other like "Warm" (warm;english) in kurdish is Gwarm or Nase(Nose;english) is "Pose" in kurdish.
and much more words.
There are many many words that you can find in Kurdish that is very close to Latin and germanic languages.
In Hindi/Sanskrit it's Nassa and Garam 😅
Infact, in German Mother is Mater, and in Hindi/Sanskrit it's Matr. There are many similar words.
In Pashto it is Poza or Peza
Many German words in English...kranky...kaputt...gesuntide...sauer kraut...
@@Bjowolf2 Yes well you have one already, "Nu/Nuh" is the word for New and "Niha" is the word for "Now". Tim/Dem (depending on dialect) is the word for Time. Hêk is the word for Egg. Silav is the word for greeting like the latin Salve. Sipas is the word for thank you like the Russian Spasiba. Dêri is the word for Door. Kon is the word for tent, cognate with the english word Cone. Bira/Birader is the word for brother. Lev is the word for Lip, cognate with the french Levre. Kit/kitik is the word for Cat. Zor is trouble/difficult, cognate with the swedish word Svår. Perishan which means perish is almost identical to the english word. There are many many more, these are just some that popped up for me right now.
This man is brilliant and I love his content
Jackson I can't tell you how happy I am to have found this! (Via the lovely Simon Roper's videos...) brief tangent but I'm an old school Doctor Who fan and "Grimm's Law" was discussed by the lead characters in The State of Decay (episode 2 at 10 min in) from 1980. I'd ALWAYS wanted to find out more about it but had no luck when I looked pre- and early internet days. This has made me very happy! :)
Really well researched and logically presented. Top man. Great hat.
Great intro into historical linguistics and the Indo-European languages! I have to give you extra credit for knowing all the languages of the IE family and the differences between them from half the world away - USA (I'm in SE Europe, native speaker of Serbo-Croatian).
Also, great explainer at the end that genes and languages are different things.
And finally, as a history (and language) buff, I love how you put it very simply: "the past is as complex as the present and the future".
I envy you for being payed to do what I love. Keep it up!
There is no Serbo-Croatian language. They are two languages, similar, but different. Serbian and Croatian. Serbo-Croatian (or Croato-Serbian) is the product of Yugoslavian policy to form Yugoslav nation and it was a failure. The great and tragic failure.
Jackson, your videos are a treasure trove. Thanks a million for sharing all this fascinating knowledge with us. I chuckle sometimes at the mix of Old Norse and cowboy
I find it very appropriate that an expert on ancient Germanic languages happens to speak a particular dialect of American English in which the wine-whine merger has not occurred. Thus, when speaking Old English, Jackson would pronounce the very first word in Beowulf, “hwaet”, much the same way as he pronounces its modern English cognate, “what” in his own native dialect. Certainly the two are much closer than they are in my (Western Australian) case, where not only has the wine-whine merger occurred, but the “a” has drifted even further backwards from its original “ae” pronunciation than it has in American English.
Like Stewie saying “Cool HWhip?” JC does have a wonderful accent, voice, and vocabulary. I’ve spent hours with him on The Great Courses on Audible. His most interesting accent is how he pronounces “…ing” without the “g.” Walkin, talkin, pronouncin, etc. He has such a magisterial and sonorous voice yet his western American upbringing still peeks through in an endearing way. Yet I mainly appreciate his deep expertise, something lacking on these channels and in today’s universities. The latter is, I’m quite sure, the reason he left the university and took up this position where he’s free to be excellent, unencumbered by plotting, tenured mediocrities.
Thank you! cowboy ,nature, snow, this is wonderful, thank you professor.
Very interesting. Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx are 'Q' Celtic languages because of the sound at the beginning of some words, e.g. Ceann (Irish for 'head') whereas Welsh, Cornish and Breton are 'P' Celtic languages, e.g. Pen (Welsh for 'head').
Aka Goidelic and Brittonic languages (based on their geography).
Thanks for the video. I visited Roamnia a few years ago and was surprised when I recognized a few of the words.
Brilliant info. Just one thing I noticed at 18:35 is when you pronounced Manx it is like the 'a' in 'maul' or 'tall'. It should be pronounced like the 'a' is in 'Ate' or May' instead.
I live close to the Isle of Man, in Northern Ireland, and a few days ago we were standing on the shore looking across the sea to Man. Beautiful place here and on the Isle. You should visit once travel restrictions are lifted.
@Klaupe Schnitzelinski Very good question. It is named after a sea-god in Irish mythology Manannán. (His full name Manannán mac Lir.)
Also in Welsh mythology is known as Manawydan. (Manawydan fab Llŷr.) Shortened over the years to Mannen, to Mann, and now Man.
I had a look on Wiki to make sure I got the spelling correct and it says that in 54BCE Julius Caesar referenced the island as Mona in Latin.
Also in the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder records it as Monapia or Monabia, and Ptolemy (2nd century) as Monœda (Mοναοιδα, Monaoida) or Mοναρινα (Monarina), in Koine Greek.
It is found in the Sagas of Icelanders as Mön.
Like most things, once you do a little research, it is fascinating what information you find.
@@veritateminquirendam2403 Ive also found how grammatical genders works and changed on some websites indeed if u check extensively we'll find a lots of stuffs, tho the developments in chronological times and how it changes surely are a lots to understand as a whole. tho I would say numbers of contributors in a ratios of it and how many languages a language family has etc in other categories thus rankings are much more important or I should just reach out to the instutitions or scholars, hope I'll get into exchange or comparative studies later on my near last semesters...
Thanks, a great introduction, very clear, and a very pleasant narrating voice and pace to listen to!
20:53 "Harja" is the Finnish word for comb. It was probably something similar in the north germanic languages but over the years it has shortened down to just Hår. This is actually a common occurrence with germanic words in Finnish, Finnish is a very conservative language. Consider the word for "King" in Finnish, "Kuningas", in Swedish it is now "Kung". It was probably something like "Koningaz" in Proto-Germanic.
@@servantofaeie1569 both seem to work for the Dutch descendent of "koning".
*kuningaz.
Really good coverage of the branches of PIE languages and all without notes or bullet points 👍
Well done. I found this really informative. Thank you
My Albania alfabet the Leter M ,is center Alfabet, the word is syllable Miter is uterus, . The word mam is mather. Don't forget my language albania 🇦🇱 my language has 2 dialects gheg and toske . And under dialects. .
Timestamp 9:12, it is interesting that a beaver is called bóbr in polish (pronounced boobr)....
17:10 Actually, the region of Dacia, inhabited by an Indo-European Thracian people, was annexed by the Roman Empire under Trajan in the 2nd century CE.
The area largely corresponds to present-day Romania and Moldova. The Thracians of Dacia adopted Vulgar Latin and became Romanized, whereas Thracians in the Byzantine Empire became Hellenized. Thus, the gradual emergence of Romanian from Vulgar Latin in Dacia likely has its origins before the start of the Medieval period.
Quite correct he is not a historian, to suggest Romanians came into Romania during the middle ages is rather poor form on his part.
Dacia was under roman rule for much shorter than the rest of the empire. Especially Moldova is quite far out. There are (and were even more historically) peoples all over the Balkans, who speak dialects of Romanian or languages closely related to it. Some of them as far away as Greece, Montenegro and Croatia. Historically these peoples (usually called Vlachs by their neighbors) practiced seminomadic pastoralism and moved often, so it's not so inconceivable that some of them migrated east. This would also explain the strong influences of slavi c languages on Romanian, which suggest centuries of cohabitation.
Establishment of the current Romanian language from what I have read was more of a state program than a natural process, implemented by Greek Phanariotes by the rule of Ottoman Empire. There were Vlahs in the region of course, but the majority of the population spoke and wrote in Slavic. The Ottoman Sultan wanted to distance this population from Russia and the other awakening closer Slavic countries. Cheers!
@@luisromanlegionaire Romanian is based on vulgar latin spoke in northern part of Eastern Roman Empire, not a specific region like Dacia. The weight center of this language was south of Danube was more dense populated and romanised, then after slavs moved in translated to north of Danube (600-900), in the south romanians were pushed to the edges or assimilated by slavs
@@Bultras12-CA You talk nonsense. Romanian was very infuenced by slavic trough use in administration and church, but always remained latin in core.
In larger vocabulary in medieval time were more slavic words used than today, but as slowly slavic was removed from administration as it was not known by lower and middle class and later (no link with ottoman empire) was relatinised by literature writtings giving priority to latin words over slavic words in larger vocabulary and later (after 1850) loans from french and italian, altough today most of loans are from english
It’s about time for a new update
One correction: the old Bulgarian that is still a liturgical language of the Orthodox Church is called Old Church Slavonic, not "Slavic".
Is it intelligible with the modern one?
@@cosettapessa6417 It's partially intelligible to Serbian speakers and probably more so to Bulgarians.
@@cosettapessa6417 it's funny, Old Church Slavonic which is the ancestor of Bulgarian, has 7 noun cases that are all retained in modern Serbian but completely lost in modern Bulgarian. :)
@@ivanjankovic8117 true
Both are correct "Old Church Slavonic" or, "Old Church Slavic".
Collins English dictionary.
Just had to contribute my thought about "you" being more variable as mentioned at 7:15. Maybe that's because invaders and conquerors would use their own form of "you" (especially the plural form) when speaking to the subjugated populace, and this would enter/alter the language as their presence and power strengthened. Have any language scholars discussed this idea?
great idea; the concept of 'me' remains understandable and consistent but 'you' changes depending on where you go!
Yeah, I was wondering this too. Haven’t looked it up though.
You confirmed it at the end, but I was wondering if this was filmed during the freak snowstorm we had in September in Colorado, and it was.
Putting (37 min.) in the title is such a dad move 😂 (I love you)
Спасибо, доктор. Очень интересно и информативно
Many thanks for this informative and scholarly presentation.
Tocharian is very important. Before its discovery, i.e. languages were split in the middle in two groups, "kentum" languages and "satem" languages (kentum, written centum is the word for "hundred" in latin and satem the corrisponding word in sanskrit). Some languages (like the indo-iranian) had [s] where the others (like latin, greek and germanic taking into account grimm's law) had [k], but it was not understood which of the two was the original. Tocharian languages, even though they are more eastward than indo-iranian, are kentum languages. Since tocharian speakers and proto-italic or greek speakers were unlikely to have come up with the same innovation at that distance, it is safe to assume [k] is the original realization and [s] an innovation.
Theres a lot of reasons why this can be refuted. It is likeleh the palatovelars were Palatl plosives, or at leasted palatalized velar stops. Secondly we can see different languages shift back(velar) and forward(palatl or postalveolar affricates) throughout history. Finally the most conservative languages Sanskrit Avestan and Lithuanian are all Satem. And /ķ/> [s] only occured in Persian, in Sanskrit it became /ś/, and in PIE /ķ/ was likley [c]
I don't understand the Old West thing this brilliant person is laying down, but I will say he is right on with the material, and that he is a gifted lecturer. If you look, you can find a Proto Indo-European vocabulary in the back or front of some dictionaries.
My dreams of becoming a linguist are reborn! That was the most fascinating video on language that I’ve ever seen.
9:35 - the words for gold, silver, lead, bronze, tin also have no shared cognates between the Indo European languages north of caucuses and south of caucuses. Even copper does not seem to share cognate between northern and southern [ayas (Vedic) /ayes (Latin)/aiz (perhaps Celtic stone or hard tool or perhaps copper) but Germanic and Slavic languages don’t share words with this cognate indicating very early Neolithic split between northern and southern Indo European before discovery of gold or even copper.
Krushi in Vedic is agriculture (krushik = farmer) and does not appear to share cognate in northern or eastern branches showing a possible split between I do Iranian and other branches even before farming became common.
Technology related words like wheel do not indicate date (just like common words for phone and computer are also useless in determining date of split)
I love this on-location lecturing
Thanks for your time and Wisdom.
31:48 just a quick note - hummingbird written in cyrillics would look like хаммингбёрд or something like this. your example would be pronounced as hoomingvnrd.
I would say it should have been written like хуммингбирд, because it’s not phonetic transcription (as shown with Greek, for example hymmiggbird)
13:00 Vedic manuals tell of starting rituals soon after winter solstice which occur within 15 to 30 days after full moon at Regulus putting and telling to skip bathing in rivers or ponds due to extremely cold days when full moon is near Spica ( see Kaushitaki Brahmana 19.3) putting KAushitaki Brahmana before 2900 BCE. Also note Rigveda has only two metals mentioned Ayas and Hiranya/Harita (not bronze weapons for those mighty gods) making Rigveda Chalcolithic text. Bronze appears in later texts.
When I went to Afghanistan, I studied Dari. I found that about 10 or 15% of the ordinary, daily use vocabulary was different from the same words in Farsi. So I wonder if linguists consider Dari a difference language from Farsi, or a dialect of Farsi.
?
I would like to wait for someone knowledgeable to answer you. AFAIK, Dari is a dialect of Farsi.
Dari is a dialect of farsi,without arabic word like tajiki
It's a dialect of Persian.
Fascinating! I want to see more of this series.
Similarities between English and Persian
Persian / English
Pedar / father
Tu / you
Dochter / daughter
Mader / mother
Brader / brother
Daar / dor
Shamshir / sword
Great overview! Love this kind of stuff. Your presentation was clear and concise.
From what I can tell there aren't too many cases of a full language switch in a population without some gene flow, so I understand people getting confused with genetic heritage and linguistic heritage.
Hopefully we can get a vid on the Indo-Iranian branch of the family someday!
Of course there will be a gene flow.
He is a linguist that specialises in Germanic languages so don't get your hopes up, unless it's how Indo-Iranian relates to Germanic languages.
The stressing of that comes, I think, from a 19th/20th fetish for binding a "people" - language, customs, genetics as a bloc and assuming all change means replacement...as if every time these days someone in Asia learns English an American comes with a sword, kills him and moves into his house.
There's always some gene flow, but not often enough to, by itself, change the language of an area. The Romance languages are an example. Sure, some Italians moved to the provinces, but not enough to cause everyone in the empire to speak Latin. They did that because they were conquered by Latin speakers, and were ruled by Latin speakers.
A good example of the complete separation of genetics and language is Garifuna, which is a Native American language spoken along the east coast of Central America. Its speakers, however, are genetically African. This resulted from the Native American inhabitants of the island of St. Vincent resisting European conquest, and accepting massive numbers of escaped slaves from neighbouring colonies. Because the slaves spoke many different African languages, they adopted the language of their hosts, married in, and became genetically dominant.
Thank you Dr. Mr. Cowboy Scholar PhD...very enlightening.
As a Finnish linguist, I do not think that Proto Indo-European and Proto-Uralic are relatedbasic the basics of grammar and how the language system works are utterly distinct. I find more linguist connections between Finnish with Turkic and Coreo-Japonic languages than with Indo-European ones.
...which you cunning people got HIM Akihito to say out loud during a visit to Hungary.
So, I was a translator for the military many years ago, and part of that training was trying to identify a language simply by hearing it. The actual language I was taught was Persian Farsi, but they played a clip of a language I hadn't heard before. The words and sounds felt familiar, but it felt like that one Italian pop song that intended to sound like English, despite containing no English words.
It was Turkish. The sounds of the words are similar but the languages are so different that it sounded like I should understand it yet it came across as gibberish.
Certainly a better experience, though, than when a buddy of mine was doing his listening homework without headphones. I was just laying there, passively listening, and slowly beginning to panic cause I didn't understand it. I was a week away from my final and terrified that I was gonna fail because it didn't make any sense all of a sudden. Then I hear "Anyong haseo" and it clicks: No wonder I don't understand it. It's Korean. It would've been more concerning if I did understand it lol
34:00 I'd say that parents pass both their genes and language to their children. Therefore it should be interesting to compare the development of the Indoeuropean language family with gene pools, how many generations ago gene pools seperated or merged. And then try to validate that information with archeological findings. I'm not an expert in either field btw, just an opinion.
France went from Gaelic to Roman (Italian) very fast. After that the upper class was Franconian, but that only survived in the Netherlands and Flanders. I just want to say, languages follow politics more than they follow genes.
@@ronaldderooij1774 It's very reasonable, due to some political ideology. If we can compare the presence of Arabs during the period they occupied many parts of North Africa we can understand there was an influence on the native Berbers for example, so we can clearly see that most of them speak Arabic. But don't forget that the genes had also some kind of influence as well.
Something else, there are also some words which are still in use in French which either are from the substract language Gaelic or Franconian.
@@ronaldderooij1774 There is no need to impose some simplistic conceptual schema onto this. Both politics and blood are clearly an influence in this regard, as you can find examples for both. Depending on the circumstances things can turn out in different ways, but it is not rational to outright deny the influence blood has on language adoption. After all, it is our parents who we inherit our language from, together with our blood.
There's actually a whole new field of science, paleogenomics, that has thrown a lot of light upon this. Have a look at David Reich's "Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past"; he covers a lot of the recent groundbreaking discoveries about ancient human genetics.
He doesn't go into languages much, but there are plenty of experts who think that a group of steppe pastoralists in the Pontic-Caspian region were the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European.
@@MaureenLycaon I see!
The are also many things we have to understand about language shift as well.
However, there are some issues that need to be resolved. I also tried to find a logical explanation of multilingualism in those areas, which show indeed a correlation, with social structure, if we take into account the presence of four languages which are used in Switzerland we can see that, an even now there are these languages, we can see that something similar might have happened since 7000 years ago, then we can see the interaction between people weren't always necessarily being war like.
An other thing I wanted to point out it's about Armenian, according to experts they found out there was bilingualism between their original speakers of Armenian and people we now know Ugaritic.
31:45 the Cyrillic is a bit off, it should be something like хуммингбирд instead of нуммингвнрд
Great introduction into a fascinating subject. I’ve noticed only one small error: at ca. 17:00 you said that “Romania is not a part of the Roman Empire, classically speaking.” It actually was, or large part of it at least. Most of the modern Romania is the ancient Dacia, the land of Dacians, a group of Indo-European tribes, certainly related to Thracians from the south of the Danube, that occupied the area between the Carpathian mountains and the west coast of the Black sea. In short, after several wars, Roman finally conquered the Dacians during the reign of Trajan (by 105 AD). Although they did not permanently occupied all of it, a vast province of Dacia was formed (divided in smaller provinces later on), that spread over much of the south and west of the modern-day Romania. In spite of many difficulties in holding these trans-Danubian regions, the Romans kept these territories for over a century and a half. During this period there was much movement of population, colonization, settlement and resettlement, entire new cities were built. Numerous inscriptions prove that usage of Latin became widespread - there is the ancestry of Romanian. The decision to abandon Dacia (“Romania”) was made only in 271 AD and even this was not fully accomplished until some years later.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
And when the Aurelian Retreat was made, there are no reports of the population itself retreating, just the army.
Many thanks for sharing your knowledge. It’s much appreciated. A few fascinating nuggets there too!
8:57 beawer - in Russian we have "bobior", "bobr".
There’s a lot of similarity between Sanskrit and Russian... like Nabaha in Sanskrit is Nebo in Russian, Chushk is same for cup in both the languages, and words like Devan(kinda sofa with no arms and back board), Dvar/Dver, Dham/Dom, Agni(fire)/ Agon... have same meanings... and so on.
Thx for posting🙏
Hey there :D I have a great example for you from a Ugric language, it was fun
Im Finnish and I was working as a student in Hungary and I saw many similarities:
Hungarian: Finnish: English:
Morsza Murusia Crumbs (as in Breadcrumbs
hűtőkamra Hyytävä kamari Freezing cabinet
Víz Vesi Water
Méz Mesi Honey
Szarv Sarvi Horn
the word refrigerator literally meant a Freeze cabinet, thats normally called a 'jääkaappi'
but there are many more :D
that's morzsa not morsza
@ woops
Doesn't English also have the word 'morsel' which means small pieces (like crumbs). Is that related to Morzsa/Murusia?
@@oilslick7010 In Hungarian it comes from the verb morzsol which means to grind something with your palms, and in the end it just a form of morzsalék morzsolék that means crumbs, shreddings. The verb itself might have originated form the verb mar (bite) mimicking the verb forms dörzsöl (rub) and horzsol (bruise) . The Hungarian verb mar might me related to
vogul verb mor- (breaks), Ostyak mori (cracks), finnic muru (morsel), samoyedic morei (breaks up).
Morsel comes from Old French, diminutive of mors ‘a bite’, from Latin mors- ‘bitten’, from the verb mordere
Dr. thank you so much for the video. Great content and presentation. You just answered what I was going to ask about the Mittani - Vedic connection, thanks! Keep up the great work.
Regarding the table Grimm's Law, 'heart': It's quite amazing how close PIE ḱḗr is to French cœr. It's almost as if thousands of years haven't happened.
Can we talk about "six"? Like, hello? The word is written the same in English and French, and it's pronounced almost the same, despite the fact the word doesn't come from borrowing? Even crazier in Quebec French, because the "i" in this word is pronounced pretty much like in English.
(also, cœur*, you missed a "u")
I wonder how they reconstructed it as ker and not kerd/kert.
English: Heart
Latin: Cardis (C is a K sound)
Greek: Kardio/Kardia
Lithuanian: Širdis
@@pilenai The final consonant appears in other ide. cases, but not in nominative.
@@UTF016 oh ok
It is Hrdaya in Sanskrit.
Never thought I'd have a cowboy teach me linguistics, but here we are.
I've no choice but to subscribe.
I thought about Latvian and Estonian being completely distinct despite their near proximity last week, when I was discussing similarities between Latvian and Russian (Baltic and Slavic branch of Balto-Slavic language family). My anti-linguist Russian speaking opponent really refused to believe that there is any relation between Latvian and Russian, and if there is, it is because Latvians have assimilated Slavic vocabulary because of our near proximity.
However, Baltics are quite isolated from the rest of the world in terms of its geography - this is a part of the reason why modern day Latvian and Lithuanian are well preserved and share similarities with Sanskrit. And I mean, any considerable contact with Slavic language speaking population would have started around 1710 when Russia took over modern day Latvia-Estonia.
Okay, but back to the point, eventhough Latvian and Estonian are right next to each other and a Finno-ugric tribe (Livonians) used to live in modern day Latvian territory, Estonian and Latvian or Lithuanian are completely distinct. For the past 800 years Latvia and Lithuania have gone quite different paths historically. But despite that, I can still recognize certain roots in Lithuanian. However, Estonian, with which we have shared a large part of the territory and been in the same entity (Livonia=parts of modern day Latvia+Estonia) for centruries, we have very, very little vocabulary in common. For comparison, I'd like to present counting in Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian:
Latvian: viens 1, divi 2, trīs 3, četri 4, pieci 5, seši 6, septiņi 7, astoņi 8, deviņi 9, desmit 10
Lithuanian: vienas 1
, du 2, trys 3, keturi 4, penki 5, šeši 6, septyni 7, aštuoni 8, devyni 9, dešimt 10
Estonian: üks [1], kaks [2], kolm [3], neli [4], viis [5], kuus [6], seitse [7], kaheksa [8], üheksa [9], and kümme [10]
Spanish: uno (ooh-no), dos (dohs), tres (trays), cuatro (kwah-troh), cinco (seen-koh), seis (says), siete (syay-tay), ocho (oh-choh), nueve (nway-vay), diez (dyays)
English: 1 one, 2 two, 3 three, 4 four, 5 five, 6 six, 7 seven, 8 eight, 9 nine, 10 ten.
As you see, it is quite evident that all of the languages presented above share similarities but Estonian. This is truly striking.
Anyways, let all the languages be preserved and cultural diversity to be cherished!
Serbian: 1 jedan,2dva,3 tri, 4 četri, 5 pet, 6 šest, 7 sedam, 8 osam , 9 sever 10 deset
You can see Serbian language ( slavic family) have big similarities
Thank you for your comments 🙏 Really appreciated and informative!
Despite Latvian and Estonian being from different lang families, Latvian has clearly been influenced by Uralic. In that sense, they definitely are neighbors. The same thing can be said about other so-called unrelated languages. Clearly more is going on than the typical family tree concept.