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As a suggestion for a future edition, I'd find interesting to compare words (e.g. German/English) that were originally synonyms but which developed in different directions. Those are not really false friends, because they actually started from the same origin. I'd rather call them "estranged partners". Examples: Zaun/town, raten/read, ritzen/write, rechnen/reckon, stürzen/start, zählen/tell, tragen/drag, schlimm/slim, drehen/throw, Haut/hide, Bein/bone Can also be between other languages; I just know those two best.
Not that I imagine it means anything to you, but I found learning Russian pronunciation useful for understanding and approximating the sounds of many other languages.
Since ur learning Swedish sometimes the k sound turns into sh sound aswell like köttbular pronounced like shirtboolar(means meatball) this was interesting cuz you were talking about the origins of the word "kmtom" turns into the Sanskrit "shatam". Jag är studier svenska ochså.
As someone who lives in India and speaks Hindi/Malayalam, being educated in English and after taking Sanskrit as a subject in school.. it was stunning to know that words like Father (Pitr), Mother (Maatr), Seven(sapta) and so many others were the same for what I thought were totally separate European languages. Gotta love linguistics and the people who put this together!
@@qtheplatypus Interesting tidbit: Some linguists believe the reason for the near universal use of the 'M' sound for mothers and 'F/P/D/T/B' sounds for fathers is due to babies spending more of their very early lives with their mothers, and only being able to vocalize simple mouth movements, like 'A' or 'M', which are then associated with mothers. Fathers spend a little bit less time with children's extremely early stages of development than mothers and are then associated with more complex sounds developed later down the road, like aforementioned 'F', 'P', 'D' or 'T'.
I took Latin in grade school, and part of the justification for it being on offer was ability to work out English words by using the roots, but also to make it easier to learn Romance languages later. And it has been very helpful in learning Spanish and being able to parse signage in France despite not having learned any at all. But I was SHOCKED to find myself recognizing cognates in Hindi. Not enough to help me genuinely communicate, but it was still a heck of a revelation years before I had ever heard of PIE.
i come from teh remote mountains of northern Pakistan where we speak an old hindi accent and when i listen to the very old people they say words like; Hithar (here) huthar (there) Gars (grass) Madar (mother) Is (this) Nak (nose) bund (behind) ma (I) chan (moon) suraj (sun) darya (river) tu (you) vo (he/they) nasa (nostril) mun (mouth) ladna (loading) marg (death/morgue) khunee (knee) ga (cow) and i could go on forever. i see so many similarities with the European words.
Amazing! Just reading your list, there is much that is immediately familiar. EG "Hithar (here)": no very long ago "come hither" (come here) was in common usage! And "nasa (nostril)" is clearly related to "nasal".
Thanks for the shout-out! PIE is often reconstructed as having a pitch-accent system, contrasting high and low level tones, as well as a falling contour tone from high to low. This is something I didn't account for in my rendition of PIE. Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek retained this ancestral system for a while. Modern Norwegian and Swedish have a their own new pitch-accent systems that evolved independently, as well as a few other Indo-European languages such as Serbo-Croatian and Punjabi. I've always been fascinated by proto-languages and the idea that, collectively, we humans may be more interconnected than we previously thought. Great video as always!
@@blazer9547There actually are still theories that call for a "southern homeland" so hey wait a few more decades it will be clear where did this language come from
@@gursehajsingh2029 By now it is clear that at least one stage of PIE (late PIE) developed on the Pontic-Caspian steppe. The only thing that is under debate is if there was perhaps an earlier stage that developed in Anatolia or the Caucasus (early PIE) which would be the stage before the Hittites split (and maybe Tocharian). But in the end even this seems unlikely since, for one thing, it seems the Hitties weren't native to Anatolia but immigrated there.
@@gursehajsingh2029 if georgian isn't part of p-i-e but it's theorized that they might be related, I would assume that p-i-e developed in or very near georgia and the georgian version stuck more because those people moved around less
I'm a Sri Lankan who speaks Sinhala ( an Indo European language). Years ago whem I was learning English and German I recognised these similarities and studied about it. That's whem I fell in love with linguistics and became one of my hobbies. Here how we count one to ten if anyone is interested Eka Deka Thuna Hathara Paha Haya Hatha Ata(ahta) Nawaya Dahaya
Law school memory: Professor mentions in class that the word “testimony” comes from Roman men swearing an oath by reference to their testes. So I got to explain that this was a common misconception, that Romans didn’t do that, and that the word actually comes from PIE roots meaning “third person standing” (i.e. a disinterested bystander or witness). The anatomical term for male gonads comes from an unrelated PIE root meaning “dry”, via terms for baked clay containers. (Same root as "thirst", incidentally.) Didn’t do that well in the class, but at least I got to sharpshoot some etymological misconceptions. Good times…
you not only corrected him but symbolically emasculated him! I'm sure he(assuming a male professor) was happy to have that association of legal-speak and masculinity, and you took it right from him. In his class no less! As someone diagnosed as "on the autism spectrum", this seems to me a very "aspy" faux pas.
My grandfather (Vittore Pisani, 1899-1990) was a world-renowned glottologist who taught linguistics at the university of Cagliari first and then at the university of Milan. I grew up knowing these notions in part because all of his children (he had 14) had to learn Latin and ancient Greek and so did a lot of his 30 grandchildren (me included) and basic word histories were passed down. I never realized how not normal this was, as a kid. I thought everyone knew these "basic notions" growing up! You can look him up in the Italian Wikipedia. He was a brilliant mind, but a very distant grandfather. He spoke 12 languages, most of them self-taught.
A lot of "common knowledge" is not as common as one may think; especially when it comes to experts in certain fields overestimating the average person's knowledge. You're lucky to have been born into a family where this knowledge was easily shared and valued! A lot of families don't even truly value education in the first place.
In my family (8 children) my siblings and I were also used to s father who had lots of books about languages. We always used to look up the etimologic origin of words in different languages. I now do the same with my 7 children 😂. Speak 7 languages and enjoy your videos!❤
About the whole "not normal" thing... A story comes to my mind, one about a child from an animal trainer family. On his first day of school he asked the other kids: "What kind of bears do you have at home?" 😂
Growing up with Norwegian, English, Hindi, and Punjabi THIS has been the most obvious thing my whole life. I also learnt Norse, Latin, and Sanskrit as a teenager, and the words are one thing but the grammar takes this to the next level. Sentences in Latin make more sense translated into Hindi for me. And some Sanskrit idioms make more sense in Norwegian.
"Sentences in Latin make more sense translated into Hindi". That is very interesting. Some years a go I wrote a book about 'Liquidity Risk', a financial subject that had never been properly formulated (although it has been there ever since). I am a German native speaker, but my editor told me to write in English from start. I did as he advised me, but there were certain conceptual formulations I simply couldn't express in English; so I switched to German. Once I had found a solution, I translated it into English. Mostly this worked quite well, but often it didn't, or only very poorly: Some of the 'untranslatable' sentences were so stubborn that their meaning changed when I tried to force a translation. The writing of the book extended over two years, during which I also needed the text for lectures in German. Suddenly, the opposite effect emerged: certain conceptual formulations 'refused' to be translated from English to German, or changed their meaning when I stubbornly tried to translate them. I finished writing the book, but I am confused about the effects described. Are there multiple perspectives (here: German and English) on things that only make 'correct' sense in one language? Is it that in the other language, one can only represent something like a shadow of the actual thing, not the thing itself? In your case it seems that you first read the sentence in the 'wrong' language (Latin) but then it reveals its 'true' sense in the 'right' language (Hindi)? One might argue "Okay, the Language represents the thinking of its speakers. No wonder that -- as the speakers think differently -- it cannot be expressed in another language". I am not sure that the solution is that simple. To further the speculation: could it even be that a 'wisdom' is formulated in one language; but in certain (rare) cases, the 'wisdom' requires another language to reveal itself?
@@RobFiedYou pose an interesting thought - I am starting to learn German and have found that many words and phrases clearly relate (being both Germanic languages). For the Latin into Sanskrit, I do not think it is a reach to suggest that more learned scholars who recorded in Latin, had travelled and interacted with people from other ancient cultures, and may have themselves heard such sayings or statements - only to find recording it in their native Latin doesn't do the statement justice but recorded it anyway. I now find the interplay between languages fascinating, unlike in High School where I thought they were pointless, I now recognise they have immense value.
Maybe four things to expand on (including one to correct outright) here: 1. “Proto” is not Latin but rather Greek; it remains the Modern Greek for “first”; 2. The Ancient Romans pronounced “pater” roughly to rhyme with “latter” (not “later”), but note it did not rhyme with “mater” as that had a long “a”; 3. English “see” is actually ultimately cognate with Latin “sequor” (meaning “I follow”; hence also “sequence”, “consecutive” etc) and thus “I see” in English really means “I follow” (but often from context this now means specifically with the eyes); 4. “Chief” did not, of course, develop within English but was a borrowing specifically from Norman French (cf. “chef”, a later borrowing from Standard French).
3. Gothic can be enlightening in that respect. The verb "saíhwan" ('aí' being a spelling convention for short 'e') still retained clear traces of the PIE -kw- that is found in Latin "sequor". Lexical correspondences that were lost in our modern languages can be found in words like "þahān" (Latin "tacēre") and "ana-silān" (Latin "silēre"). Curiously, Gothic also had passive forms, which in the case of "saíhwan" would have been "saíhwada" and "saíhwanda", corresponding to the Greek middle/passive forms in -tai and -ntai.
As a Lithuanian I'm so excited that you've included some examples of our language. We have lots of words that are literally the same or very very similar as in Sanskrit, and lots of our words sound similar to reconstructed PIE words.
@@ModernDayRenaissanceMan A linguist who could draw correct conclusions about PIE should know the following languages: Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Lithuanian, Armenian, Romanian, Albanian and Ossetian.
Small correction, the initial h in Greek 'hekaton' doesn't correspond to the initial k of PIE, but the middle k does. The he- part comes from a root meaning 'one', so the whole thing means 'one hundred', with the 'katon' part being a very close reflex of kmtom.
@@davidsturm7706That's also very similar to the progression of the word for son. Son & one probably were related at one time as 'firstborn." However language was much more simple back then so they probably said one born
It ABSOLUTELY wasn't more simple. It was slower and with less vocabulary, but it had a BUNCH more grammar. Hunter-gatherer societies tend to have a lot more complex grammar because they have more time and less things to talk about.
@@bacicinvatteneaca You're right for pointing that out, but what do you mean when you say that the language was 'slower'? Also, how would having more time and less things to talk about make grammar more complex?
@@trafo60 I guess that rather than make it more complex, it just wouldnt need to make it simpler? If you have all the time in the world you can say things in a complex way.
Sir, in a platform rapidly filling with artificailly created non-content, your videos are more important than ever. I wish there was a 'real' verification mark that channels like yours could attain.
I've been on this platform since early 2007. It's always been filled with garbage. Not to discredit your point, however. I agree that Rob Words is a gem among the rough! I've found that if you're particular about what content you watch and you use the "do not recommend" button, you will eventually not receive trash. (Most of the time 😅)
I speak Afrikaans (from the Dutch language family) as my first language and English as a second language. I recently learned Russian and was blown away by word similarities. But what truly shocked me was watching a Danish film recently and being able to understand large amounts of the dialogue without reading the subtitles. A completely unintelligible language to me in the past. Russian and Danish are nothing alike, and Dutch and Danish are very dissimilar, but when the witch's brew of Russian and Afrikaans combined in my head, the Danish suddenly started making sense. It was an incredible feeling to suddenly understand large bits of a language you've never studied. Like alchemy or magic.
My favourite PIE root is *bhel-, "shine, flash, burn". It's the root of the English word "black", as well as the French word for "white", "blanc", and thus the English "blank". English "white" comes from PIE *kweit-, which also meant "shine". I guess the PIE-speakers liked talking about shiny things a lot.
The French word blanc is exclusively a loan from Common Germanic into Latin because they lacked a word for it. Same as gris fro grey/gray or bleu for blue. Germanic loan words into Latin.
@@SchmulKrieger True! From Frankish (a Germanic language) into French, then into English, near as I could find. I'm just tickled by the fact that words for black and white have the same root.
I like *lewk- in Old English lēoht , Latin lūceō (lūcēre) "to shine", lūx "light," and in Greek leukós. As in Lucifer; "the light bringer", the god of the evening star, son of Aurora (the Dawn). lol
I'm Indian and I have basic knowledge in Sanskrit. I once tried learning Latin and I was amazed to find similarities not just in vocabulary but also structure. It might not seem obvious at first but my knowledge of Sanskrit and my overall interest in languages in general led me to observe those similarities. For example, in Sanskrit the third-person singular and plural verb conjugations are respectively -ti and -nti. In Latin they are -t and -nt. I also tried learning Persian and observed even more similarities there but that was more obvious are Persian is much more closely related to Sanskrit.
I 100% agree! I hate so many jump cuts, background music and ads everywhere. I love videos that get right to the point! I find myself always clicking around RUclips videos because so many of them implement these irritating practices.
PLAT - word family • Platus, an ancient greek word means flat or brode. 1. Platypus- flat footed animal 2. Platinum- flat or inferior silver metal 3. Plate- flat metal disc 4. Plato- nick name for his brode chest 5. Plateau- flat area 6. Platitude- flat or empty saying
Here's my favourite example showing how these languages are related: - Hindi/Punjabi: Javaan - Farsi: Javoon - Italian: Giovane - Spanish: Joven - French: Jeune - Dutch: Jong - English: Young They're all basically the same word! Pretty neat!
@@tobiasharstel7941 well we dont use the word "stan" in persian anymore but we do use as a suffix for many places for example bolgharestan: bulgaria engelestan: england lehestan: poland . . .
My pet theory is it comes from the Danes/Nords. "Bairn" exists in Scots, and also in dialects from North-East England like Geordie from Newcastle where the Danelaw existed. Another interesting one is "braw" in Scots, meaning "good", which is very similar to the Swedish "brå".
@@alexythemechanic8056You’re right. In another of Rob’s videos he says how that these Scots/northern English dialect words come from old Norse, as the Vikings raided then settled these parts the most
@@alexythemechanic8056 the Danes and the Nords did in fact settle the northern British Isles - quite possibly where my Scottish surname (which just so happens to also feature in Beowulf) comes from.
As a Finnish speaker, I enjoyed the discussion of Proto-Uralic. I would have also been keen to hear about Proto-Turkic and why seemingly PIE just missed that whole chunk of land.
Actually a branch of the PIE was spoken in what's now modern-day Turkey. It was the Anatolian languages (Hittite, Lydian and others whose names I forgot). They were spoken during Antiquity and ended up extinct. So PIE reached this land but didn't maintain. Concerning Proto-Turkic, it was spoken somewhere in Central Asia (where exactly I have no clue, it's not the language family I'm the most interested in, but I guess hypotheses were made over time). Turkish didn't develop in what's nowadays Turkey. The turk arrived pretty recently (at the historical scale) in this region.
Anatolia had a lot of indo-european speakers like Hittite and Lydian they went extinct over time, would have been cool if they survived to help connect the PIE bridge
@@gunnasinternThose Anatolian speakers got Hellenized after Alexander the Great’s conquest, and the descendants of those Hellenized Anatolian spoke Greek in those regions until the 1920s. Or rather, the ones who stayed Christian kept speaking it, since modern Turks are descended from both the Turkic nomads who arrived in the Middle Ages and the people who were living there beforehand. And since Greek was closely associated with Orthodox Christianity and Turkish was closely associated with Islam, people living there who converted to Islam generally started speaking Turkish and raising their children with Turkish as their first language.
He was always quite a "celtophile", as evidenced by a certain Celtic influence on the languages of Middle-earth. The funny thing was he actually constructed the world and stories primarily to serve the languages. In other words, his love of languages came first and everything came after.
When I retired I decided, as a challenge ,to study my father’s Oxford Dictionary and see if I could work out the patterns in words and sure enough because there are so many variations I managed to work out that there was a common language from the past. And I then started buying books on Etymology and sure enough I was correct with all my findings. I also have a very neat way to determine if words from different languages are related. Spending lots of time in Spain reaffirmed the links. And visiting Wales! One annoying English word is Cupboard. But that is an open shelf for cups! Cupboards are closed off! Then I found an old Spanish word for Cupboard which related to Cubierta (Covered) So we actually should call a Cupboard a ‘Covered’. Because that is what it is! I found out all what is in this video and way more. I even worked out our original Proto Language from at least a hundred thousand years ago. And it is basic and understandable but very simple so not suitable for complex conversation. I think a lot of body language was used to impart meaning. Also words are actually ‘Recordings of speech’ in the same way musical notation is a recording of music. We still use the phrase ‘Keeping a Record’ when meaning to write it down. There is so much more to languages. I only speak English and a bit of basic Spanish and French but the patterns are there and electronic translators can find lots of words in many languages as can translator apps! So you do not need to have a second language to work all this out. 👍
As someone from Georgia (Kartvelian language family), I can say that I always wondered about the possible connection between Indo-European language family with Kartvelian. Here are my observations of words in Georgian that might be connected to the common ancestral language: Three - Sami Six - Eqwsi Me, I - Me He, She, It - Is This - Es We - Chwen You - Tqwen
@@thorstenjaspert9394 the 'gh' sound in English words was still spoken recently enough to appear in books made in printing presses, hence why they still appear in written English
Probably my favorite subject in linguistics, the origin and evolution of language. I can't even explain why I find it so fascinating. It's such a joy to, as I have in this video, learn something new. And, yes, the hundred progression was satisfying.
One of the best RUclips channels to follow if you want to stay in the loop about P-I-E is Jackson Crawford. He looks at new discoveries and theories -- from the recent archeological find of a newly attested language that's closely related to Hittite, to attempts to link the Indo-European languages with Basque. Crawford discusses them with colleagues, shares his criticism and questions, etc.
At 12:15, the Irish "athair" for father is actually pronounced more like ah-her (th and sh are pronounced like an English h) so its pronunciation is even closer to the other words for father.
No, actually, in Proto-Celtic, the Proto-Indo-European p sound became somewhat of an f sound, which then disappeared in all daughter languages. Modern f in Celtic languages comes from different sources @@authentiekaziatisch5949
So *phter > *fater > *ather > athair Keep in mind that that's not the exact way the word evolved, but it's accurate enough to show that it did in fact come from the same word as father and pater
I'm from Sweden and is learning german and I'm acutally thankfull that I know both Swedish and English cause now I can find a word in either the languages which sounds closest and go of that. Like for example Nervous is German is Nervös which is exacly like swedish Nervös.
English is much more influenced by latin and French, which is also explained because British people are much more mixed bunch.. native britons, picts, gaels, romans, normans, anglo-saxons, and even some viking influence too.
@@tux_duh I've never studied Swedish, but I was watching some Swedish video once that was tailored for beginning speakers. I was surprised how much of it I could understand without any study whatsoever. One think that threw me off was that the teacher was talking about "glass," while she was showing a video of children eating ice cream out of glass bowls. I wondered why she was focusing so much on the bowls, when I realized that the Swedish word for ice cream is a borrowing of the French word "glace"!
I feel like I comment this on EVERY RobWords video but the fact remains - this is such a great video! I’ve been interested in etymology & linguistics since I was a kid, years before I discovered that this weird interest of mine had a proper name and an entire field dedicated to it. I’ve since grown up and discovered even more fascinations with many, MANY more things, but finding Rob’s channel reminded me why I had an interest in this kind of stuff to begin with. I feel like people spend MOST of their lives using a language to communicate, express and understand the world around them, while simultaneously knowing nothing about the language itself. And I feel like that’s where the real GEMS are hidden! Maybe I’m an outlier, an oddball who just really loves to learn new things.. Even if so, going on these little journeys with Rob through history and legend to learn WHY words are spelled the way they are, pronounced the way they are, where they come from, what they USED to mean, etc. is so satisfying and enriching. This channel as a whole makes me feel so much more capable of communicating effectively in language I’ve known and spoken since I was a child. Rob, you are a treasure! I hope you know how much your knowledge, research, humor and passion has enriched the lives of so many English speakers & learners. Hardcore þ FOREVER!
Great video as always, Rob! Another interesting historical observer on Proto-Indo-European was the Ottoman traveler, Evliya Çelebi (1611 - 1682). He ventured across much of the Mediterranean basin, and his familiarity with Persian allowed him to draw comparisons between German and Persian in the 17th century, suggesting a potential root between them! Alongside this, Evliya Çelebi was something of an amateur linguist and etymologist, and he gave us very detailed notes on the pronunciation of early-modern languages across much of Western Eurasia!
There was also a Dutch professor named Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn (1612-1653) who noticed the similarity between many IE languages and proposed a relationship, but his ideas just didn't catch on among the academic community.
@@aLadNamedNathan PIE wasn't really accepted until recently, same thing with plate tectonics that was proven much later on, a lot of people thought it was nonsense
When you introduced the word “nostratic” as “countrymen” or “us” I had an AHAH!! moment! In Spanish “nosotros” which has that nos- beginning means “we”!! Which makes a lot of sense because Spanish retains much of its Latin roots. Also! Cheers 🥂 from a fellow linguist nerd!!
That's literally where it comes from. The Russian linguists who came up with it just wanted to call it "OUR langauge" (Our referring to all of us humans), hence "Nostra (our)"+tic.
Not just the italic branch, in the indic branch it is used as the plural enclitic of the accusative, dative and genetive, its pronounced predictably as nas (all e and o sounds collapse to a), of the pronoun declension of 'I', the declension stem we call asmad, related to English - us.
Matri and patri could have just been coincidental, to be fair. I mean, in this specific case they definitely aren't! But baby language acquisition follows a pretty set pattern no matter where they are, and babbling sounds get incorporated into parent terms all over the world. E.g. English and Arabic are not related, but English's 'mommy' sounds similar to Arabic's 'ummi'.
It's not matri, patri, and datri... The correct Sanskrit transcription and pronunciation are as follows: मातृ (mātṛ) - mother पितृ (pitṛ) - father दुहितृ (duhitṛ) - daughter भ्रातृ (bhrātṛ) - brother It is amazing to see how an ancient Indo-Aryan language can be so extremely close to even modern English..... Many Indians, unfortunately, are Hindu nationalists, and they confuse the political propaganda and pseudo-history/mythology that they're taught since early childhood for real history and science.... Therefore, they usually deny the fact that the speakers of Proto-Indo-European originally came from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, c. 3,200 BCE, although it has been proven by science, i.e., a combination of archaeological data/physical remains, linguistic data, and genetic data.....
@stevemayes8799 That's Hindi/Urdu, which certainly descends from Sanskrit.... Sanskrit is like Ancient Greek or Latin, albeit even older..... The correct pronunciation is "merā nām" (meh-rah nahm) I'm a fluent speaker of Hindi/Urdu.... I've studied it for over 20 years... Here are a few simple sentences you'll find interesting: यह मेरा भाई है . - This is my brother. (yeh merā bhāī hai.) मेरे तीन भाई हैं . - I have three brothers. (mere tīn bhāī hain) आपका नाम क्या है? - (āpkā nām kyā hai) मेरा नाम अर्जुन है . (merā nām arjun hai)
I always award you a "Like", but I figured I would pause today and tell you that your videos are ALWAYS entertaining and educational... and, for me, much valued.
The 'sh' sound in 'kök'/'keramik' is a modern development. Before 20-30 years ago it was a sound like german 'ch' in 'Mädchen' (but not like in 'ach'). The same 'replacement' has happened in many Norwegian dialects. The younger generations often don't hear the difference.
@@LarsOleBergersen And in the 1800's it was typically more like English 'ch' with a "t" sound at the beginning. This is still the standard in Fenno-Swedish.
Having studied French, Latin and Sanskrit in my youth, I really appreciate your video about *P-I-E, Rob. On the Asian side of things, I think that there was probably a Proto-Austronesian language, which gave rise to the Taiwanese tribal languages, the many Filipino languages, and Proto-Malay (which was the Lingua Franca of South East Asia for a long time), and Bahasa Indonesia. It's easy to see how many similarities there are between many languages throughout South East Asia.
That's crazy yo! Some similarities with sanskrit -> 1. Sit- Sidieti - UpaviShati 2. Wit - Vidieti - Vidya 3. Nest - Gniezdo - Nida 4. Stand - Stati - Stha 5. Folk - Polk - Lok 6. Tooth - Diesna - Dantah Now some more similarities between russian and sanskrit -> 1.God भग (Bhag) Бог (Bog) 2.Sky नभस् (Nabhas) Небо (Nebo) 3.Door द्वार (Dvara) Дверь (Dver’) 4.House धाम (Dham) Дом (Dom) 5.Mother मातृ (Matr) Мать (Mat’) 6.Brother भ्राता (Bhrata) Брат (Brat) 7.To carry, to take भारती (Bharati) Береть (Beriot) 8.To burn, to shine घरति (Gharati) Горить (Gorit) wanna know more? Check this out -> Brother in law in Hindi is "Devar". Neck is "Griva" in sanskrit. Fire is "Agni" in Sanskrit and Hindi. Watermelon is "Tarbuz" or "Tarbooz " in Hindi. Hey one word for water is "Udaka" in Sanskrit, wait let's mispronounce it, Udaka - Vudaka - Vodaka - Vodka, WHAT THE HEYALLL?
Great job, again. Thank you. Polish numbers have surprising similarities to modern Hindi, too. And the best value thing in Scandiwegia is, 'Learn one, get two free' for Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Swedish is Norwegian in a minor key, and Danish is Norwer, but only when spoken underwater. Great fun.
I’m really interested in patterns shared between unrelated languages. Like “hi” “nihao” “aloha” “hola” “marhaba “ all have the aspirated “h” sound; perhaps because it’s a word you need to shout a bit more? I’m sure even mentioning this exposes my ignorance… which is exactly why such a video would be awesome!
@@bobthemagicmoose It was very interesting that "m" was usually the beginning of "me", across so many languages. i assume because its such an easy sound to make - don't even have to open your mouth, hah! Having the same level of knowledge/ignorance, the shouting part seems reasonable - works for Halt! too!
15:04 And the related word to "caput" in German is "Haupt" (c→h), while the German "Kopf" is related to English "cup" (from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz, "round object, bowl").
Thanks for that. I was wondering about the Haupt->Kopf change in German. It's interesting that it means a small container because something similar happened in Italian Capo->Testa (testa roughly means "small jar"). Now I wonder why both languages had such a similar change to the word for head...
@@ivanskyttejrgensen7464 Maybe from people using them like slang? In English too, 'noggin' is a slang word for head that comes from a word meaning a small drinking cup.
The German word for “hood” (that which covers the head) is “Kapuze” [kaˈpuːt͡sə]. And fitting into that as well is the word for “cap” (another head ornament), “Haube” [ˈhaʊ̯bə].
Fantastisk video, Rob. Jag ser fram emot att utforska din kanal ännu mer. Roligt att höra att du håller på att lära dig svenska :) Du är alltid välkommen till vårt land. Obs: Om du kommer till Sverige får du vara tydlig med lokalbefolkningen att du vill tala svenska med dem (vi tycker nämligen om att träna på vår engelska när vi träffar utlänningar ;)).
When elementary school me found out about the Indo-European language family, I was stunned and very excited. Seemingly unrelated languages following very similar patterns and ancestral vocabulary was the coolest thing I've ever heard at that time. I think this single piece of information was what sparked my interest in linguistics as well as learning foreign languages and cultures. Even the controversial Altaic and Nostratic language families are an interesting topic, factual or not. I think a video about the hypothetical Altaic language family would be very cool.
@@zarinaromanets7290 The Altaic language family doesn't refer to a single specific language or culture, it's a proposed language macro-family that would include Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic and sometimes even Japonic and Koreanic language families. So imagine it like the Indo-European language family, but with very limited evidence in favour of this grouping. This proposed macro-family is controversial because it has been rejected by the vast majority of linguists, though some continue researching it and are in favour of it.
@@FakeMaker I'm aware, just didn't write family bc of saving time typing 😅 do it's controversial bc linguists don't agree on it? I'm curious to look into it a bit more now.
@@zarinaromanets7290 Oh, I see now, sorry for the misunderstanding. Yeah, the Altaic language family is considered controversial as it's much more likely their similarities don't stem from common ancestry, but as a result of geographical proximity and prolonged contact. Hence, most linguists don't agree with them being closely related enough to be in the same family. There also seems to be quite a bit of confusion between "Altai languages" and the "Altaic language family". Though that isn't surprising, idk who thought it would be a good idea to have the names be so similar lol.
@@FakeMaker No worries, the internet comment space is confusing and lacking lol. Oh wow that is interesting. I wonder exactly how they evolved as languages being as most original people from the region were nomadic and following there herds so they could eat and protect them from wolves. I wonder if they've been doing this since the ice age and only spoke when meeting another family unit to trade or intermarry, a couple times a year. Could be they had their own evolution all together.
Thank you for tracing the Indo-European language tree. I noticed the link when learning to intrduce myself in Hindi 'Mera naam Sharon hai', with mera being 'my', and naam being 'name', much more similar to English than the Turkish 'ad' for name - although the suffix indicating it's 'my name' is still an 'm' sound. Genesis Chapter 11 is an excellent attestation to the historical existence of a 'World language', and how the different language groups arose. They were so different from each other that the people immediately formed into different tribes and dispersed forthwith.
7:34 Learn Lithuanian! While I'm not sure if it is available on Babel, mastering Lithuanian can be a true gem for any linguistics scholar. The language offers a unique glimpse into ancient Indo-European roots, boasting a rich history and complex grammatical structure that can deepen your understanding of linguistic evolution and diversity. Dive into Lithuanian and unlock a treasure trove of linguistic insights!
I'm not sure how accurate this is (but your post suggests it is), but I remember reading that Lithuanian was something of a language "time capsule", due to the geography of the country (surrounded by dense forests) which isolated it from outside influences.
What's even more funny is that "Caput", the exact same word you named from indo-european but with a C instead of a K is still widely used in informal situations in italian to say that something has physically flipped. Like if you were to say "The car flipped on the road" you could just say "La macchina ha fatto caput per strada" and everyone would understand you. I genuinely don't know if it's related at all but if it is, that's some crazy language conservation
My personal favorite is the word for Mom being the first thing any baby pronounce, just by sticking togheter the lips and then open them quickly. Is very similar in every language because of that. The mother would be the first person that the baby "spoke" that "word" for, so that sound just mean that: mother
It's actually what a lot of people here when a baby cries, ah, ah, ah, to mah, mah, mah. Like people are laughing like hahaha, or muha, muha muhaha. But that's actually absurd, because pa + -ter (blood relative marker) changes to fa + -ter. So does ma changes sometimes to la or ra.
That's a myth. Babies make "baba" and "dada" before "mama" and the first sound every baby makes is "gaga" which is not even a word in many languages let alone a term for a parent. It is true though that "mama" is practically universal, but it doesn't have to do with how babies talk. Irish mothers are mamas, and Chinese mothers are mamas, Maori mothers are mamas, and Russian mothers are mamas... but you know who isn't? Chippewa mothers, Maya mothers, Cherokee mothers, etc. everyone south of the Arctic Circle in the Americas. Same for the indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and Australia. The cultures who have been in their current locations for more than 10,000 years, when the Bering land bridge as last exposed.
I'm glad you pronounced 'centum' correctly, the Latin way. I've been irritated recently on RUclips and elsewhere with people pronouncing Galla Placidia as Plasidia rather than Plakidia. Although, it's deeonisius not die-onisius. (From Dionysios). I have never heard about trying to prove that Romans are Greeks, but southern Italy before it was Italy was called Magna Graeca, Greater Greece, which was conquered by the Roman Republic. Greece had colonies to the east up to the far coast of the Black Sea, and to the west up to part of Spain.
You see the same phenomenon in non-PIE languages. “Medicine” is 藥 (yào) in Chinese, ยา (yaa) in Thai, and 약 (yak) in Korean. “North” and “South” in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese are 北 (běi), 북 (buk), and Bắc; and 南 (nán), 남 (nam), and Nam (Vietnam is the “the land of the Southern Viets”, the Viets being in the dominant ethnic group in the area). Interestingly, Chinese, Thai, Korean, and Vietnamese words for bread - 包 (bāo), ปัง (pang), 빵 (ppang), and bánh - are similar for a different reason: they all come from the Portuguese word pão, I guess because bread came to the East with Portuguese traders.
Japanese also has "Pan" (rhymes with barn) for bread. I thought their word for name "nameh" was English derived, but it actually is a complete coincidence and had no relation.
@@donperegrine922 nameh could be derived from Sanskrit because Sanskrit had a long history of relationship with the Chinese, Korean, Japanese and South-east Asian languages.
@@donperegrine922 名前 (namae) is the word you're looking for. It's a false cognate with the English word "name", but it's pronounced very differently, kind of like "nah ma eh" (forgive the horrible pronunciation example) instead of the English pronunciation.
Great video. Aside from the interesting content, I also would like to mention you have a wonderful neutral 'talking voice'. I could listen to this for hours and hours. Many voices on youtube may bother me one way or another, but not yours. And you have a very expressive face, which makes it all even better for content like this. Combined with a good fast tempo of small cool facts and explanations and nice visual support, and it results in a great way to learn something new.
In Dutch (related to English) you can actually use an article before a language name (i.e. "Ik haat (het) Frans" = "I hate French") so maybe English dropped it somewhere between now and when the author used it
He didn't use it for the other languages, though. I cam only guess that back then, "Old Persian" was not viewed as one syntactic element, and was more like "the old version of Persian", and maybe he felt that using the article was more natural
Quite interesting for you to use the word for "hundred", because that's what's commonly used to divide Indo-European (not Proto) into two main families: "satem" and "centum". PS. I believe that, apart from the "reconstruction from reconstructions" issue, the Nostratic hypothesis has to deal with the fact that those peoples lived close to one another and cross-contamination during millenia is bound to happen.
This is a good video. This guy’s a good presenter; his genuine excitement for the topic comes through in his presentation and the editing is helpful and well done. Interesting topic too. 👍🏻
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_language "The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589)."
People whose parents had spoken Gothic ended up speaking something else instead because that other one was more dominant & that made it more useful. It's the same thing that's happening to other minority languages in danger of extinction today. We mostly don't need to reconstruct Gothic because we uave actual texts written in it, mostly the Bible. But that leaves some gaps (features that don't happen to have been used in the available texts) that can only be filled in by comparative reconstruction or not at all.
The problem I have with the reconstruction of proto Indo-European Is that it's actually easier to understand than Old English. Which makes me think that there is bias in the reconstruction data. Why would a language 10,000 years old be easier for me to understand than a language only 1,000 years old which is actually more closer related to mine?
Part of the reason why I think this is the case is because every time I try to translate Old English it comes up that It's hard to understand because the Norman conquest hasn't happened, or the Vikings have not begun raiding or something like that. Whereas they conveniently include all of these languages In proto Indo-European so you don't have to worry about these historical events because it's a giant soup and they've mixed up all the languages together so that all of the sounds are there. I think that is where the bias comes in. The original language would not have had all of those sounds together.
As a bilingual Spanish-English speaker, I thought the coincidences between those two languages were impressive enough, but learning about Proto-Indo-European just made me realize how connected everything is. It's so god damn amazing to notice these similarities. It makes me want to learn all the languages of this world. And the fact that the Nostratic language means "Us" is just so beautiful I wanna cry a little bit. This world is amazing and I'm sad that I'll never get the full experience of it. The human mind and life is just too short for the wonders this planet has to offer.
I knew there was a shared language when I heard the word for kitchen in Russian. It's sounds almost the same as the word for kitchen in Spanish - cocina. I tried to find a connection between the languages - maybe through Roman influence? It turns out though that Common-Slavonic has been around since 500 BCE, so it predates any possible Roman influence. Again, that points back to a common language that predates both.
Kitchen, Küche, køkken are loaned from the Latin cucina. The Russian word is most likely also borrowed from Latin (or French or German or Norse so indirectly from Latin).
This is amazing! I always liked to find similarities between words in different languages and that helped me to understand the meaning, like 'agni-ogon-ogien-ignite' share the 'gn', but tracing this far is just something. I'm impressed! And it's not always easy to track the word if it had changed some vowels or consonants too.
I'm Lithuanian, and the word "Mėnuo" isn't the best word to mean "a moon", a better word would be "Mėnulis". That is because "Mėnuo" means "a young moon" refering to a moon that is partially covered by the earths shadow. The word as well can have other meanings, such as when counting months, you can use this word to refer to a month or refer to a time period of a month. One more thing, there is a huge difference between a letter "é" and "ė" , meaning that the word is written incorrectly 7:10
and menuo/menulis probably comes from latin based on spanish "disminuir" meaning to reduce or decrease. both based on a smaller/earlier stage of something
@@didntwantmyrealnameanymore No, it's related to Latin "mensis" (month) and (predictably) to English 'moon' / 'month'. They are all related, but none of them is a loanword.
This was super interesting. Thanks! I have enjoyed your videos since I discovered them (I’m a fairly nerdy person…). I particularly enjoyed the lost letters of the alphabet, and now feel super smart when I see “ye olde” and know it’s the lost thorn letter. Also cool for me were the plurals (moose/moose but goose/geese, one sheep/two sheep), the months (I always wondered why October had an “8” at the front). Great vowel shift was excellent. Yes, you can see I am a nerd…. But thank you for posting all of your videos, and also your newsletter, which I totally enjoy.
I’d be very interested to know how the hundreds of languages spoken by the Indigenous Australians fits into the other world languages. The sounds used are pretty unique and distinct.
As Australia drifted off and separated from Pangea 1.2 billion years ago, humans who either stayed on the continent or arrived from nearby islands probably developed their own unique language families isolately from the rest of the world, with influences from nearby Austronesian languages influencing it as well.
@@ikkue There were no humans 1.2 billion years ago, any theoretical human-esque primate that arose that far back would be an entirely different species from us, as homo sapiens have only been around for at MOST roughly 300,000 years (and actually, the kingdom of animalia is less than 1 billion years old itself, and the clade mammalia is less than 250 million years old. any lifeforms over a billion years old were practically all single celled, so there were definitely no humans back then let alone primates or the genus homo in general). the first modern humans to get to australia happened roughly 50k years ago, still plenty of time for their own unique languages to develop and way too far back for us to know what they are truly closest linked too, but wayyyyyy more recently than the figure you brought up, since 1.2 billion years ago there werent even any actual animals on earth, let alone walking around australia.
@@JubioHDXA good response to a claim that was never made. The poster didn't say humans moved across 1.2 billion years ago, only that the continents separated then. If they had put the word 'later' in there, it would have been clearer, but I'm sure they didn't mean to say there were humans back then.
@@Xubuntu47 just felt like it needed clarifying since immediately after saying the continent split off 1.2bya they said “humans that stayed there probably developed their own-“, making it at least sound to people who may have no clue that there were people there who were sectioned off from the rest that far long ago🤝🏽
in korea, we have gyeon or gae for dog. many linguists in korea believe we also owe our language to sanskrit. dola (not exactly sure how it's spelled...) has a meaning similar to turning (which by the way, turn and dola both having t/d and r/l is remarkable) in sanskrit. in korean, we have dor-a (it's how i would spell it to be more accurate) which also means to turn. it wasn't a borrowed word from hanja (chinese characters). makes me confident that we have sanskrit baked-in in our language. the word for tower in sanskrit is atta, udarka, attaka. in old chinese and cantonese it's taap, in korean it's tab (탑), in mandarin it's tǎ, and in japanese it's to-. i can easily see how we go from atta to taab/tab/tǎ/to- and tower. remove the "a" at the beginning, and you can see that they all kept the sound "t + vowel" and evolved from there. there really should be a europe/asia/north africa proto language. but i'm guessing it's too archaic to find the link (edit) just thought about this while reading comments. this might be a stretch, but i thought it was interesting so i'm sharing my opinion on it. in korean, we have two words for fire. one is borrowed from hanja and the other is just korean. we have hwa, which if we replace hw to f, it's fa. although, it's spelled fire, it still kinda sounds like fa (not that it needs to have the same exact vowel sound but it works in this case). the other word is bul (yes, like the buldak noodles) which sounds similar to what happens when there is a fire, things burn. we then have a word to ride, to be on, or to take "tada" or just "ta" so to take flame or to burn is bultada or bul e tada (e is just a preposition for in/on). tocar in spanish means to touch. which is similar to taking something. fuego is fire. so in a very stretched way (i told you, this is an opinion of mine that could just be a stretch from my adhd mind) tocar+fuego, in a very bad barely making sense way, is the same as to take flame and therefor bul e tada. glad i got that out of my system. now i can move on with my life 😅🤣 (edit) okay yeah, i should stop where i was. but my mind says otherwise... e is a preposition for in or on like i mentioned before. but we also have the literal word for "in" which is "an" this is very similar to "en" in spanish. in korean, "an e" is "inside" what is happening to my mind... hopefuly this is the last "edit" i make to this... but i don't know anymore 😅🙃. it's still fun to let my mind go wild with languages i guess...
The word you share about fire is Agni(Sanskrit) & Igni(Latin). How similar is still surprises me (Igni = Agni). The English word Ignition comes from there, if you noticed you will see it written near key switch, I dont know in korea whether it written in English or not, you can confirm me.
@@garnedmatser russian word огонь reads something like "agon" with softened n sound which is like there was 'i' in the end [agon(i)]. The connection is everywhere.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. Thank you so much for taking the clearly massive amount of time to put this together and explain it so plainly and succinctly. I've always thought that if I could have any superpower, I'd like to be able to speak and understand ALL the languages 😀
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Let me know what you make of P-I-E below. And start speaking a new language in 3 weeks with Babbel 🎉. Get up to 60% OFF your subscription ➡ Here: go.babbel.com/t?bsc=usa-influ-eg-dt-1m&btp=default&RUclips&Influencer..Jul-2024..USA-TATAM..1200m60-yt-robwords-jul-2024
As a suggestion for a future edition, I'd find interesting to compare words (e.g. German/English) that were originally synonyms but which developed in different directions. Those are not really false friends, because they actually started from the same origin. I'd rather call them "estranged partners".
Examples: Zaun/town, raten/read, ritzen/write, rechnen/reckon, stürzen/start, zählen/tell, tragen/drag, schlimm/slim, drehen/throw, Haut/hide, Bein/bone
Can also be between other languages; I just know those two best.
Not that I imagine it means anything to you, but I found learning Russian pronunciation useful for understanding and approximating the sounds of many other languages.
Since ur learning Swedish sometimes the k sound turns into sh sound aswell like köttbular pronounced like shirtboolar(means meatball) this was interesting cuz you were talking about the origins of the word "kmtom" turns into the Sanskrit "shatam". Jag är studier svenska ochså.
You are a genius to call it "Low". Up is not only English.
Thank you for picking up this episode. I’ve been asking and commenting on PIE for years on various videos. It is a fun concept.
As someone who lives in India and speaks Hindi/Malayalam, being educated in English and after taking Sanskrit as a subject in school.. it was stunning to know that words like Father (Pitr), Mother (Maatr), Seven(sapta) and so many others were the same for what I thought were totally separate European languages. Gotta love linguistics and the people who put this together!
Malayalam is a Dravidian language, the similar words are mostly just Sanskrit loans. Hindi is definitely related, though.
The words for mother and father are very similar across all languages. They are all things like “mama” and “papa” sounds that babies will babble out.
@@qtheplatypus
Interesting tidbit:
Some linguists believe the reason for the near universal use of the 'M' sound for mothers and 'F/P/D/T/B' sounds for fathers is due to babies spending more of their very early lives with their mothers, and only being able to vocalize simple mouth movements, like 'A' or 'M', which are then associated with mothers.
Fathers spend a little bit less time with children's extremely early stages of development than mothers and are then associated with more complex sounds developed later down the road, like aforementioned 'F', 'P', 'D' or 'T'.
@@htwtrbg1 in russian we have very similar words "papa", "mama", "sem"
I took Latin in grade school, and part of the justification for it being on offer was ability to work out English words by using the roots, but also to make it easier to learn Romance languages later. And it has been very helpful in learning Spanish and being able to parse signage in France despite not having learned any at all.
But I was SHOCKED to find myself recognizing cognates in Hindi. Not enough to help me genuinely communicate, but it was still a heck of a revelation years before I had ever heard of PIE.
i come from teh remote mountains of northern Pakistan where we speak an old hindi accent and when i listen to the very old people they say words like; Hithar (here) huthar (there) Gars (grass) Madar (mother) Is (this) Nak (nose) bund (behind) ma (I) chan (moon) suraj (sun) darya (river) tu (you) vo (he/they) nasa (nostril) mun (mouth) ladna (loading) marg (death/morgue) khunee (knee) ga (cow) and i could go on forever. i see so many similarities with the European words.
Amazing! Just reading your list, there is much that is immediately familiar.
EG "Hithar (here)": no very long ago "come hither" (come here) was in common usage! And "nasa (nostril)" is clearly related to "nasal".
That's so cool, absolutely crazy
That's not old hindi, that's urdu.
Hindi has no history in any of the northern regions of Pakistan. It's Urdu.
@@youknow6968Do you know that, as there was no Pakistan before 1946? Modern borders do not dictate ancient languages
@@youknow6968 Hindi and Urdu are dialects of a single language, namely Hindustani.
Indo-Europeans: we are a big family!
Finns and Hungarians: Who are you people?
🤣
*@takanobaierun* Who are you people SURROUNDING US?
*Reply to:* _"Finns and Hungarians: Who are you people?"_
Don't forget Estonians and the Sami! The big Uralic family outside of Russia
Perkele!
@@purplemarsmotionpictures Our Khanty and Mansi brothers.
Thanks for the shout-out! PIE is often reconstructed as having a pitch-accent system, contrasting high and low level tones, as well as a falling contour tone from high to low. This is something I didn't account for in my rendition of PIE.
Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek retained this ancestral system for a while. Modern Norwegian and Swedish have a their own new pitch-accent systems that evolved independently, as well as a few other Indo-European languages such as Serbo-Croatian and Punjabi.
I've always been fascinated by proto-languages and the idea that, collectively, we humans may be more interconnected than we previously thought. Great video as always!
Proto indo European originated in eastern Europe , pontic steppe to be exact.
Something hindu nationalists deny
@@blazer9547we don't know. Maybe in turkey.. Maybe in Armenia.. Maybe in Caucasus mountains.. Maybe in Ukraine...
@@blazer9547There actually are still theories that call for a "southern homeland" so hey wait a few more decades it will be clear where did this language come from
@@gursehajsingh2029 By now it is clear that at least one stage of PIE (late PIE) developed on the Pontic-Caspian steppe. The only thing that is under debate is if there was perhaps an earlier stage that developed in Anatolia or the Caucasus (early PIE) which would be the stage before the Hittites split (and maybe Tocharian). But in the end even this seems unlikely since, for one thing, it seems the Hitties weren't native to Anatolia but immigrated there.
@@gursehajsingh2029 if georgian isn't part of p-i-e but it's theorized that they might be related, I would assume that p-i-e developed in or very near georgia and the georgian version stuck more because those people moved around less
I'm a Sri Lankan who speaks Sinhala ( an Indo European language). Years ago whem I was learning English and German I recognised these similarities and studied about it. That's whem I fell in love with linguistics and became one of my hobbies. Here how we count one to ten if anyone is interested
Eka
Deka
Thuna
Hathara
Paha
Haya
Hatha
Ata(ahta)
Nawaya
Dahaya
And the letters in the numbers look delightfully like cats and mice!
Law school memory: Professor mentions in class that the word “testimony” comes from Roman men swearing an oath by reference to their testes. So I got to explain that this was a common misconception, that Romans didn’t do that, and that the word actually comes from PIE roots meaning “third person standing” (i.e. a disinterested bystander or witness). The anatomical term for male gonads comes from an unrelated PIE root meaning “dry”, via terms for baked clay containers. (Same root as "thirst", incidentally.)
Didn’t do that well in the class, but at least I got to sharpshoot some etymological misconceptions. Good times…
you not only corrected him but symbolically emasculated him! I'm sure he(assuming a male professor) was happy to have that association of legal-speak and masculinity, and you took it right from him. In his class no less! As someone diagnosed as "on the autism spectrum", this seems to me a very "aspy" faux pas.
Yes. Well done, though!
@@squirlmy -- Nah, it was all good. Granted, he did retire the next year, but I'm sure that was unrelated... :-)
@@charlesp.kalina4162 would be funnier if it _is_ related. Like you shattered his whole world view that he's incapable of continuing on teaching.
Whenever I hear a teacher spouting something obviously false, I have to wonder, how much of the rest of this class is BS too?
My grandfather (Vittore Pisani, 1899-1990) was a world-renowned glottologist who taught linguistics at the university of Cagliari first and then at the university of Milan. I grew up knowing these notions in part because all of his children (he had 14) had to learn Latin and ancient Greek and so did a lot of his 30 grandchildren (me included) and basic word histories were passed down. I never realized how not normal this was, as a kid. I thought everyone knew these "basic notions" growing up! You can look him up in the Italian Wikipedia. He was a brilliant mind, but a very distant grandfather. He spoke 12 languages, most of them self-taught.
A lot of "common knowledge" is not as common as one may think; especially when it comes to experts in certain fields overestimating the average person's knowledge. You're lucky to have been born into a family where this knowledge was easily shared and valued! A lot of families don't even truly value education in the first place.
In my family (8 children) my siblings and I were also used to s father who had lots of books about languages. We always used to look up the etimologic origin of words in different languages.
I now do the same with my 7 children 😂.
Speak 7 languages and enjoy your videos!❤
About the whole "not normal" thing... A story comes to my mind, one about a child from an animal trainer family. On his first day of school he asked the other kids: "What kind of bears do you have at home?" 😂
@@sendmorerum8241 that is hilarious!
No way! We learned about your grandpa at school just a few weeks ago!
Growing up with Norwegian, English, Hindi, and Punjabi THIS has been the most obvious thing my whole life. I also learnt Norse, Latin, and Sanskrit as a teenager, and the words are one thing but the grammar takes this to the next level. Sentences in Latin make more sense translated into Hindi for me. And some Sanskrit idioms make more sense in Norwegian.
This is so interesting. I love the interplay of languages and words and the depth all of it will add as you read .
So many connections .
the Indo branch kept many of the older sounds, maybe because they migrated earlier than everyone else
"Sentences in Latin make more sense translated into Hindi". That is very interesting.
Some years a go I wrote a book about 'Liquidity Risk', a financial subject that had never been properly formulated (although it has been there ever since).
I am a German native speaker, but my editor told me to write in English from start.
I did as he advised me, but there were certain conceptual formulations I simply couldn't express in English; so I switched to German. Once I had found a solution, I translated it into English. Mostly this worked quite well, but often it didn't, or only very poorly: Some of the 'untranslatable' sentences were so stubborn that their meaning changed when I tried to force a translation.
The writing of the book extended over two years, during which I also needed the text for lectures in German.
Suddenly, the opposite effect emerged: certain conceptual formulations 'refused' to be translated from English to German, or changed their meaning when I stubbornly tried to translate them.
I finished writing the book, but I am confused about the effects described.
Are there multiple perspectives (here: German and English) on things that only make 'correct' sense in one language?
Is it that in the other language, one can only represent something like a shadow of the actual thing, not the thing itself?
In your case it seems that you first read the sentence in the 'wrong' language (Latin) but then it reveals its 'true' sense in the 'right' language (Hindi)?
One might argue "Okay, the Language represents the thinking of its speakers. No wonder that -- as the speakers think differently -- it cannot be expressed in another language".
I am not sure that the solution is that simple.
To further the speculation: could it even be that a 'wisdom' is formulated in one language; but in certain (rare) cases, the 'wisdom' requires another language to reveal itself?
@@RobFiedYou pose an interesting thought - I am starting to learn German and have found that many words and phrases clearly relate (being both Germanic languages). For the Latin into Sanskrit, I do not think it is a reach to suggest that more learned scholars who recorded in Latin, had travelled and interacted with people from other ancient cultures, and may have themselves heard such sayings or statements - only to find recording it in their native Latin doesn't do the statement justice but recorded it anyway.
I now find the interplay between languages fascinating, unlike in High School where I thought they were pointless, I now recognise they have immense value.
Maybe four things to expand on (including one to correct outright) here:
1. “Proto” is not Latin but rather Greek; it remains the Modern Greek for “first”;
2. The Ancient Romans pronounced “pater” roughly to rhyme with “latter” (not “later”), but note it did not rhyme with “mater” as that had a long “a”;
3. English “see” is actually ultimately cognate with Latin “sequor” (meaning “I follow”; hence also “sequence”, “consecutive” etc) and thus “I see” in English really means “I follow” (but often from context this now means specifically with the eyes);
4. “Chief” did not, of course, develop within English but was a borrowing specifically from Norman French (cf. “chef”, a later borrowing from Standard French).
About #2: it does not matter
@@dbryn2 It does totally matter. A precise pronunciation of Latin is required to understand the development of all Romance languages.
@@joagalo Have some fun bro. I was joking
3. Gothic can be enlightening in that respect. The verb "saíhwan" ('aí' being a spelling convention for short 'e') still retained clear traces of the PIE -kw- that is found in Latin "sequor". Lexical correspondences that were lost in our modern languages can be found in words like "þahān" (Latin "tacēre") and "ana-silān" (Latin "silēre"). Curiously, Gothic also had passive forms, which in the case of "saíhwan" would have been "saíhwada" and "saíhwanda", corresponding to the Greek middle/passive forms in -tai and -ntai.
So it sounds like “potter”? That’s close to father
This video epitomises everything I love about the internet. Absolutely amazing and free to access. Brilliant!
As a Lithuanian I'm so excited that you've included some examples of our language. We have lots of words that are literally the same or very very similar as in Sanskrit, and lots of our words sound similar to reconstructed PIE words.
Exactly, Lithuanian is the closest living language in Europe to Proto Indoeuropean, cheers for that. 🍻
Lithuanian is considered the closest living language to pie.
Lithuanian language is extremely close to pie.... Yes
@@ModernDayRenaissanceMan A linguist who could draw correct conclusions about PIE should know the following languages: Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Lithuanian, Armenian, Romanian, Albanian and Ossetian.
@@ModernDayRenaissanceMan Sanskrit crying in the corner.
Small correction, the initial h in Greek 'hekaton' doesn't correspond to the initial k of PIE, but the middle k does. The he- part comes from a root meaning 'one', so the whole thing means 'one hundred', with the 'katon' part being a very close reflex of kmtom.
Yes, the he- part comes from sm°- a root for one. So it's sm°-+km°tom. Greek initial s- becomes h-, m°- becomes a vowel... he+katon. *One* hundred
@@davidsturm7706That's also very similar to the progression of the word for son. Son & one probably were related at one time as 'firstborn."
However language was much more simple back then so they probably said one born
It ABSOLUTELY wasn't more simple. It was slower and with less vocabulary, but it had a BUNCH more grammar. Hunter-gatherer societies tend to have a lot more complex grammar because they have more time and less things to talk about.
@@bacicinvatteneaca You're right for pointing that out, but what do you mean when you say that the language was 'slower'? Also, how would having more time and less things to talk about make grammar more complex?
@@trafo60 I guess that rather than make it more complex, it just wouldnt need to make it simpler? If you have all the time in the world you can say things in a complex way.
Sir, in a platform rapidly filling with artificailly created non-content, your videos are more important than ever. I wish there was a 'real' verification mark that channels like yours could attain.
I concur
I've been on this platform since early 2007. It's always been filled with garbage.
Not to discredit your point, however. I agree that Rob Words is a gem among the rough!
I've found that if you're particular about what content you watch and you use the "do not recommend" button, you will eventually not receive trash. (Most of the time 😅)
I feel like this comment is AI
@@LightIceAurora Beep boop!
@@stephencoles3664 oh you.
I speak Afrikaans (from the Dutch language family) as my first language and English as a second language. I recently learned Russian and was blown away by word similarities. But what truly shocked me was watching a Danish film recently and being able to understand large amounts of the dialogue without reading the subtitles. A completely unintelligible language to me in the past. Russian and Danish are nothing alike, and Dutch and Danish are very dissimilar, but when the witch's brew of Russian and Afrikaans combined in my head, the Danish suddenly started making sense. It was an incredible feeling to suddenly understand large bits of a language you've never studied. Like alchemy or magic.
This is probably one of the coolest youtube videos I've ever watched
My favourite PIE root is *bhel-, "shine, flash, burn". It's the root of the English word "black", as well as the French word for "white", "blanc", and thus the English "blank". English "white" comes from PIE *kweit-, which also meant "shine". I guess the PIE-speakers liked talking about shiny things a lot.
I saw video about that. Pretty cool
The French word blanc is exclusively a loan from Common Germanic into Latin because they lacked a word for it. Same as gris fro grey/gray or bleu for blue. Germanic loan words into Latin.
Hey! Vsauce! :)
@@SchmulKrieger True! From Frankish (a Germanic language) into French, then into English, near as I could find. I'm just tickled by the fact that words for black and white have the same root.
I like *lewk- in Old English lēoht , Latin lūceō (lūcēre) "to shine", lūx "light," and in Greek leukós. As in Lucifer; "the light bringer", the god of the evening star, son of Aurora (the Dawn). lol
I'm Indian and I have basic knowledge in Sanskrit. I once tried learning Latin and I was amazed to find similarities not just in vocabulary but also structure. It might not seem obvious at first but my knowledge of Sanskrit and my overall interest in languages in general led me to observe those similarities.
For example, in Sanskrit the third-person singular and plural verb conjugations are respectively -ti and -nti. In Latin they are -t and -nt.
I also tried learning Persian and observed even more similarities there but that was more obvious are Persian is much more closely related to Sanskrit.
Thanks.
That was insanely interesting and, as always, so clearly explained. Best of all... no background 'music'!
*_NO BACKGROUND MUSIC IS WONDERFUL!_*
Second this
A quiet background music is better.
@@notdon245so add one for yourself
I 100% agree! I hate so many jump cuts, background music and ads everywhere. I love videos that get right to the point! I find myself always clicking around RUclips videos because so many of them implement these irritating practices.
I love how excited he looks explaining the entire video. It makes me excited to learn as well
PLAT - word family
• Platus, an ancient greek word means flat or brode.
1. Platypus- flat footed animal
2. Platinum- flat or inferior silver metal
3. Plate- flat metal disc
4. Plato- nick name for his brode chest
5. Plateau- flat area
6. Platitude- flat or empty saying
PERRY THE PLATYPUS?!
Plat=flat in dutch.
For comparison its best to look at simple words. Like water, sun, etc. Things we all used and had in common.
Here's my favourite example showing how these languages are related:
- Hindi/Punjabi: Javaan
- Farsi: Javoon
- Italian: Giovane
- Spanish: Joven
- French: Jeune
- Dutch: Jong
- English: Young
They're all basically the same word! Pretty neat!
Yes, that's one of my favourite things (as an Indian) when learning (non-English) IE languages - how some of the words are basically the same!
Persian - Stan (in many countries, like KazakhSTAN)
English - stay
German - steh
So Kazakhstan is the place were Kazakhs stay (live)
@@tobiasharstel7941 well we dont use the word "stan" in persian anymore but we do use as a suffix for many places for example
bolgharestan: bulgaria
engelestan: england
lehestan: poland
.
.
.
Juvenis in Latin hence the word juvenile
@@tobiasharstel7941 also "stan" means "camp" and "stature" in Russian, and "yunyi" means "juvenile"
child in Swedish is "barn", and child in Scots is "bairn". Fascinating!
And they're both related to English "born." A child is someone who was born only a few years ago.
My pet theory is it comes from the Danes/Nords. "Bairn" exists in Scots, and also in dialects from North-East England like Geordie from Newcastle where the Danelaw existed. Another interesting one is "braw" in Scots, meaning "good", which is very similar to the Swedish "brå".
@@alexythemechanic8056You’re right. In another of Rob’s videos he says how that these Scots/northern English dialect words come from old Norse, as the Vikings raided then settled these parts the most
@@alexythemechanic8056 the Danes and the Nords did in fact settle the northern British Isles - quite possibly where my Scottish surname (which just so happens to also feature in Beowulf) comes from.
Thanks! Now l know why Mr. Scott called the Enterprise's engines his "wee barins" 😂
Have mercy Captain!
This is one of the most satisfying videos I've seen in a very long time...
This was great. I was always fascinated by the word ‚mother’. It’s literally the same pattern all around the world.
Vad roligt att du lär dig svenska. I have been following you videos for years and being a polyglot I really appriciate them! Hälsningar från Sverige!
As a Finnish speaker, I enjoyed the discussion of Proto-Uralic. I would have also been keen to hear about Proto-Turkic and why seemingly PIE just missed that whole chunk of land.
Actually a branch of the PIE was spoken in what's now modern-day Turkey. It was the Anatolian languages (Hittite, Lydian and others whose names I forgot). They were spoken during Antiquity and ended up extinct. So PIE reached this land but didn't maintain.
Concerning Proto-Turkic, it was spoken somewhere in Central Asia (where exactly I have no clue, it's not the language family I'm the most interested in, but I guess hypotheses were made over time). Turkish didn't develop in what's nowadays Turkey. The turk arrived pretty recently (at the historical scale) in this region.
To my understanding, they did there at one point. The Anatolian languages used to be spoken there, such as Hittite!
Anatolia had a lot of indo-european speakers like Hittite and Lydian
they went extinct over time, would have been cool if they survived to help connect the PIE bridge
@@jujujuju4435Luwian is the third Anatolian language you’re thinking of I believe
@@gunnasinternThose Anatolian speakers got Hellenized after Alexander the Great’s conquest, and the descendants of those Hellenized Anatolian spoke Greek in those regions until the 1920s.
Or rather, the ones who stayed Christian kept speaking it, since modern Turks are descended from both the Turkic nomads who arrived in the Middle Ages and the people who were living there beforehand. And since Greek was closely associated with Orthodox Christianity and Turkish was closely associated with Islam, people living there who converted to Islam generally started speaking Turkish and raising their children with Turkish as their first language.
I have a fascination with languages, all thanks to Mr. JRR Tolkien and his constructed languages.
He was very great with words and languages .
Me, too! I ended up studying linguistics in college and was gratified to discover that Tolkien was a philologist.
He was always quite a "celtophile", as evidenced by a certain Celtic influence on the languages of Middle-earth. The funny thing was he actually constructed the world and stories primarily to serve the languages. In other words, his love of languages came first and everything came after.
RobWords has become one of my favorite channels on RUclips. You make learning about English and language interesting!
When I retired I decided, as a challenge ,to study my father’s Oxford Dictionary and see if I could work out the patterns in words and sure enough because there are so many variations I managed to work out that there was a common language from the past. And I then started buying books on Etymology and sure enough I was correct with all my findings. I also have a very neat way to determine if words from different languages are related. Spending lots of time in Spain reaffirmed the links. And visiting Wales!
One annoying English word is Cupboard. But that is an open shelf for cups! Cupboards are closed off! Then I found an old Spanish word for Cupboard which related to Cubierta (Covered)
So we actually should call a Cupboard a ‘Covered’. Because that is what it is!
I found out all what is in this video and way more. I even worked out our original Proto Language from at least a hundred thousand years ago.
And it is basic and understandable but very simple so not suitable for complex conversation. I think a lot of body language was used to impart meaning.
Also words are actually ‘Recordings of speech’ in the same way musical notation is a recording of music.
We still use the phrase ‘Keeping a Record’ when meaning to write it down. There is so much more to languages. I only speak English and a bit of basic Spanish and French but the patterns are there and electronic translators can find lots of words in many languages as can translator apps!
So you do not need to have a second language to work all this out. 👍
As someone from Georgia (Kartvelian language family), I can say that I always wondered about the possible connection between Indo-European language family with Kartvelian.
Here are my observations of words in Georgian that might be connected to the common ancestral language:
Three - Sami
Six - Eqwsi
Me, I - Me
He, She, It - Is
This - Es
We - Chwen
You - Tqwen
In hindi Me is M ( how M or Ma is pronounced in word " Mandarin")
This - es (how es is pronounced in ester
And you is Tu
The Sanskrit "ashta" and the German "acht" are astonishingly similar.
How about Sanskrit "atman" and German "Atem"?
English night, German Nacht. All nights are starting with n.
Where English has a silent gh, German has a ch.
eight - acht
light - Licht
daughter - Tochter
@@gabor6259 when was the gh voiced? The gh in Dutch is similar to the German ch attached with a r sound.
@@thorstenjaspert9394 the 'gh' sound in English words was still spoken recently enough to appear in books made in printing presses, hence why they still appear in written English
To explain more about "hundred", the "red" in hundred apparently comes from a word meaning "row", that was related to "read"
"Red" still means row or order in Croatian, the language I'm learning. :-)
Probably my favorite subject in linguistics, the origin and evolution of language. I can't even explain why I find it so fascinating. It's such a joy to, as I have in this video, learn something new.
And, yes, the hundred progression was satisfying.
our minds always look for patterns, it's satisfying that all indo european languages are connected
Favourite
This video sent me down a rabbit hole that took up my whole day
One of the most enlightening elucidations of philology I have ever seen on RUclips. Well done, Rob.
One of the best RUclips channels to follow if you want to stay in the loop about P-I-E is Jackson Crawford. He looks at new discoveries and theories -- from the recent archeological find of a newly attested language that's closely related to Hittite, to attempts to link the Indo-European languages with Basque. Crawford discusses them with colleagues, shares his criticism and questions, etc.
Thanks for the recommendation! If I'm not mistaken, he was on an Ecolinguist video about Old Norse. I didn't know he talked about Proto-Indo-European.
At 12:15, the Irish "athair" for father is actually pronounced more like ah-her (th and sh are pronounced like an English h) so its pronunciation is even closer to the other words for father.
If I remember correctly in PIE there were two roots for father: ‘pter’ and ‘atta’. Seems like the Irish took ‘atta’ (compare ‘atetz’ in Russian)
@@authentiekaziatisch5949 I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for that info!
That makes sense since in the Semitic languages, father is based on Aba/Abu so atta is close to those.
No, actually, in Proto-Celtic, the Proto-Indo-European p sound became somewhat of an f sound, which then disappeared in all daughter languages. Modern f in Celtic languages comes from different sources @@authentiekaziatisch5949
So *phter > *fater > *ather > athair
Keep in mind that that's not the exact way the word evolved, but it's accurate enough to show that it did in fact come from the same word as father and pater
I'm from Sweden and is learning german and I'm acutally thankfull that I know both Swedish and English cause now I can find a word in either the languages which sounds closest and go of that. Like for example Nervous is German is Nervös which is exacly like swedish Nervös.
Watch out for false friends! The German word "Öl" means "oil," not "beer"!
English is much more influenced by latin and French, which is also explained because British people are much more mixed bunch.. native britons, picts, gaels, romans, normans, anglo-saxons, and even some viking influence too.
I learned a little swedish, I liked how it felt like French and English combined in a way
Also Glass and glass are my favorite swedish words haha
@@tux_duh I've never studied Swedish, but I was watching some Swedish video once that was tailored for beginning speakers. I was surprised how much of it I could understand without any study whatsoever. One think that threw me off was that the teacher was talking about "glass," while she was showing a video of children eating ice cream out of glass bowls. I wondered why she was focusing so much on the bowls, when I realized that the Swedish word for ice cream is a borrowing of the French word "glace"!
They all or Germanic languages, so this is a much tighter connection than one presented in the video.
How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
I feel like I comment this on EVERY RobWords video but the fact remains - this is such a great video!
I’ve been interested in etymology & linguistics since I was a kid, years before I discovered that this weird interest of mine had a proper name and an entire field dedicated to it.
I’ve since grown up and discovered even more fascinations with many, MANY more things, but finding Rob’s channel reminded me why I had an interest in this kind of stuff to begin with. I feel like people spend MOST of their lives using a language to communicate, express and understand the world around them, while simultaneously knowing nothing about the language itself. And I feel like that’s where the real GEMS are hidden!
Maybe I’m an outlier, an oddball who just really loves to learn new things.. Even if so, going on these little journeys with Rob through history and legend to learn WHY words are spelled the way they are, pronounced the way they are, where they come from, what they USED to mean, etc. is so satisfying and enriching. This channel as a whole makes me feel so much more capable of communicating effectively in language I’ve known and spoken since I was a child.
Rob, you are a treasure! I hope you know how much your knowledge, research, humor and passion has enriched the lives of so many English speakers & learners.
Hardcore þ FOREVER!
Great video as always, Rob! Another interesting historical observer on Proto-Indo-European was the Ottoman traveler, Evliya Çelebi (1611 - 1682). He ventured across much of the Mediterranean basin, and his familiarity with Persian allowed him to draw comparisons between German and Persian in the 17th century, suggesting a potential root between them! Alongside this, Evliya Çelebi was something of an amateur linguist and etymologist, and he gave us very detailed notes on the pronunciation of early-modern languages across much of Western Eurasia!
There was also a Dutch professor named Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn (1612-1653) who noticed the similarity between many IE languages and proposed a relationship, but his ideas just didn't catch on among the academic community.
@@aLadNamedNathan PIE wasn't really accepted until recently, same thing with plate tectonics that was proven much later on, a lot of people thought it was nonsense
When you introduced the word “nostratic” as “countrymen” or “us” I had an AHAH!! moment! In Spanish “nosotros” which has that nos- beginning means “we”!! Which makes a lot of sense because Spanish retains much of its Latin roots.
Also! Cheers 🥂 from a fellow linguist nerd!!
@Ellie-wl3rw *high fives*
That's literally where it comes from. The Russian linguists who came up with it just wanted to call it "OUR langauge" (Our referring to all of us humans), hence "Nostra (our)"+tic.
Not just the italic branch, in the indic branch it is used as the plural enclitic of the accusative, dative and genetive, its pronounced predictably as nas (all e and o sounds collapse to a), of the pronoun declension of 'I', the declension stem we call asmad, related to English - us.
And "nosotros" is related to english "us" as well!
"nosotros" < latin "nos" < PIE "nsme"
"us" < proto germanic "uns" < PIE "nsme"
Yes, and the banking term "nostro account" to refer to the bank's own account!
There are some stunning cognates in Sanskrit that surprise English speakers. Matri for mother, Patri for father, datri for daughter.
I like 'meera naama", my name is...
Matri and patri could have just been coincidental, to be fair. I mean, in this specific case they definitely aren't! But baby language acquisition follows a pretty set pattern no matter where they are, and babbling sounds get incorporated into parent terms all over the world. E.g. English and Arabic are not related, but English's 'mommy' sounds similar to Arabic's 'ummi'.
It's not matri, patri, and datri...
The correct Sanskrit transcription and pronunciation are as follows:
मातृ (mātṛ) - mother
पितृ (pitṛ) - father
दुहितृ (duhitṛ) - daughter
भ्रातृ (bhrātṛ) - brother
It is amazing to see how an ancient Indo-Aryan language can be so extremely close to even modern English.....
Many Indians, unfortunately, are Hindu nationalists, and they confuse the political propaganda and pseudo-history/mythology that they're taught since early childhood for real history and science....
Therefore, they usually deny the fact that the speakers of Proto-Indo-European originally came from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, c. 3,200 BCE, although it has been proven by science, i.e., a combination of archaeological data/physical remains, linguistic data, and genetic data.....
@@andrewtheworldcitizen thank you! It's been a few years for me, so I appreciate the correction.
@stevemayes8799
That's Hindi/Urdu, which certainly descends from Sanskrit....
Sanskrit is like Ancient Greek or Latin, albeit even older.....
The correct pronunciation is "merā nām" (meh-rah nahm)
I'm a fluent speaker of Hindi/Urdu....
I've studied it for over 20 years...
Here are a few simple sentences you'll find interesting:
यह मेरा भाई है . - This is my brother.
(yeh merā bhāī hai.)
मेरे तीन भाई हैं . - I have three brothers.
(mere tīn bhāī hain)
आपका नाम क्या है? -
(āpkā nām kyā hai)
मेरा नाम अर्जुन है .
(merā nām arjun hai)
I always award you a "Like", but I figured I would pause today and tell you that your videos are ALWAYS entertaining and educational... and, for me, much valued.
‘Tell me that isn’t satisfying…” How can I??? It’s wonderful x
10:34 Swedish does this in words like Kök and Keramik (Kitchen and Ceramics) which is prounced more like Shök and Sherameek
The 'sh' sound in 'kök'/'keramik' is a modern development. Before 20-30 years ago it was a sound like german 'ch' in 'Mädchen' (but not like in 'ach'). The same 'replacement' has happened in many Norwegian dialects. The younger generations often don't hear the difference.
@@LarsOleBergersen And in the 1800's it was typically more like English 'ch' with a "t" sound at the beginning. This is still the standard in Fenno-Swedish.
This is called lenition (in general) and satemisation (when related to K sounds turning soft)
I love watching your videos because you show how much you love what you know. It’s a pleasure to watch 😊
No surprise that Lithuanian was mentioned plenty of times. Was really interesting to hear numbers sounding almost native
I've heard that the Baltic languages are sometimes considered to be closest to PIE.
@@stevenjlovelace yeah especially old prussian
@@ANCalias Old Persian (Official language of the Achaemenid Persian Empire) was also very similar to Lithuanian.
@@ShahanshahShahin I do know nothing to Old Persian exept that both are indo-european so I can't tell
Congratulations! This vídeo is (like the ones you’ve posted before…) fascinating and inspiring. 👏🏻👏🏻🥰🥰
Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.
This was the best episode yet! Mind blown!
On my travels, every nation I came accross sang the song Frere Jacques in their own language. Loved it.
Having studied French, Latin and Sanskrit in my youth, I really appreciate your video about *P-I-E, Rob. On the Asian side of things, I think that there was probably a Proto-Austronesian language, which gave rise to the Taiwanese tribal languages, the many Filipino languages, and Proto-Malay (which was the Lingua Franca of South East Asia for a long time), and Bahasa Indonesia. It's easy to see how many similarities there are between many languages throughout South East Asia.
There was a proto language for every language family that exists.
My favorite English Russian cognates:
1. Sit - Sidieti
2. Wit - Vidieti and Viedati
3. Nest - Gniezdo
4. Milk - Moloko
5. Stuff - Stiebieli
6. Moon - Miesiats
7. Saddle - Siedlo
8. Stand - Stati
9. Rye - Rozh
10. Leed - Liudi
11. Skul - skuly
12. is - jesti
13. That - Tot
14. Wolf - Volk
15. Folk - Polk
16. Lie 1 - Liezhati
17. Lie 2 - Lgati
18. Tooth - Diesna
19. Stool - Stool (lol) and Stol
20. Murther - Smierti
That's crazy yo! Some similarities with sanskrit ->
1. Sit- Sidieti - UpaviShati
2. Wit - Vidieti - Vidya
3. Nest - Gniezdo - Nida
4. Stand - Stati - Stha
5. Folk - Polk - Lok
6. Tooth - Diesna - Dantah
Now some more similarities between russian and sanskrit ->
1.God भग (Bhag) Бог (Bog)
2.Sky नभस् (Nabhas) Небо (Nebo)
3.Door द्वार (Dvara) Дверь (Dver’)
4.House धाम (Dham) Дом (Dom)
5.Mother मातृ (Matr) Мать (Mat’)
6.Brother भ्राता (Bhrata) Брат (Brat)
7.To carry, to take भारती (Bharati) Береть (Beriot)
8.To burn, to shine घरति (Gharati) Горить (Gorit)
wanna know more? Check this out ->
Brother in law in Hindi is "Devar".
Neck is "Griva" in sanskrit.
Fire is "Agni" in Sanskrit and Hindi.
Watermelon is "Tarbuz" or "Tarbooz " in Hindi.
Hey one word for water is "Udaka" in Sanskrit, wait let's mispronounce it, Udaka - Vudaka - Vodaka - Vodka, WHAT THE HEYALLL?
Favourite .as this is about English
@@keithhitchings8911 nobody really cares.
Great job, again. Thank you.
Polish numbers have surprising similarities to modern Hindi, too.
And the best value thing in Scandiwegia is, 'Learn one, get two free' for Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Swedish is Norwegian in a minor key, and Danish is Norwer, but only when spoken underwater. Great fun.
I’m really interested in patterns shared between unrelated languages. Like “hi” “nihao” “aloha” “hola” “marhaba “ all have the aspirated “h” sound; perhaps because it’s a word you need to shout a bit more? I’m sure even mentioning this exposes my ignorance… which is exactly why such a video would be awesome!
In other words: are sounds arbitrary or do they have meaning?
@@bobthemagicmoose It was very interesting that "m" was usually the beginning of "me", across so many languages. i assume because its such an easy sound to make - don't even have to open your mouth, hah!
Having the same level of knowledge/ignorance, the shouting part seems reasonable - works for Halt! too!
Segue into the final topic of the video ... . I believe you got where he was leading.
@@bobthemagicmoose I would hazard that the sounds are mostly arbitrary, but not all. See "buzz", "hiss", "bellow", the list goes on, even "piss".
If the 'Hola' you meant is the Spanish one, the H is silent and there's no aspirated sound in the word. AFAIK.
15:04 And the related word to "caput" in German is "Haupt" (c→h), while the German "Kopf" is related to English "cup" (from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz, "round object, bowl").
Thanks for that. I was wondering about the Haupt->Kopf change in German. It's interesting that it means a small container because something similar happened in Italian Capo->Testa (testa roughly means "small jar"). Now I wonder why both languages had such a similar change to the word for head...
@@ivanskyttejrgensen7464 Maybe from people using them like slang? In English too, 'noggin' is a slang word for head that comes from a word meaning a small drinking cup.
@@julius9055 I doubt it. I think the change in Italian and German happened much too early for that, and slang rarely crosses languages.
@@ivanskyttejrgensen7464 I'm saying the fact that it happened in English too, further suggests it's a common transition of meaning.
The German word for “hood” (that which covers the head) is “Kapuze” [kaˈpuːt͡sə]. And fitting into that as well is the word for “cap” (another head ornament), “Haube” [ˈhaʊ̯bə].
I honestly didn't expect "Welcome to another RobWords" to be earliest english ancestor! :3
English - Armenian
Mother - Mayr
Daughter - Dustr
Mouse - Muk
Heart - Sirt
Smoke - Mukh
Bear - Berel (bring)
Summer - Amar
Light - Luys
Cat - Katu
Hound - Shun
Door - Dur
Father - Hayr
Kind of rough, though)
Va härligt att höra dig prata svenska, Rob!
Fantastisk video, Rob. Jag ser fram emot att utforska din kanal ännu mer. Roligt att höra att du håller på att lära dig svenska :) Du är alltid välkommen till vårt land. Obs: Om du kommer till Sverige får du vara tydlig med lokalbefolkningen att du vill tala svenska med dem (vi tycker nämligen om att träna på vår engelska när vi träffar utlänningar ;)).
Love your content! 🌻
When elementary school me found out about the Indo-European language family, I was stunned and very excited.
Seemingly unrelated languages following very similar patterns and ancestral vocabulary was the coolest thing I've ever heard at that time. I think this single piece of information was what sparked my interest in linguistics as well as learning foreign languages and cultures.
Even the controversial Altaic and Nostratic language families are an interesting topic, factual or not. I think a video about the hypothetical Altaic language family would be very cool.
Why is Altaic considered controversial? All I know is there are not a lot of speakers left but they're trying to get recognized
@@zarinaromanets7290 The Altaic language family doesn't refer to a single specific language or culture, it's a proposed language macro-family that would include Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic and sometimes even Japonic and Koreanic language families. So imagine it like the Indo-European language family, but with very limited evidence in favour of this grouping.
This proposed macro-family is controversial because it has been rejected by the vast majority of linguists, though some continue researching it and are in favour of it.
@@FakeMaker I'm aware, just didn't write family bc of saving time typing 😅 do it's controversial bc linguists don't agree on it? I'm curious to look into it a bit more now.
@@zarinaromanets7290 Oh, I see now, sorry for the misunderstanding.
Yeah, the Altaic language family is considered controversial as it's much more likely their similarities don't stem from common ancestry, but as a result of geographical proximity and prolonged contact. Hence, most linguists don't agree with them being closely related enough to be in the same family.
There also seems to be quite a bit of confusion between "Altai languages" and the "Altaic language family". Though that isn't surprising, idk who thought it would be a good idea to have the names be so similar lol.
@@FakeMaker No worries, the internet comment space is confusing and lacking lol. Oh wow that is interesting. I wonder exactly how they evolved as languages being as most original people from the region were nomadic and following there herds so they could eat and protect them from wolves. I wonder if they've been doing this since the ice age and only spoke when meeting another family unit to trade or intermarry, a couple times a year. Could be they had their own evolution all together.
Thank you for tracing the Indo-European language tree. I noticed the link when learning to intrduce myself in Hindi 'Mera naam Sharon hai', with mera being 'my', and naam being 'name', much more similar to English than the Turkish 'ad' for name - although the suffix indicating it's 'my name' is still an 'm' sound.
Genesis Chapter 11 is an excellent attestation to the historical existence of a 'World language', and how the different language groups arose. They were so different from each other that the people immediately formed into different tribes and dispersed forthwith.
PIE has been of great interest to me since I first really read about it a decade or so ago. Thank you for the video!
Such a well crafted video!
O Rob, I had learned most of this information already, but I really liked your way of saying it, thank you.
7:34 Learn Lithuanian! While I'm not sure if it is available on Babel, mastering Lithuanian can be a true gem for any linguistics scholar. The language offers a unique glimpse into ancient Indo-European roots, boasting a rich history and complex grammatical structure that can deepen your understanding of linguistic evolution and diversity. Dive into Lithuanian and unlock a treasure trove of linguistic insights!
Yeah, I hard that lithuanian is the most preserved oldest language in Europe. I heard that it's about as old as Sanskrit which is insane.
I'm not sure how accurate this is (but your post suggests it is), but I remember reading that Lithuanian was something of a language "time capsule", due to the geography of the country (surrounded by dense forests) which isolated it from outside influences.
@@washimpatwary1446 and no Lithuanian can speak his mother tongue properly... :D
@@kcnmsepognln we've been too poor and out of Vikings routes to rob (sorry Rob for a pun) us, more likely. 😁
yeah right
What's even more funny is that "Caput", the exact same word you named from indo-european but with a C instead of a K is still widely used in informal situations in italian to say that something has physically flipped. Like if you were to say "The car flipped on the road" you could just say "La macchina ha fatto caput per strada" and everyone would understand you.
I genuinely don't know if it's related at all but if it is, that's some crazy language conservation
I love how sanskrit chatvaari is so similar to russian четыре (chetyre) which also means four
Russian has alot of sanscript words that are similar
My personal favorite is the word for Mom being the first thing any baby pronounce, just by sticking togheter the lips and then open them quickly. Is very similar in every language because of that. The mother would be the first person that the baby "spoke" that "word" for, so that sound just mean that: mother
It's actually what a lot of people here when a baby cries, ah, ah, ah, to mah, mah, mah. Like people are laughing like hahaha, or muha, muha muhaha. But that's actually absurd, because pa + -ter (blood relative marker) changes to fa + -ter. So does ma changes sometimes to la or ra.
My Daughters first words were Ipad and tiktok.
It's a myth that it's the 1st word spoken, it all depends on what you teach them, a lot of kids don't say either mum or dad
That's a myth. Babies make "baba" and "dada" before "mama" and the first sound every baby makes is "gaga" which is not even a word in many languages let alone a term for a parent. It is true though that "mama" is practically universal, but it doesn't have to do with how babies talk. Irish mothers are mamas, and Chinese mothers are mamas, Maori mothers are mamas, and Russian mothers are mamas... but you know who isn't? Chippewa mothers, Maya mothers, Cherokee mothers, etc. everyone south of the Arctic Circle in the Americas. Same for the indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and Australia. The cultures who have been in their current locations for more than 10,000 years, when the Bering land bridge as last exposed.
My son's first words were mim mee. I was calling the dog and he joined in. Her name was Minnie.
I'm glad you pronounced 'centum' correctly, the Latin way. I've been irritated recently on RUclips and elsewhere with people pronouncing Galla Placidia as Plasidia rather than Plakidia.
Although, it's deeonisius not die-onisius. (From Dionysios). I have never heard about trying to prove that Romans are Greeks, but southern Italy before it was Italy was called Magna Graeca, Greater Greece, which was conquered by the Roman Republic. Greece had colonies to the east up to the far coast of the Black Sea, and to the west up to part of Spain.
You see the same phenomenon in non-PIE languages. “Medicine” is 藥 (yào) in Chinese, ยา (yaa) in Thai, and 약 (yak) in Korean. “North” and “South” in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese are 北 (běi), 북 (buk), and Bắc; and 南 (nán), 남 (nam), and Nam (Vietnam is the “the land of the Southern Viets”, the Viets being in the dominant ethnic group in the area).
Interestingly, Chinese, Thai, Korean, and Vietnamese words for bread - 包 (bāo), ปัง (pang), 빵 (ppang), and bánh - are similar for a different reason: they all come from the Portuguese word pão, I guess because bread came to the East with Portuguese traders.
Japanese also has "Pan" (rhymes with barn) for bread.
I thought their word for name "nameh" was English derived, but it actually is a complete coincidence and had no relation.
@@donperegrine922 nameh could be derived from Sanskrit because Sanskrit had a long history of relationship with the Chinese, Korean, Japanese and South-east Asian languages.
@@ShahanshahShahin that would be awesome if it is true!
@@donperegrine922 名前 (namae) is the word you're looking for. It's a false cognate with the English word "name", but it's pronounced very differently, kind of like "nah ma eh" (forgive the horrible pronunciation example) instead of the English pronunciation.
I have always wondered about Korean numbers 하나 둘 셋 (Hana, Dool, Seht- 1, 2, 3). 둘 really seems like duo or deux
Rob, I appreciate your insight, knowledge and enthusiasm. This is a topic I have enjoyed for many years. Thanks!
Great video. Aside from the interesting content, I also would like to mention you have a wonderful neutral 'talking voice'. I could listen to this for hours and hours. Many voices on youtube may bother me one way or another, but not yours. And you have a very expressive face, which makes it all even better for content like this. Combined with a good fast tempo of small cool facts and explanations and nice visual support, and it results in a great way to learn something new.
As for the odd use of “the” I suspect the author was using “language” as understood, as in “the Celtic (language)”. Thoughts?
Exactly what I was thinking.
In Dutch (related to English) you can actually use an article before a language name (i.e. "Ik haat (het) Frans" = "I hate French") so maybe English dropped it somewhere between now and when the author used it
He didn't use it for the other languages, though. I cam only guess that back then, "Old Persian" was not viewed as one syntactic element, and was more like "the old version of Persian", and maybe he felt that using the article was more natural
Quite interesting for you to use the word for "hundred", because that's what's commonly used to divide Indo-European (not Proto) into two main families: "satem" and "centum".
PS. I believe that, apart from the "reconstruction from reconstructions" issue, the Nostratic hypothesis has to deal with the fact that those peoples lived close to one another and cross-contamination during millenia is bound to happen.
This is a good video. This guy’s a good presenter; his genuine excitement for the topic comes through in his presentation and the editing is helpful and well done. Interesting topic too. 👍🏻
All so fascinating, just love languages and language history
Thanks for opening my eyes to the history of English and other associated languages! A great and fascinating presentation.👍
i love our ability to travel through time
What actually happened to gothic? Are there reconstructions? How comes a language can disappear like that?
This needs to be a video!
I think there’s some reconstruction but I could be wrong
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_language "The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589)."
People whose parents had spoken Gothic ended up speaking something else instead because that other one was more dominant & that made it more useful. It's the same thing that's happening to other minority languages in danger of extinction today.
We mostly don't need to reconstruct Gothic because we uave actual texts written in it, mostly the Bible. But that leaves some gaps (features that don't happen to have been used in the available texts) that can only be filled in by comparative reconstruction or not at all.
We still have the entire Bible written in Gothic.
you should win an award for this particular video - like seriously - great job
Rob you are a wonderful teacher, I love watching your videos more than once too :) Thanks for doing all that you do
The problem I have with the reconstruction of proto Indo-European Is that it's actually easier to understand than Old English. Which makes me think that there is bias in the reconstruction data. Why would a language 10,000 years old be easier for me to understand than a language only 1,000 years old which is actually more closer related to mine?
Part of the reason why I think this is the case is because every time I try to translate Old English it comes up that It's hard to understand because the Norman conquest hasn't happened, or the Vikings have not begun raiding or something like that.
Whereas they conveniently include all of these languages In proto Indo-European so you don't have to worry about these historical events because it's a giant soup and they've mixed up all the languages together so that all of the sounds are there. I think that is where the bias comes in. The original language would not have had all of those sounds together.
what?? PIE is far harder for an untrained native English speaker to understand compared to old English. like objectively
As a bilingual Spanish-English speaker, I thought the coincidences between those two languages were impressive enough, but learning about Proto-Indo-European just made me realize how connected everything is. It's so god damn amazing to notice these similarities. It makes me want to learn all the languages of this world.
And the fact that the Nostratic language means "Us" is just so beautiful I wanna cry a little bit.
This world is amazing and I'm sad that I'll never get the full experience of it. The human mind and life is just too short for the wonders this planet has to offer.
I knew there was a shared language when I heard the word for kitchen in Russian. It's sounds almost the same as the word for kitchen in Spanish - cocina. I tried to find a connection between the languages - maybe through Roman influence? It turns out though that Common-Slavonic has been around since 500 BCE, so it predates any possible Roman influence. Again, that points back to a common language that predates both.
Kitchen, Küche, køkken are loaned from the Latin cucina. The Russian word is most likely also borrowed from Latin (or French or German or Norse so indirectly from Latin).
This is amazing! I always liked to find similarities between words in different languages and that helped me to understand the meaning, like 'agni-ogon-ogien-ignite' share the 'gn', but tracing this far is just something. I'm impressed! And it's not always easy to track the word if it had changed some vowels or consonants too.
I'm Lithuanian, and the word "Mėnuo" isn't the best word to mean "a moon", a better word would be "Mėnulis". That is because "Mėnuo" means "a young moon" refering to a moon that is partially covered by the earths shadow. The word as well can have other meanings, such as when counting months, you can use this word to refer to a month or refer to a time period of a month.
One more thing, there is a huge difference between a letter "é" and "ė" , meaning that the word is written incorrectly 7:10
and menuo/menulis probably comes from latin based on spanish "disminuir" meaning to reduce or decrease. both based on a smaller/earlier stage of something
@@didntwantmyrealnameanymore No, it's related to Latin "mensis" (month) and (predictably) to English 'moon' / 'month'. They are all related, but none of them is a loanword.
This was super interesting. Thanks! I have enjoyed your videos since I discovered them (I’m a fairly nerdy person…). I particularly enjoyed the lost letters of the alphabet, and now feel super smart when I see “ye olde” and know it’s the lost thorn letter. Also cool for me were the plurals (moose/moose but goose/geese, one sheep/two sheep), the months (I always wondered why October had an “8” at the front). Great vowel shift was excellent. Yes, you can see I am a nerd…. But thank you for posting all of your videos, and also your newsletter, which I totally enjoy.
Fascinating and informative, as always! Thanks!
This is great! Amazing! Thanks for putting it together.
Excellent stuff Rob, Very interesting. It makes perfect sense that many languages have come from similar roots and roots can go deep!
Interesting for German, face = Gesicht, sight = Sicht, to see = Sehe
And in the same sequence in Dutch: Gezicht, zicht and zien. Do you notice the change from 's' into 'z'?
@@telebubba5527That's more like an orthographic convention, as German "s" is often pronounced as Dutch "z."
*Sehen
@@daroguk8071 danke, hab's das n vergessen
Also Seguir = Follow in Spanish. You follow what you see.
I’d be very interested to know how the hundreds of languages spoken by the Indigenous Australians fits into the other world languages. The sounds used are pretty unique and distinct.
As Australia drifted off and separated from Pangea 1.2 billion years ago, humans who either stayed on the continent or arrived from nearby islands probably developed their own unique language families isolately from the rest of the world, with influences from nearby Austronesian languages influencing it as well.
And don't forget the over 800 living languages spoken in Papua New Guinea.
@@ikkue There were no humans 1.2 billion years ago, any theoretical human-esque primate that arose that far back would be an entirely different species from us, as homo sapiens have only been around for at MOST roughly 300,000 years (and actually, the kingdom of animalia is less than 1 billion years old itself, and the clade mammalia is less than 250 million years old. any lifeforms over a billion years old were practically all single celled, so there were definitely no humans back then let alone primates or the genus homo in general).
the first modern humans to get to australia happened roughly 50k years ago, still plenty of time for their own unique languages to develop and way too far back for us to know what they are truly closest linked too, but wayyyyyy more recently than the figure you brought up, since 1.2 billion years ago there werent even any actual animals on earth, let alone walking around australia.
@@JubioHDXA good response to a claim that was never made. The poster didn't say humans moved across 1.2 billion years ago, only that the continents separated then. If they had put the word 'later' in there, it would have been clearer, but I'm sure they didn't mean to say there were humans back then.
@@Xubuntu47 just felt like it needed clarifying since immediately after saying the continent split off 1.2bya they said “humans that stayed there probably developed their own-“, making it at least sound to people who may have no clue that there were people there who were sectioned off from the rest that far long ago🤝🏽
in korea, we have gyeon or gae for dog. many linguists in korea believe we also owe our language to sanskrit. dola (not exactly sure how it's spelled...) has a meaning similar to turning (which by the way, turn and dola both having t/d and r/l is remarkable) in sanskrit. in korean, we have dor-a (it's how i would spell it to be more accurate) which also means to turn. it wasn't a borrowed word from hanja (chinese characters). makes me confident that we have sanskrit baked-in in our language.
the word for tower in sanskrit is atta, udarka, attaka. in old chinese and cantonese it's taap, in korean it's tab (탑), in mandarin it's tǎ, and in japanese it's to-.
i can easily see how we go from atta to taab/tab/tǎ/to- and tower. remove the "a" at the beginning, and you can see that they all kept the sound "t + vowel" and evolved from there. there really should be a europe/asia/north africa proto language. but i'm guessing it's too archaic to find the link
(edit) just thought about this while reading comments. this might be a stretch, but i thought it was interesting so i'm sharing my opinion on it. in korean, we have two words for fire. one is borrowed from hanja and the other is just korean. we have hwa, which if we replace hw to f, it's fa. although, it's spelled fire, it still kinda sounds like fa (not that it needs to have the same exact vowel sound but it works in this case). the other word is bul (yes, like the buldak noodles) which sounds similar to what happens when there is a fire, things burn. we then have a word to ride, to be on, or to take "tada" or just "ta"
so to take flame or to burn is bultada or bul e tada (e is just a preposition for in/on).
tocar in spanish means to touch. which is similar to taking something. fuego is fire. so in a very stretched way (i told you, this is an opinion of mine that could just be a stretch from my adhd mind) tocar+fuego, in a very bad barely making sense way, is the same as to take flame and therefor bul e tada. glad i got that out of my system. now i can move on with my life 😅🤣
(edit) okay yeah, i should stop where i was. but my mind says otherwise... e is a preposition for in or on like i mentioned before. but we also have the literal word for "in" which is "an"
this is very similar to "en" in spanish. in korean, "an e" is "inside"
what is happening to my mind... hopefuly this is the last "edit" i make to this... but i don't know anymore 😅🙃. it's still fun to let my mind go wild with languages i guess...
Wow, can you share something more that Korean is originated from Sanskrit. Very surprised.
The word you share about fire is Agni(Sanskrit) & Igni(Latin). How similar is still surprises me (Igni = Agni). The English word Ignition comes from there, if you noticed you will see it written near key switch, I dont know in korea whether it written in English or not, you can confirm me.
@@garnedmatser russian word огонь reads something like "agon" with softened n sound which is like there was 'i' in the end [agon(i)]. The connection is everywhere.
I have always been so fascinated by this. Thank you for the video, Rob!
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. Thank you so much for taking the clearly massive amount of time to put this together and explain it so plainly and succinctly. I've always thought that if I could have any superpower, I'd like to be able to speak and understand ALL the languages 😀
The prefix proto is greek, not latin 😊