M. Hall source? From what I can find the earliest written Greek was 1450 BCE, or about 3500 years ago at most. Hell, the earliest written text we know of is “only” 5400 years old
In the context of phonological change, you could say that vowels are the flesh of words and consonants the skeleton. Bones are more durable than flesh. In the same way, vowels are more subject to distortion over time than consonants because when making vocalic sounds there is less (in terms of the physical apparatus within the mouth and throat) for them to hang on to. If when comparing words from cognate languages you strip out the vowels, the remaining consonants often betray relationship between these words more easily.
Imo only European languages have large vowel inventory that keep moving around. In the development of modern Indo-Aryan from Old Indo Aryan the vowels didn't change but many words lost most of their consonants. For example Hindi for boar is "sūar" from Sanskrit "sūkara" note the k lost. The word for mother is "mã" from Sanskrit "mātā/mātr" notice the t lost.
There was also giutan in the dead East Germanic tongue Gothic. Gush is said to be a loanword from either Middle Dutch Guysen or Norse Gusa. Compare Old Norse geysa (“to gush”), German gießen (“to pour”), Old English ġēotan ("to pour"; > English yote).
This is like saying useful and useless having the same root is ironic. No, it's not, it's very easy to turn a word's meaning into the complete opposite using affixes
Thank you! :) I don't know about that, but I wouldn't complain if they did - RUclips seems like a good platform for reaching people at the moment, anyway.
Things like this always leave me in awe of the sheer number of human beings whose unwitting efforts preserved these bits of culture, just generation after generation of older people passing on words and ideas to younger people, linking all of us today back to these humans millennia ago.
This is quite interesting from a Swedish-speaking perspective, where the word of God and to pour are in one case quite similar. Gudarna: the gods Gjutarna: those who pour/cast. - a word nowadays most often used while talking about working with liquid metals. In this sense, the gods are the shapers and molders of existence, I suppose.
yato boi in German it’s Gott for God and Gießen for pouring which isn’t far from dutch. Taking the past form of Gießen is Goss which is closer to Gott. It’s pretty cool but unsurprising how close the central european languages are, together with scandinavian languages. In writing I can understand a lot of Swedish (had only a few lessons) and Dutch because they share tons of related words.
Most likely means “those to whom we pour out things.” Not anything like “shaper.” The gods lowercase were often very weak spirits who needed appeasement.
my taste in youtube videos changes constantly and we all go through stages but I can honestly say this channel is something so special. I enjoy educational videos but often they overload you with information and , although satisfying to watch, little information stays with you. Every time I watch one of your videos I learn something that stays with me and finds a place in my conscious mind through my free time - you're dealing with a bank of information that was so hard for people to first uncover and explaining it perfectly to layman such as myself. Thanks so much for doing what you do Simon, I think another heartwarming thing about historic linguistics is reiterating how connected our cultures are around the world, language is such a definitive characteristic and it's truly humbling to see how in reality it is a dynamic bank of loose, flowing boundaries rather than the seemingly ex nihilo solid library we often see it as. I'm a Biochemistry student and have always loved history, especially the medieval period - you've really rekindled my interest for it and I must say thank you so much
I agree with this so much! So many channels have all kinds of interesting content that make me say, "Huh. That's interesting." And then never think of it again. Channels like this one, that allow you to absorb and digest the material, so to speak, are few and far between.
Thank you for watching! I worried the sort of text-and-diagrams format might be a bit much, but it's good to know people are still interested, particularly from other more hard-sciencey fields.
@@simonroper9218 Don't mind the format, because it is nice enough to just listen, and then if I'm more energetic/interested the text-and-diagrams adds something, but aren't absolutely necessary. And I was actually just thinking something along similar lines as William Crann. I don't really know what it is that makes your videos stand out. Maybe that they aren't overproduced, and that they are thoughtful instead of "Hey, isn't this interesting! And this here is even more so! And *this* will blow your mind!". You sort of offer us a suitable morsel and invite us to think about it.
As an Indian i was very surprised when i first learnt french numbers. The similarity was just too obvious with our own languages. Later i carefully noted many cognates. Mort -mrutyu dent -daant Donner dena Dieu Dev and many which now don't come to mind. It is so surprising that a country which is so far away has cognates with our language. And of course pater pita mater mata I'm unsure though of Equus vulg cheval ashva me sounds referring to self tu tu for you.
Latin equus is cognate with Sanskrit अश्व (áśva), both from Proto-Indo-European *h₁éḱwos (“horse”). French cheval is from Late Latin caballus, which in earlier Latin had had the more specific meaning "pack horse" and is of Celtic (Gaulish) origin (see en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caballus#Latin for more on this).
My culture doesn’t have much Indian influence but tell me if I’m wrong Chicken is cognate with ‘Tiki’ like tiki masala, Indian food influences my culture though lol. This is less obvious but in corrupting tiki to chiki then to chike you can get prettt close to English
Pratik K I’m Australian but had the same experience in India and Nepal. There were too many words that were similar for it to be a coincidence. It was so strange to be sitting at the base of the Himalayas and they were speaking a language with the same ancestor as what they speak in England at the other end of the continent.
@@emiliocarver2061 Modern English chicken came from Old English ċycen, which came from Proto-Germanic *kiukīną (or *kukkīną) Considering that tiki & *kiukīną look nothing alike, I dont think theyre cognates
Scifi borrowed a lot from linguistics: Star Trek's Ferengi is obviously very close to the Persian word for "stranger/ foreigner", but Idk how that is spelled.
I’ve always been very bad at learning languages and even though I’ve taken classes for Latin, Greek, Spanish, and Mandarin I’ve never been able to grasp new languages well or find them terribly interesting. But, this is quickly becoming one of my favorite RUclips channels. I love how passionate you are about this and how much detail you can give. It’s not something I’ve ever been good at so it’s interesting to watch someone who is so passionate and well informed.
linguistics isn't the same as learning languages tho, just like a scientist that studies astrophysics doesn't need to go to space, linguists don't need to learn languages (or to be fluent in them) cheers
Dear Simon - another fascinating episode - this time it was like linguistic archeology. Thank you for the excellent content and the effort you put into the diagrams. I loved the nature scenes at the end. Deeply pleasing. Not knowing the origins of English words, it has long fascinated me how similar the language of everyday farm life is between English and German or Swiss German: I bake bread - ich backe Brot / I feed my cows - ich füttere meine Kühe / swine - Schweine / Horse - Ross (not Pferd!) / sheep - Schafe / I mow grass - ich mähe Gras and so on. One gets the impression that not only were the roots deeply related but the lifestyle continued to be very similar. Even Snottynose - Schnuddernase! (Swiss German) I love that one. And you mentiond Acker - field - related to acre. Try and get hold of "A Mouthful of Air: Language, Languages...Especially English" by Anthony Burgess (author of 'A Clockwork Orange'). I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy it. Link: www.amazon.com/Mouthful-Air-Language-Languages-Especially/dp/0688119352 He shows similarities between Arabic and German, English, French for family members for example. All the best, Rob in Switzerland
Thank you! I wish I knew more about P.I.E, it would be fascinating to make a few more videos about. And the German füttern has a direct English cognate in 'fodder,' although it's not used so much outside of dialects and old books nowadays. Thank you for the link as well, I never knew Burgess had written about linguistics.
I also know the word "schnoddernase" from northern german dialects, like berlin dialect or frisian/plattdütsch, dialects that are more closely related to english than standard german. But the word isn't used in bavaria and south germany in general, nor in austria. So how did it survive in switzerland?
Pouring as a religious ritual, an offering of some liquid, is frequently referred to in the Torah. In Croatian we call it the poured sacrifice, in which case the word poured actually acquired a noun form and that noun is used exclusively in that context.
From Wiktionary: libation; The act of pouring a liquid, most often wine, in sacrifice on the ground, on a ritual object, or on a victim, in honor of some deity.
The High German consonant shifts occured in the south of the German speaking world and has spread northward since then. The consonants of the plattdeusch languages of norhern Germany are much closer to Dutch, English and even Scandinavian than Hochdeutsch is.
An possible interesting cognate is 'promulgate' from Latin promulgare. The 'mulg' element might be a related to milk. So to promulgate or promote an idea might mean to 'milk' it.
@@simonroper9218 I was rather amused that you consider Cumbrian to be a separate language, although in reality you most likely regard it as a dialect of English. I have worked with many Cumbrians, and some of them are not easy to understand. I remember that the word 'table' was pronounced something like 'chabbel'; I never did work out whether it was due to accent or dialect. I lived in Glasgow for six months many years ago and once I had worked out that the Glaswegian accent frequently just ignores the letters 'B', 'F', 'G', 'L', and 'T', or maybe just acknowledges the letter's presence with the use of an alternative pronunciation, I found that I could understand the locals a lot better. Being asked the question 'are you watching the football tonight?' just left me utterly baffled as to what language they were speaking in when I first moved there, it sounded like 'Are ya Wayne Fooeny?' to my unaccustomed ears.
Fun fact: in swedish (which from my understanding also is a germanic language) the word "åker" means field. I had never noticed or even thought about the connection between åker and agri before, so thanks :)
@@GiandomenicoDeMola In Dutch it's "akker" and we have the same last name "akkerman" which meant the same as the German last name. That word here is eventually replaced to "boer" (probably from "bouwer" which sounds the same as "Bauer").
There was a fire in a cinema in Bilbao and sadly many died trying to get out one door. The police said you shouldn't put all your Basques in the one exit.
I love your videos and the insight they give me as to the way our ancestors used to live, talk, and think. Thank you for the work you put into these and I look forward to many more.
English and Frisian have a lot of phonological developments in common! I think it would be an extremely easy language for English speakers to learn if there were more resources dedicated to it.
Well, the phonology is quite different (more conservative in many respects) and not as much Scandinavian/Norman French influence would make it harder (it’s close to Dutch in many respects, and grown more so, due to being a minority language within the Netherlands and everybody being bilingual nowadays). But a lot of core vocabulary has remained closer to English’ Germanic core.
@@simonroper9218 Yes, the phonological parallelisms between English and Frisian are very striking -- a classic example is tsiis, the Frisian word for cheese (in contrast to Dutch kaas); tsiis, cheese, and kaas are all descendants of the Proto-Germanic *kāsijaz, a borrowing from Latin cāseus, but only English and Frisian have undergone the changes which make tsiis and cheese sound so similar, and so very different from the Dutch. I'm not so sure, though, that this fact alone would make Frisian "an extremely easy language" for English-speakers to learn, given the language-disruptive effects of Norse and French on English and the grammatical and other influences of Dutch upon Frisian in the period since Old English and Old Frisian were pretty well mutually comprehensible by communities on both sides of the North Sea. For those interested in learning more about Frisian, see ruclips.net/video/XqeJn-MAC8Q/видео.html and the comments (and sound samples) to be found at www.languageandlaw.org/FRISIAN/FRISIAN.HTM
@@Ynysmydwr In my dialect of German Cheese is Kjees, where the Kj sound is like a Ch sound in English, but Ks followed by fronted vowels always makes the Kj sound in my dialect, like a C in Italian or Romanian would.
I hope I recall this correctly - the word "widow" has cognates in many Indo-European languages such as Russian, Spanish and Sanskrit that all still mean the same as the English word. Since they aren't loanwords but actual cognates, it's evidence that the Proto-Indo-European had marriage of some kind. It's fascinating indeed that the words we speak today reveal aspects of how people lived thousands of years ago.
Most words for in-laws remained as well, e.g. Lain socer, levir, nurus, gener for father-, brother-, daughter-, son-in-law are ultimate of the same origin as Russian svyokor, dever', snokha and zyat'. They probably really kept in touch.
My god. I am absolutely loving this video. Have had thoughts about deeper evolution of languages so much recently, and this video is just splendid! Furthermore, there are just so many interesting chains, makes me see the world differently. Thanks Simon.
Fascinating! I've often thought about how we carry within the deepest folds of our language(s) the germ, the embryo, the "Keim", as Germans would say, of ancient, very ancient, ancestral modes of seeing the world, the earliest Weltanschauungen... Thank you
When I was teaching Dutch to refugees I had a lot of speakers of Persians in my class, first thing was that they picked up Dutch a lot easyer than speakers of nonrelated languages, nd after a while I found out that there were lots of cognates. the word for doughter is nearly identical in both languages.
The modern Iranian word for "daughter" is virtually identical to that English word, and apparently the modern Dutch word as well. Oddly other Indoeuropean languages in Europe have lost cognant words for 'daughter" like Spanish. The Spanish word is hija. (pronounced "ee-hah").
Hey Simon, great video. Interesting cognates between Germanic god and Latin futile, It's fascinating how language can change and evolve over time. I'm curious if you have delved into The more ancient IE languages of Tocharian and Hittite/Luwian? If so if there are any interesting cognates with their words comoared to the germanic languages. As a side note, I've had a discussion with someone who claims that the Old Norse word for the moon, Máni, is cognate with a sanskrit word for the Mind. I would very much like your opinion on that subject for clarity. Thanks and keep up the great work!
@@islandsunset Unrelated. Máni is cognate to English 'moon', and modern Hindi मास (mas), so with a root meaning 'moon, month (one moon cycle)'. Also related: Latvian meness, Ancient Greek μείς (mes), Latin mensis, Russian ме́сяц (mesyats). English mind, Latin mens, and Sanskrit मनस् are all related, from PIE stem *men- relating to thought. Note - the reason for the n disappearing in Sanskrit to Hindi in मास was that the original n was a zero-grade next to a laryngeal, and this tends to cause the laryngeal to absorb the zero-grade n in Indo-Iranian words. Greek and Slavic did similar things later, but for different reasons (Greek converts ns -> s, Slavic put a k next to the n and then sound changed nk -> ts). *men - derived words had no laryngeal.
The three Tocharian languages aren't ancient, they're attested from the 4th to 9th Century CE, roughly, making them contemporary of Classical Armenian, Koine Greek, Vulgar Latin, Gothic/Early Old Norse, Old Welsh/Old Irish, and Late Proto-Slavic/Early Old Church Slavonic. They're about as sound-change developed as Koine by the point we find them attested. Hittite is from the 2nd millenium BCE though, so it is extremely old for an attested Indo-European language. As for interesting Hittite to Germanic cognates, uhhh, the word for 'grass' is from the same root? Sorry, most cognates are actually pretty mundane.
One thing that caught my attention is how an animal and the food it eats sort of are opposites in different Germanic languages. In German and Scandinavian languages, squirrel is "Eichorn" and "Ekorn", while the nut (?) they eat is "Acorn" in English.
Marie Lastname el.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Διόσκουροι don’t know the translation to English but you can see the name is due to those heroes of ancient times.Before we describe something we need the actual idea behind it right?If I am correct it’s due to their helmets of been like the tail of squirrel with some fancy hairs or something similar like the helmet of romans commanders.
Marie Lastname also the story or myth or whatever says that those two brothers kastor and polydeukis was hiding inside a tree cause they had robbed some guys.
Great video and explanation. I've been interested in linguistics ever since I read Charlton Laird's 'The Miracle of Language'. Studying and understanding linguistics is in a way studying and understanding how humans think. Keep up the good work.
@@irgendwer3610 I'm replying specifically to the idea that Har Simaja put forth : (Judaism and Christianity not being among them of course) Your point makes no sense in that context.
Ghutós rings a bell. When I was learning Modern Indo-European, one of the first sentences I was dealing with was "I'm doing sacred libations" = "Sakrá dhidhēmi ghutá" and "These druids are making a sacred libation" = "Drúwides toi sakróm dhedhn̥ti ghutóm". But I never knew it was the root of English "God".
@@superstructure23 The motto of the project of Modern Indo-European is the following: "Promoting North-West Indo-European as a modern language, with continuous reference to the parent Late Proto-Indo-European language." So it is a project of a few academics who want to make North-West dialect of Late PIE accessible to non-academic enthusiasts by creating resources for them in the form of texts, videos, manuals, self-learning guidebooks. In a sense, they are bridging the huge gap between the academic side of reconstructing PIE and the modern methods of language learning. Have a look at academiaprisca.org
Great stuff. Linguistics is endlessly fascinating. Reminds me a bit of the study of universal archetypes in dreams. The water/pouring/God insight was worth the video alone.
2:00 -- Water. The waiter brought vats of water to fill my vessel and vase. I was so much wetter that I waded until I was washed up and my vascular was wasted.
God, I once got into the most heated argument with a classmate (I think his native language was something Semitic) who could not be convinced that Greek and Latin weren't 'basically the same language'. I mean. I guess he was kind of right, but in a really, really general sense, you feel me?
Wow, wow, wow... now you're really exaggerating. Greece and latin differ lexicaly, morphologically and grammaticaly very much. It's almost like saying french and russian are same languages. While connection is probably there (we never can't say for sure, can't we?) it isn't, by no means, the same! (also latin may have been a made-up standard, like today's Hochdeutch is... back then, they didn't even refer to latin as latin, but as "grammar"... they didn't take latin classes, they took grammar classes)
@@DetectiveAndrey Yeah that was my point with my classmate. Like, I guess if you come from a background where your native language isn't even tangentially related to PIE (which he did) I can kind of see the logic, but he was still super wrong.
@@kariscoyne1886 I mean in what kind of sense was he wrong?! It isn't the same, just connected. Especcially if his mothertongue was semitic, then he would feel the similarity even stronger as an 'outsider'...
This is the first video of Simon's that I have seen, and I have to say that I am very impressed. You obviously find the subject fascinating and certainly know your subject, thanks for uploading.
Amazing!!! agros is the same in greek -> αγρος. So the greek word for "farmer" is "αγρο-της". Also αγρ-ιος (masculine) which means fierce/wild /untamed. PS : I really enjoy your videos Simon
Fantastic, thanks. Halfway, I just had to make this remark. I am Dutch and speak and write English, German and French. Did Latin and Greek, although I largely forgot my Greek. Your derivation of the word 'god' from meanings like 'a jar' and 'to pour' and 'leaking', struck me for it also reveals the Germanic and Dutch words for gutter and to pour (a fluid): gutter
I was wondering if the original meaning might have been pouring rain and/or pouring rivers (living waters) not just pouring out a libation or pouring a drink.
In Afrikaans, 'loodgieter' is the word for plumber. It literally means a lead-pourer (or caster) I suppose. Plumber comes from the Latin word for lead, of course.
The French word 'goutte' (meaning 'drop', as in a drop of water) may have the same origin. See en.wiktionary.org/wiki/goutte#Etymology_2 and en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gutta#Latin.
Pouring a little of your drink on the ground for the gods was a common feature in ancient greek societies, probably many other. A small sacrifice like the sanskrit word. I wonder, since this happend before you got to drink of course, maybe it is related to praying before a meal.
The notion that the word “pour” might have a relationship to the word “God” it’s pretty interesting. I was working on a translation of an Italian poet named Christina Campo, who became a very hyper Catholic, let’s say hyper- traditional catholic phase late in her life in reaction to the liberalization of the Catholic rite in the early 60s. In one poem, she intones to God, “chrism poured out is your name.” I thought this was a pretty striking phrase, but now that I see an association between pouring and the name of God, it seems very ancient, maybe even more ancient than what she was reaching for.
Given that the Greeks performed libations, and I believe some other ancient societies in Eurasia as well, that makes sense that pouring was considered a religious act, probably by several societies originating from the first PIE speakers.
I have wonfered for years about where the english word "god" comes from, and i have never once found anyone who has tried it. Here you are, casually sauntering past it like old hat. Thank you.
The spanish word for droplet is 'gota', while the verb to drip is 'gotear'. And the word for futile is 'futíl' with the 'u' pronounced as in put and the emphasis in the 'i' like the word 'until', which sounds similar to 'gotear' in an abstract way.
I speak spanish and I must say that I cannot find any similarity in expression between gotear and futil honestly. Even if it would be so, gotear is just a way of transforming gota like you can do with any word - mear, for example.
Am really liking the videos. Brings me back to Linguistics in college but your material is even more interesting. Lovely garden shots. Best regards. G (Ire)
When a small child just gaining consciousness about relationships my world was my immediate family - - > my father, my mother, my brother my sister. Then I knew my cousins and I were a family due to common grandparents etc. Then I realised I could relate to all Kashmiris and Punjabis as mine own (I am from a Kashmiri Punjabi mix Hindu family) Then I could see the whole India was my one big family. And lo behold! Now my family through common ancestors spans from England, France, Italy, Germany to Russia Ukraine , to Iran, to even Australia, New Zealand and US-of-A. (sorry for missing out and not writing all) Language helped me uncover my vast vast family. Thank you ancestors. Thank you Sanskrit
Interesting also that close relative words 'father, mother, brother' are so stable among the IE family. Other fundamental words - numbers, body parts, common animals, colours etc - are also the slowest to change because we learn them so young and we don't change their meaning because they are so valuable. This is what the concept of the Swadesh List is about - you can get a very good feel for the relatedness of languages - and of the systemic changes between of the type Simon describes - from comparing the 207 words of the Swadesh list between languages.
To provide an example of this, we can look at the Welsh word for love. Welsh - Caru (verb), Cariad (noun) Irish - Caraid Latin - Carus, Cārĭtās Italian - Caro French - Cher Sanskrit- Cāru English - Care, Caress, Cherish, Charity
Please make a video about how the words "wheel" and "culture" share the same PIE root (*kʷel-). I was interested whether English "wheel" and Slavic "kolo", "koleso" are cognates (yes, they are), so I looked at their etymology and discovered that they share the same root with Latin "cultura" (culture), "coleo" (to cultivate) and even the Greek πόλος/polos (later borrowed by Latin as "polus"). So, wheel, culture, and pole (like Northern or Southern Pole) share the common PIE root *kʷel-. It's amazing!
Awesome video, including the nature finish. I've been binging your videos lately and they're lovely. I'd love to learn Latin for so many reasons! It's all fascinating! 😄
I’d love you to look into old west norse vs English. I hear pronunciations in Welsh and Irish for instance that correlate with Icelandic and I notice that even though English is very different there seem to be similarities maybe via the Faroe Islands?
Modern Icelandic's pronunciation has changed an enormous amount over the last 800-1000 years in terms of vowels and (to a lesser extent) consonants, so a lot of similarities might just be coincidence (for example, pronouncing without voicing in Welsh and Icelandic). However, you would expect at least a little bit of Scandinavian vocabulary to have persisted in some Irish dialects.
Simon Roper I would love to see a video on your view of Icelandic language, it’s such a beautiful song to hear... I would love to learn it but it’s complicated due to all the rules and then the many exceptions to those rules!
Fascinating & entertaining. 'If only' pops into my head everytime I've watched one of your videos although may be it's more a function of being retired and having time to watch & digest info but I wish back in the 70s a careers/uni advisor had said anything about study of languages, archaeology et al. I may have had a very different life. Or not. I may not have ended in Australia and that would have had serious quincequonces for my two kids 😁 Thanks Simon!
Funny, because "pour" in German is "Gießen" (giessen) and the double "s" (scharfes S) is a consonant shift from the letter "t" so you can see just how closely related God, Gott, Gieten, guthan, gheu-, and even the Greek "khein" for "pour" all are and have a common ancestry
Excellent video, but I found it weird that you didn’t include any of the Iranian languages under “Indo-Iranian”, like Persian, but Sanskrit (ancient/out of common use) was listed On that note, just as a fun fact, the Persian word for god is “khoda” /xo’dā:/ - I was surprised to hear how similar it was to the proto-Germanic
Can you list a Persian word that derives from the same root? I know a bunch of Sanskrit words that derive from the same word are in common use today in its descendant languages.
The to-pour thing reminds me of shiva and the big fountain on top of his head. Google 'shiva head fountain' or something. It symbolises giver of knowledge/grace.
God, I love shit like this. I appreciate coming home and being able to watch this after a long day of studying and working with subjects I tbh have absolutely no passion for.. lol I hope he doesn't qu*t
Props for your interest in the great science of historical linguistics. Two small things to help you along: 'Kurgan' is pronounced with a voiced velar plosive, not an affricate, as it's a Russian loan. 'Chalcolithic' then again is pronounced with an initial voiceless velar plosive (again, not an affricate), because it's a loan from Greek, where the word khalkos ("copper") started with a chi, i.e. a voiceless velar fricative today or a voiceless velar aspirated plosive in the olden days. Keep the videos coming. Love your content on old British languages.
How about looking for a relation between "buddha" (the awakened one), modern Russian "будить" ("budit'", to wake someone up) and these "ghew-ghutos-ghuda...god" words? BTW, "god" in Russian is "бог" ("bog"), is considered to be related to Sanskrit "bhagas" (the one that gives), and also to "богат(ый)" ("bogat(y)") - the rich one (usually adjective). Maybe "the one who gives" has blended with "the one who pours / fills the (ritual / metaphorical / sacrificial) cup"?
@@blahblah24681357 There is no relation between those words. Spanish dar comes from latin Donar, like in Catalan, preserved as Donar; it has no connection to Dios, which comes from the genitive form of Jupiter. Jupiter is "Ius Pater" and this from old Italic "Dious Pater", in Greek, the Genitive form of Zeus is Dios, and in Old High German "Tyr" is written Ziu. These all stem from the Pre-IE word for the sky. Dios Pater (Greek) or Dious Pater (Latin), and by extension Zeus and Iouis (Jowis) mean Sky, or the Sky father.
@@RoderickVI Why are you so sure of how and where those words came to be? Why do you always ignore Slavic languages? What if it was the other way around. And those words are related with each other but came from proto slavic. Why can't that be?
When you say that you know the pit grave culture only dealt with one type of metal because they had only one word for it, how do you reconcile that lack of words with the fact that *we* have only been able to reconstruct a handful of their words? Did they truly only have one generic word meaning ‘metal’ or have we merely been unable, to date, to uncover them?
This is really well made, thanks! A nitpick: the word Kurgan is pronounced with a hard G. As for pouring as a ritual, we have evidence of libation in classical Antiquity, as well as proto-German and proto-Norse runic inscriptions with just one word 'alu', most likely meaning ale, a ceremonial drink.
Thank you, I was going to chuck in a disclaimer that I'd never actually heard 'Kurgan' pronounced! I'll bear that in mind :) And I'm not that familiar with classical religious practice, but that doesn't surprise me! Pouring seems to have significance in a lot of world religions, Indo-European or otherwise.
The short i was my bane trying to learn Sanskrit (besides trying to memorize sandhi rules). I'd ALWAYS forget to write it before its consonant, and have to erase or squeeze it in.
@@YuryPanikov initially I thought so but that might be a keyboard problem. I tried to search the world online but couldn't find it. But the transcript does verify that there is a mistake.
Cognates are a fascinating topic. There are many words where it is easy to see the connections between even relatively distant languages within the Indoeuropean family. I think the first deciphered sentence of Hittite (by Bedřich Hrozný, a Czech professor) had the word water in it very similar, it was: "Ninda-an ezzatteni, waatar-ma ekuuteni" Bread (you will) eat, water (you will) drink." That ninda is taken from Sumerian (bread) but the rest of these words are fairly similar. Ezzatteni to Eat/essen/jíst etc. Waatar is perfectly clear, ekuutteni for drink is quite probably related to "aqua" as this is what people drink most often, at least at that time. Cognates are my passion, but I dare to look for them on a global scale, and they exist. It would be interesting to know what you think about this. I have a few e-booklets in the series 123+ Words from the Proto-World and the last one, Fire Burn Kindle Ignite is free today and tomorrow - and what I found may surprise you, but the words related to fire (fyr, pyr, palo, pul etc.) are everywhere - Ancient America to Asia to Europe to Ancient Australia. Water is also omnipresent with slight variations, often in the form "aqua" and similar, also globally. There are at least 100 such words that look like global cognates that I already collected.
That's correct we say 'dokhtar' .It means girl. It's funny how are connected like that. i even think that Europeans and Iranians looked very similar in physical appearance prior to Arab, Turk and Mongol invasions and subsequent 'mixing' (rap3) of the Iranian people
A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished. He who is grateful for the existence of music. He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology. Two workmen playing, in a cafe in the South, a silent game of chess. The potter, contemplating color and form. The typographer who set this page well, though it may not please him. A woman and man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto. He who strokes a sleeping animal. He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him. He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson. He who prefers others to be right. These people, unaware, are saving the world.
Mind. Blown... I'm late to the party here, but digging back the layers of language here makes me think of religious connotations. I was looking at one of your Old English videos and then this one and realized that, very simply, when you peel back the layers of languages, these earlier languages, earlier cultures, likely passed on their religions, too, and they evolved in new regions along with the languages. When you strip back to the cognate and walk forward, you can see how one god can become multiple names and associated with different attributes, because of various climates and evolving languages... You can see how God (the word itself) becomes God in English today, but if you go to the Proto Indo-European, how many different branches come off of the original word from pour/cast? Are people pouring their beliefs / love? Sacrifice? We don't know for sure, but the end NAME changes. Þórr vs Þunor vs þonar. God vs Deus vs θεός
For me some clever Eastern Europeans R1a came to India about 4000 years ago , influenced their religion, culture , language, number's figures and military. Some other branches lived all over Eastern Europe, shared similar languages.
Proto-Indo-Europeans were pouring one out for the homies 4000 years ago
real early pastoralisation hours, smash that mf like button if you worshipping sky god
7 to 9 thousand years ago
widhbnw efDwdwDW The earliest written Greek is that old.
M. Hall source? From what I can find the earliest written Greek was 1450 BCE, or about 3500 years ago at most. Hell, the earliest written text we know of is “only” 5400 years old
@@Scyllax aaah yeea
"Acker" is also a modern German word for a (usually freshly ploughed) field.
Doesn't have to be freshly plowed just agriculturally used.
"åker" has the same meaning and origin in Norwegian
Yup, same in Dutch
I'm not sure if it's as free as you're describing it. I'd say "akker" just means a field on which "agriculture" is being performed.
Colloquially, "ackern" can also mean working hard. I believe it comes from the fact that agriculture requires hard work.
Marco Naujokat but Danish preserved the exact same spelling as in Latin ; ager
This is why I love studying these things. The little glimpses into cultures and people long since gone from the world.
The Blood of these people still flows in your veins.
It reallyy is awe inspiring.
Not completely gone. Europeans may no longer "pour libations" to their gods, but Hindu worship ("aarti") still involves pouring offerings.
In the context of phonological change, you could say that vowels are the flesh of words and consonants the skeleton. Bones are more durable than flesh. In the same way, vowels are more subject to distortion over time than consonants because when making vocalic sounds there is less (in terms of the physical apparatus within the mouth and throat) for them to hang on to. If when comparing words from cognate languages you strip out the vowels, the remaining consonants often betray relationship between these words more easily.
Interesting. In Hebrew, only the consonants, the "bones" are written. The "flesh" of the words are implied.
But that doesn't mean you can ignore vowels
Imo only European languages have large vowel inventory that keep moving around. In the development of modern Indo-Aryan from Old Indo Aryan the vowels didn't change but many words lost most of their consonants.
For example Hindi for boar is "sūar" from Sanskrit "sūkara" note the k lost. The word for mother is "mã" from Sanskrit "mātā/mātr" notice the t lost.
*ghew- actually survived with a more literal meaning in the English "gush" and the German "gießen," meaning "pour"
But cover yourself , when your garden becomes ,gesprengt'.
Geotan 'yey-ohtan' meaning 'to pour' modern dialectal English yote 'to pour.' Gush is a loanword...
Goutter in french -> to drip
@@adrienchantry2650 Nice one! "Goutte" - dew
There was also giutan in the dead East Germanic tongue Gothic. Gush is said to be a loanword from either Middle Dutch Guysen or Norse Gusa.
Compare Old Norse geysa (“to gush”), German gießen (“to pour”), Old English ġēotan ("to pour"; > English yote).
The word “God” and the word “futile” having the same ancestral root feels very cosmic horror
This is like saying useful and useless having the same root is ironic. No, it's not, it's very easy to turn a word's meaning into the complete opposite using affixes
It's also weird that one of the main doctrines of Christianity is "kenosis", a word which means to empty out and is used to describe the incarnation.
@@Jasonbeck2753 a life poured out as a sacrice to God, Jesus.
I was a pretty astonished to see it's cognate to Persian خدا /xodɒː/ but it makes sense when I think about it.
Feels about right really.
You have a great talent of making what should be very boring actually very interesting. BBC 4 should give you a series.
Thank you! :) I don't know about that, but I wouldn't complain if they did - RUclips seems like a good platform for reaching people at the moment, anyway.
@@simonroper9218 you should come up with a rough idea and contact them they might go with it.
If you get a show please let us know. I don’t watch bbc4 in the US.
BBC1 !
brilliant idea! There's a few experts on RUclips that are as as good, if not better, as some of those on TV.
I must say I rather enjoy this and hold you in high regard and admiration.
Things like this always leave me in awe of the sheer number of human beings whose unwitting efforts preserved these bits of culture, just generation after generation of older people passing on words and ideas to younger people, linking all of us today back to these humans millennia ago.
Seriously!
And to think this is from such scant evidence, too!
“Here’s a spicy one for you” lol
TheLoafaBread 5:02
He’s honestly the best 😂
This is quite interesting from a Swedish-speaking perspective, where the word of God and to pour are in one case quite similar.
Gudarna: the gods
Gjutarna: those who pour/cast. - a word nowadays most often used while talking about working with liquid metals.
In this sense, the gods are the shapers and molders of existence, I suppose.
StronglikeLion3 Det har jag inte tänkt på, men du kan ha rätt.
Now that I think about it, gieten in Dutch means "to pour". And yes, the word for god in Dutch is "god".
yato boi in German it’s Gott for God and Gießen for pouring which isn’t far from dutch. Taking the past form of Gießen is Goss which is closer to Gott. It’s pretty cool but unsurprising how close the central european languages are, together with scandinavian languages. In writing I can understand a lot of Swedish (had only a few lessons) and Dutch because they share tons of related words.
Most likely means “those to whom we pour out things.” Not anything like “shaper.” The gods lowercase were often very weak spirits who needed appeasement.
Don't forget that the German term for 'creator' (Schöpfer) literally means 'the one who scoops/ladles'.
my taste in youtube videos changes constantly and we all go through stages but I can honestly say this channel is something so special.
I enjoy educational videos but often they overload you with information and , although satisfying to watch, little information stays with you. Every time I watch one of your videos I learn something that stays with me and finds a place in my conscious mind through my free time - you're dealing with a bank of information that was so hard for people to first uncover and explaining it perfectly to layman such as myself.
Thanks so much for doing what you do Simon, I think another heartwarming thing about historic linguistics is reiterating how connected our cultures are around the world, language is such a definitive characteristic and it's truly humbling to see how in reality it is a dynamic bank of loose, flowing boundaries rather than the seemingly ex nihilo solid library we often see it as.
I'm a Biochemistry student and have always loved history, especially the medieval period - you've really rekindled my interest for it and I must say thank you so much
I agree with this so much! So many channels have all kinds of interesting content that make me say, "Huh. That's interesting." And then never think of it again. Channels like this one, that allow you to absorb and digest the material, so to speak, are few and far between.
I’m also interested in history, but language and linguistics have made me more imaginative about the past than any history book.
Thank you for watching! I worried the sort of text-and-diagrams format might be a bit much, but it's good to know people are still interested, particularly from other more hard-sciencey fields.
@@simonroper9218 Don't mind the format, because it is nice enough to just listen, and then if I'm more energetic/interested the text-and-diagrams adds something, but aren't absolutely necessary.
And I was actually just thinking something along similar lines as William Crann. I don't really know what it is that makes your videos stand out. Maybe that they aren't overproduced, and that they are thoughtful instead of "Hey, isn't this interesting! And this here is even more so! And *this* will blow your mind!". You sort of offer us a suitable morsel and invite us to think about it.
Biochemistry is an interesting source of linguistic innovation.
As an Indian i was very surprised when i first learnt french numbers. The similarity was just too obvious with our own languages. Later i carefully noted many cognates. Mort -mrutyu dent -daant Donner dena Dieu Dev and many which now don't come to mind. It is so surprising that a country which is so far away has cognates with our language. And of course pater pita mater mata I'm unsure though of Equus vulg cheval ashva me sounds referring to self tu tu for you.
Latin equus is cognate with Sanskrit अश्व (áśva), both from Proto-Indo-European *h₁éḱwos (“horse”). French cheval is from Late Latin caballus, which in earlier Latin had had the more specific meaning "pack horse" and is of Celtic (Gaulish) origin (see en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caballus#Latin for more on this).
My culture doesn’t have much Indian influence but tell me if I’m wrong
Chicken is cognate with ‘Tiki’ like tiki masala, Indian food influences my culture though lol. This is less obvious but in corrupting tiki to chiki then to chike you can get prettt close to English
Pratik K I’m Australian but had the same experience in India and Nepal. There were too many words that were similar for it to be a coincidence. It was so strange to be sitting at the base of the Himalayas and they were speaking a language with the same ancestor as what they speak in England at the other end of the continent.
@@emiliocarver2061
Modern English chicken came from Old English ċycen, which came from Proto-Germanic *kiukīną (or *kukkīną)
Considering that tiki & *kiukīną look nothing alike, I dont think theyre cognates
@@emiliocarver2061 no. Tiki or tika doesn't mean chicken. The word for chicken is murg.
The Proto-Germanic word for God “ɣo.ðɑ” sounds similar to Persian word for God “xoda”
Yeah that's the main idea
Which is similar to Star War's Yoda....
Mike Poulin so baby Yoda is basically baby Jesus
Unfortunately, that's just a similarity by chance: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7#Persian
Scifi borrowed a lot from linguistics: Star Trek's Ferengi is obviously very close to the Persian word for "stranger/ foreigner", but Idk how that is spelled.
I remember reading about "toast" and "thirst" being connected because they both mean "to dry"
Throat is dry so thirst
Bread becomes dry so toast!
:o
I’ve always been very bad at learning languages and even though I’ve taken classes for Latin, Greek, Spanish, and Mandarin I’ve never been able to grasp new languages well or find them terribly interesting. But, this is quickly becoming one of my favorite RUclips channels. I love how passionate you are about this and how much detail you can give. It’s not something I’ve ever been good at so it’s interesting to watch someone who is so passionate and well informed.
linguistics isn't the same as learning languages tho, just like a scientist that studies astrophysics doesn't need to go to space, linguists don't need to learn languages (or to be fluent in them)
cheers
Also, the Latin “preces effundere” was a common phrase which meant “to pour forth/out prayers” or, generally, “to pray”
So i would guess that "precious" (of which i know that it has a similar meaning as "preces") is somehow related to the verb "to pray"?
Dear Simon - another fascinating episode - this time it was like linguistic archeology. Thank you for the excellent content and the effort you put into the diagrams. I loved the nature scenes at the end. Deeply pleasing.
Not knowing the origins of English words, it has long fascinated me how similar the language of everyday farm life is between English and German or Swiss German: I bake bread - ich backe Brot / I feed my cows - ich füttere meine Kühe / swine - Schweine / Horse - Ross (not Pferd!) / sheep - Schafe / I mow grass - ich mähe Gras and so on. One gets the impression that not only were the roots deeply related but the lifestyle continued to be very similar. Even Snottynose - Schnuddernase! (Swiss German) I love that one. And you mentiond Acker - field - related to acre.
Try and get hold of "A Mouthful of Air: Language, Languages...Especially English" by Anthony Burgess (author of 'A Clockwork Orange'). I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy it. Link: www.amazon.com/Mouthful-Air-Language-Languages-Especially/dp/0688119352 He shows similarities between Arabic and German, English, French for family members for example.
All the best, Rob in Switzerland
Thank you! I wish I knew more about P.I.E, it would be fascinating to make a few more videos about. And the German füttern has a direct English cognate in 'fodder,' although it's not used so much outside of dialects and old books nowadays. Thank you for the link as well, I never knew Burgess had written about linguistics.
I also know the word "schnoddernase" from northern german dialects, like berlin dialect or frisian/plattdütsch, dialects that are more closely related to english than standard german. But the word isn't used in bavaria and south germany in general, nor in austria. So how did it survive in switzerland?
I feel like you're sitting me down for a serious personal talk.
Pouring as a religious ritual, an offering of some liquid, is frequently referred to in the Torah.
In Croatian we call it the poured sacrifice, in which case the word poured actually acquired a noun form and that noun is used exclusively in that context.
From Wiktionary: libation; The act of pouring a liquid, most often wine, in sacrifice on the ground, on a ritual object, or on a victim, in honor of some deity.
Yomiko Readman and in Hinduism. Water is poured on certain idols for blessings.
The pouring as a religious ritual is still a huge part of hinduism and is also considered as a poured sacrifice.
Libation is almost universal.
Mooooom! Simon is talking about cognates again!
When a youtube recommendation is actually interesting.
Instead of "Wasser" it is also called "Water" in northern Germany.
The High German consonant shifts occured in the south of the German speaking world and has spread northward since then. The consonants of the plattdeusch languages of norhern Germany are much closer to Dutch, English and even Scandinavian than Hochdeutsch is.
Wasser - Hase - Течь
Water - Hidro -Gidro - Жидкость - Агрегатное
Разные корни
@@kek2961
Water - Вода
In Afrikaans southern Africa, we pronounce it almost similar to the root but with a longer ä sound
@@ukyoize Так же как и A-QUA смысл примерно не твердая. [v/h/g/hw)o[t/d/g/y/j] - жидкая, редкая
Агрегатное состояние
An possible interesting cognate is 'promulgate' from Latin promulgare. The 'mulg' element might be a related to milk. So to promulgate or promote an idea might mean to 'milk' it.
От молоть.mil-ak. Само же "молоко" от гладить, цедить, в целом звукоподражание
Or even to extract or extend.
@widhbnw efDwdwDW mleko - PL
You should write a book someday, I would be really interested in reading about linguistics from your point of view.
I'm writing one about the development of Cumbrian at the moment, it's good to know there would be a bit of interest :)
@@simonroper9218 Chears! And the best of luck to your endeavors Mr.Roper!
@@simonroper9218 I was rather amused that you consider Cumbrian to be a separate language, although in reality you most likely regard it as a dialect of English. I have worked with many Cumbrians, and some of them are not easy to understand. I remember that the word 'table' was pronounced something like 'chabbel'; I never did work out whether it was due to accent or dialect.
I lived in Glasgow for six months many years ago and once I had worked out that the Glaswegian accent frequently just ignores the letters 'B', 'F', 'G', 'L', and 'T', or maybe just acknowledges the letter's presence with the use of an alternative pronunciation, I found that I could understand the locals a lot better. Being asked the question 'are you watching the football tonight?' just left me utterly baffled as to what language they were speaking in when I first moved there, it sounded like 'Are ya Wayne Fooeny?' to my unaccustomed ears.
@@GeorgeSPAMTindle chabbel = щабель
@@simonroper9218 may I ask where you come from, Simon? Are you from Cumbria?
Fun fact: in swedish (which from my understanding also is a germanic language) the word "åker" means field. I had never noticed or even thought about the connection between åker and agri before, so thanks :)
BrekoElmoff Same in English. I never thought about the potential similarity between “agri-“ and “acre.”
I seem to remember that in AltHochDeutsch and in MittelHochDeutsch the word "Ackermann" meant the modern "Bauer".
@@GiandomenicoDeMola In Dutch it's "akker" and we have the same last name "akkerman" which meant the same as the German last name. That word here is eventually replaced to "boer" (probably from "bouwer" which sounds the same as "Bauer").
@@hugovangalen that's it, my friend.
@@WilliamFord972 agri- in English probably comes from Norman and thus Latin. However, acre stands a good chance of coming from old norse.
Proto Indo-European??
_[Laughs in Basque]_
Basks don't laugh.
Polish people do laugh in all the languages they know. Ha ha ha :) Thanks for the reason :D
In Serbia as well.When you learn a bit more you're gonna bou to the most hated today...
@@TaipeiGeek The fun part may be that even tho Basks may not laugh it IS possible for osasunaitor to laugh IN Basque :D
There was a fire in a cinema in Bilbao and sadly many died trying to get out one door. The police said you shouldn't put all your Basques in the one exit.
I love your videos and the insight they give me as to the way our ancestors used to live, talk, and think. Thank you for the work you put into these and I look forward to many more.
West Frisian still “wetter” with audible thrilled r. And fronted a>e. And eker, ikker for “field, acre”. Dutch has non-fronted akker.
English and Frisian have a lot of phonological developments in common! I think it would be an extremely easy language for English speakers to learn if there were more resources dedicated to it.
Well, the phonology is quite different (more conservative in many respects) and not as much Scandinavian/Norman French influence would make it harder (it’s close to Dutch in many respects, and grown more so, due to being a minority language within the Netherlands and everybody being bilingual nowadays). But a lot of core vocabulary has remained closer to English’ Germanic core.
@@simonroper9218 Yes, the phonological parallelisms between English and Frisian are very striking -- a classic example is tsiis, the Frisian word for cheese (in contrast to Dutch kaas); tsiis, cheese, and kaas are all descendants of the Proto-Germanic *kāsijaz, a borrowing from Latin cāseus, but only English and Frisian have undergone the changes which make tsiis and cheese sound so similar, and so very different from the Dutch.
I'm not so sure, though, that this fact alone would make Frisian "an extremely easy language" for English-speakers to learn, given the language-disruptive effects of Norse and French on English and the grammatical and other influences of Dutch upon Frisian in the period since Old English and Old Frisian were pretty well mutually comprehensible by communities on both sides of the North Sea.
For those interested in learning more about Frisian, see ruclips.net/video/XqeJn-MAC8Q/видео.html and the comments (and sound samples) to be found at www.languageandlaw.org/FRISIAN/FRISIAN.HTM
@@Ynysmydwr In my dialect of German Cheese is Kjees, where the Kj sound is like a Ch sound in English, but Ks followed by fronted vowels always makes the Kj sound in my dialect, like a C in Italian or Romanian would.
@@hoathanatos6179 Interesting. Would I be correct in guessing that your dialect is Plautdietsch?
I hope I recall this correctly - the word "widow" has cognates in many Indo-European languages such as Russian, Spanish and Sanskrit that all still mean the same as the English word. Since they aren't loanwords but actual cognates, it's evidence that the Proto-Indo-European had marriage of some kind. It's fascinating indeed that the words we speak today reveal aspects of how people lived thousands of years ago.
Most words for in-laws remained as well, e.g. Lain socer, levir, nurus, gener for father-, brother-, daughter-, son-in-law are ultimate of the same origin as Russian svyokor, dever', snokha and zyat'. They probably really kept in touch.
My god. I am absolutely loving this video. Have had thoughts about deeper evolution of languages so much recently, and this video is just splendid! Furthermore, there are just so many interesting chains, makes me see the world differently. Thanks Simon.
Fascinating! I've often thought about how we carry within the deepest folds of our language(s) the germ, the embryo, the "Keim", as Germans would say, of ancient, very ancient, ancestral modes of seeing the world, the earliest Weltanschauungen... Thank you
My favourite comparison is ‘Punjab’ (Punj+ab) which means ‘five rivers’. Direct cognates in Welsh ‘pump afon’ from Brythonic ‘pempe abona’.
Puna / Polna (not to confuse with just "pol") also in Slavic languages means full. I guess because 5 fingers is a full fist.
When I was teaching Dutch to refugees I had a lot of speakers of Persians in my class, first thing was that they picked up Dutch a lot easyer than speakers of nonrelated languages, nd after a while I found out that there were lots of cognates. the word for doughter is nearly identical in both languages.
The modern Iranian word for "daughter" is virtually identical to that English word, and apparently the modern Dutch word as well. Oddly other Indoeuropean languages in Europe have lost cognant words for 'daughter" like Spanish. The Spanish word is hija. (pronounced "ee-hah").
thank you for the plants in the end. greetings from brazil celebrating your sensibility
Fascinating, I love finding out two seemingly unrelated words are cognates
Hey Simon, great video. Interesting cognates between Germanic god and Latin futile, It's fascinating how language can change and evolve over time. I'm curious if you have delved into The more ancient IE languages of Tocharian and Hittite/Luwian? If so if there are any interesting cognates with their words comoared to the germanic languages. As a side note, I've had a discussion with someone who claims that the Old Norse word for the moon, Máni, is cognate with a sanskrit word for the Mind. I would very much like your opinion on that subject for clarity. Thanks and keep up the great work!
I was hoping he was going to say "Luwian" for the original culture.
There are multiple Sanskrit words for mind but the one which looks similar to Máni is मनस् (Manas). Maybe they are cognate.
@@islandsunset i think mann is cognate with latin mens even English word mind
@@islandsunset Unrelated. Máni is cognate to English 'moon', and modern Hindi मास (mas), so with a root meaning 'moon, month (one moon cycle)'. Also related: Latvian meness, Ancient Greek μείς (mes), Latin mensis, Russian ме́сяц (mesyats). English mind, Latin mens, and Sanskrit मनस् are all related, from PIE stem *men- relating to thought.
Note - the reason for the n disappearing in Sanskrit to Hindi in मास was that the original n was a zero-grade next to a laryngeal, and this tends to cause the laryngeal to absorb the zero-grade n in Indo-Iranian words. Greek and Slavic did similar things later, but for different reasons (Greek converts ns -> s, Slavic put a k next to the n and then sound changed nk -> ts). *men - derived words had no laryngeal.
The three Tocharian languages aren't ancient, they're attested from the 4th to 9th Century CE, roughly, making them contemporary of Classical Armenian, Koine Greek, Vulgar Latin, Gothic/Early Old Norse, Old Welsh/Old Irish, and Late Proto-Slavic/Early Old Church Slavonic. They're about as sound-change developed as Koine by the point we find them attested. Hittite is from the 2nd millenium BCE though, so it is extremely old for an attested Indo-European language.
As for interesting Hittite to Germanic cognates, uhhh, the word for 'grass' is from the same root? Sorry, most cognates are actually pretty mundane.
incredible. so god and futile came from the same word. i love it
I would never have guessed that, etymology is quite interesting
One thing that caught my attention is how an animal and the food it eats sort of are opposites in different Germanic languages.
In German and Scandinavian languages, squirrel is "Eichorn" and "Ekorn", while the nut (?) they eat is "Acorn" in English.
Acorns are nuts.
In Greek we call squirrel Σκίουρος which is exactly the animal described with its physical apearance.
@@ΜιχΛαζ Explain. What does the word actually say?
Marie Lastname el.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Διόσκουροι don’t know the translation to English but you can see the name is due to those heroes of ancient times.Before we describe something we need the actual idea behind it right?If I am correct it’s due to their helmets of been like the tail of squirrel with some fancy hairs or something similar like the helmet of romans commanders.
Marie Lastname also the story or myth or whatever says that those two brothers kastor and polydeukis was hiding inside a tree cause they had robbed some guys.
The words Futile and God are cognates
Voltaire: *interesting*
Great video and explanation.
I've been interested in linguistics ever since I read Charlton Laird's 'The Miracle of Language'. Studying and understanding linguistics is in a way studying and understanding how humans think.
Keep up the good work.
The poured, the offered, the invoked.
"Pour" with religious connotations is a recurring trend- Christ means "anointed one" after all.
Many Indo-European religions had libations. (Judaism and Christianity not being among them of course)
The Greek word ‘Christ’ however *is* cognate through PIE to another spicy word, in fact two: grime, and grisly.
@@harsimaja9517 yeah but baptism involves pouring? Christ is know a little bit for that?
@@StoufSto that was way before any indo-european people converted to christianity
@@irgendwer3610 I'm replying specifically to the idea that Har Simaja put forth : (Judaism and Christianity not being among them of course)
Your point makes no sense in that context.
Yes this is some really fascinating stuff. Please keep it up. As others said this is quickly becoming one of my favourite channels
Ghutós rings a bell. When I was learning Modern Indo-European, one of the first sentences I was dealing with was "I'm doing sacred libations" = "Sakrá dhidhēmi ghutá" and "These druids are making a sacred libation" = "Drúwides toi sakróm dhedhn̥ti ghutóm".
But I never knew it was the root of English "God".
What is 'Modern' Indo-european if I may ask?
@@superstructure23 The motto of the project of Modern Indo-European is the following:
"Promoting North-West Indo-European as a modern language, with continuous reference to the parent Late Proto-Indo-European language."
So it is a project of a few academics who want to make North-West dialect of Late PIE accessible to non-academic enthusiasts by creating resources for them in the form of texts, videos, manuals, self-learning guidebooks. In a sense, they are bridging the huge gap between the academic side of reconstructing PIE and the modern methods of language learning. Have a look at academiaprisca.org
What's the second example? Welsh?
@@michaelflores9220 Both examples I've given are MIE (NWIE) and their English translations.
@@tymmiara5967 What is MIE
Great stuff. Linguistics is endlessly fascinating. Reminds me a bit of the study of universal archetypes in dreams. The water/pouring/God insight was worth the video alone.
2:00 -- Water. The waiter brought vats of water to fill my vessel and vase. I was so much wetter that I waded until I was washed up and my vascular was wasted.
If the people who spoke P.I.E. had a word for 'axel' (text from 8:58), they must've practiced ice skating. ;-) Great video!
God, I once got into the most heated argument with a classmate (I think his native language was something Semitic) who could not be convinced that Greek and Latin weren't 'basically the same language'. I mean. I guess he was kind of right, but in a really, really general sense, you feel me?
Wow, wow, wow... now you're really exaggerating. Greece and latin differ lexicaly, morphologically and grammaticaly very much. It's almost like saying french and russian are same languages. While connection is probably there (we never can't say for sure, can't we?) it isn't, by no means, the same! (also latin may have been a made-up standard, like today's Hochdeutch is... back then, they didn't even refer to latin as latin, but as "grammar"... they didn't take latin classes, they took grammar classes)
@@DetectiveAndrey Yeah that was my point with my classmate. Like, I guess if you come from a background where your native language isn't even tangentially related to PIE (which he did) I can kind of see the logic, but he was still super wrong.
@@kariscoyne1886 I mean in what kind of sense was he wrong?! It isn't the same, just connected. Especcially if his mothertongue was semitic, then he would feel the similarity even stronger as an 'outsider'...
@@DetectiveAndrey dude reread my original comment- he was the one arguing that they were the same
@@kariscoyne1886 ah, sorry, I missread it first.
This is the first video of Simon's that I have seen, and I have to say that I am very impressed. You obviously find the subject fascinating and certainly know your subject, thanks for uploading.
Your zeitgeist-influenced weltanschauung causes me to experience schadenfreude.
hehe
Not sure why this was in my recommended but this is honestly fascinating! Great video
Amazing!!! agros is the same in greek -> αγρος. So the greek word for "farmer" is "αγρο-της".
Also αγρ-ιος (masculine) which means fierce/wild /untamed.
PS : I really enjoy your videos Simon
And άγρα (agra) means intensive search or hunting because, I suppose, hunting also took place in the fields.
I could just listen for hours to nothing but these explanations of words that go from PIE roots to words in other languages. it's just so fascinating
Thank you, Simon. Very interesting indeed. Cheers.
I could easily watch an hour of you exampling different cognates and showing how they stem from PIE
Now this is interesting! You are an incredible linguist Baldrick.
Fantastic, thanks. Halfway, I just had to make this remark. I am Dutch and speak and write English, German and French. Did Latin and Greek, although I largely forgot my Greek. Your derivation of the word 'god' from meanings like 'a jar' and 'to pour' and 'leaking', struck me for it also reveals the Germanic and Dutch words for gutter and to pour (a fluid): gutter
I was wondering if the original meaning might have been pouring rain and/or pouring rivers (living waters) not just pouring out a libation or pouring a drink.
In Afrikaans, 'loodgieter' is the word for plumber. It literally means a lead-pourer (or caster) I suppose. Plumber comes from the Latin word for lead, of course.
The French word 'goutte' (meaning 'drop', as in a drop of water) may have the same origin. See en.wiktionary.org/wiki/goutte#Etymology_2 and en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gutta#Latin.
Pouring a little of your drink on the ground for the gods was a common feature in ancient greek societies, probably many other. A small sacrifice like the sanskrit word. I wonder, since this happend before you got to drink of course, maybe it is related to praying before a meal.
The notion that the word “pour” might have a relationship to the word “God” it’s pretty interesting. I was working on a translation of an Italian poet named Christina Campo, who became a very hyper Catholic, let’s say hyper- traditional catholic phase late in her life in reaction to the liberalization of the Catholic rite in the early 60s. In one poem, she intones to God, “chrism poured out is your name.” I thought this was a pretty striking phrase, but now that I see an association between pouring and the name of God, it seems very ancient, maybe even more ancient than what she was reaching for.
Given that the Greeks performed libations, and I believe some other ancient societies in Eurasia as well, that makes sense that pouring was considered a religious act, probably by several societies originating from the first PIE speakers.
I have wonfered for years about where the english word "god" comes from, and i have never once found anyone who has tried it.
Here you are, casually sauntering past it like old hat.
Thank you.
You can easily search most words' etymologies online. There are a few that nobody knows where they come from, though.
The spanish word for droplet is 'gota', while the verb to drip is 'gotear'. And the word for futile is 'futíl' with the 'u' pronounced as in put and the emphasis in the 'i' like the word 'until', which sounds similar to 'gotear' in an abstract way.
I speak spanish and I must say that I cannot find any similarity in expression between gotear and futil honestly. Even if it would be so, gotear is just a way of transforming gota like you can do with any word - mear, for example.
Delving so deep in linguistical and phonologic soil is tremendously interesting, to me. Great channel, by all means.
Here's a fav of mine!
Zygote, subjugate, yoke, and yoga all came from the same root! At least partially for subjugate
Am really liking the videos. Brings me back to Linguistics in college but your material is even more interesting. Lovely garden shots. Best regards. G (Ire)
When a small child just gaining consciousness about relationships my world was my immediate family - - > my father, my mother, my brother my sister.
Then I knew my cousins and I were a family due to common grandparents etc.
Then I realised I could relate to all Kashmiris and Punjabis as mine own (I am from a Kashmiri Punjabi mix Hindu family)
Then I could see the whole India was my one big family.
And lo behold!
Now my family through common ancestors spans from England, France, Italy, Germany to Russia Ukraine , to Iran, to even Australia, New Zealand and US-of-A. (sorry for missing out and not writing all)
Language helped me uncover my vast vast family.
Thank you ancestors.
Thank you Sanskrit
Interesting also that close relative words 'father, mother, brother' are so stable among the IE family. Other fundamental words - numbers, body parts, common animals, colours etc - are also the slowest to change because we learn them so young and we don't change their meaning because they are so valuable. This is what the concept of the Swadesh List is about - you can get a very good feel for the relatedness of languages - and of the systemic changes between of the type Simon describes - from comparing the 207 words of the Swadesh list between languages.
To provide an example of this, we can look at the Welsh word for love.
Welsh - Caru (verb), Cariad (noun)
Irish - Caraid
Latin - Carus, Cārĭtās
Italian - Caro
French - Cher
Sanskrit- Cāru
English - Care, Caress, Cherish, Charity
Please make a video about how the words "wheel" and "culture" share the same PIE root (*kʷel-). I was interested whether English "wheel" and Slavic "kolo", "koleso" are cognates (yes, they are), so I looked at their etymology and discovered that they share the same root with Latin "cultura" (culture), "coleo" (to cultivate) and even the Greek πόλος/polos (later borrowed by Latin as "polus"). So, wheel, culture, and pole (like Northern or Southern Pole) share the common PIE root *kʷel-. It's amazing!
:o
Awesome video, including the nature finish.
I've been binging your videos lately and they're lovely. I'd love to learn Latin for so many reasons! It's all fascinating! 😄
I’d love you to look into old west norse vs English. I hear pronunciations in Welsh and Irish for instance that correlate with Icelandic and I notice that even though English is very different there seem to be similarities maybe via the Faroe Islands?
Modern Icelandic's pronunciation has changed an enormous amount over the last 800-1000 years in terms of vowels and (to a lesser extent) consonants, so a lot of similarities might just be coincidence (for example, pronouncing without voicing in Welsh and Icelandic). However, you would expect at least a little bit of Scandinavian vocabulary to have persisted in some Irish dialects.
Simon Roper I would love to see a video on your view of Icelandic language, it’s such a beautiful song to hear... I would love to learn it but it’s complicated due to all the rules and then the many exceptions to those rules!
Totally off topic, but you do have the most mesmerizing eyes. Fascinating video as always, Simon.
Boston accent: “Ialways drop my ahhs , they always disappee-yuh, and wheyuh they go, I have no Eye-dear.
And I like ‘jimmies’ on my ice cream cones.”
That's a frickin wicked pissah...
Fascinating & entertaining. 'If only' pops into my head everytime I've watched one of your videos although may be it's more a function of being retired and having time to watch & digest info but I wish back in the 70s a careers/uni advisor had said anything about study of languages, archaeology et al. I may have had a very different life.
Or not.
I may not have ended in Australia and that would have had serious quincequonces for my two kids 😁
Thanks Simon!
Funny, because "pour" in German is "Gießen" (giessen) and the double "s" (scharfes S) is a consonant shift from the letter "t" so you can see just how closely related God, Gott, Gieten, guthan, gheu-, and even the Greek "khein" for "pour" all are and have a common ancestry
I really like the end section of shrubs in the wind. The front stuff was fascinating too.
Excellent video, but I found it weird that you didn’t include any of the Iranian languages under “Indo-Iranian”, like Persian, but Sanskrit (ancient/out of common use) was listed
On that note, just as a fun fact, the Persian word for god is “khoda” /xo’dā:/ - I was surprised to hear how similar it was to the proto-Germanic
Can you list a Persian word that derives from the same root? I know a bunch of Sanskrit words that derive from the same word are in common use today in its descendant languages.
You're tone is so erudite, you almost snuck past me with that "here's a spicy one for you" @5:00. ALMOST.
The to-pour thing reminds me of shiva and the big fountain on top of his head. Google 'shiva head fountain' or something. It symbolises giver of knowledge/grace.
I enjoy your videos very much, Simon. Glad to hear you're going to keep them coming!
God, I love shit like this. I appreciate coming home and being able to watch this after a long day of studying and working with subjects I tbh have absolutely no passion for.. lol I hope he doesn't qu*t
Do you actually look like Zoe Kazan?
If you like Indo-European language family then you should type Indo-European in Wikipedia that will enlight you with more interest.
@@lw4423 Hey ur the second person that's told me that haha
Props for your interest in the great science of historical linguistics. Two small things to help you along: 'Kurgan' is pronounced with a voiced velar plosive, not an affricate, as it's a Russian loan. 'Chalcolithic' then again is pronounced with an initial voiceless velar plosive (again, not an affricate), because it's a loan from Greek, where the word khalkos ("copper") started with a chi, i.e. a voiceless velar fricative today or a voiceless velar aspirated plosive in the olden days. Keep the videos coming. Love your content on old British languages.
How about looking for a relation between "buddha" (the awakened one), modern Russian "будить" ("budit'", to wake someone up) and these "ghew-ghutos-ghuda...god" words? BTW, "god" in Russian is "бог" ("bog"), is considered to be related to Sanskrit "bhagas" (the one that gives), and also to "богат(ый)" ("bogat(y)") - the rich one (usually adjective). Maybe "the one who gives" has blended with "the one who pours / fills the (ritual / metaphorical / sacrificial) cup"?
in spanish, “dios” means god. “dar” means to give, but when conjugated to mean “he gave,” it turns into “dió.” “god gave” = “dios dió”
I read once that 'Bog' is from the Persian. Wouldn't swear to it, though.
@@blahblah24681357 There is no relation between those words. Spanish dar comes from latin Donar, like in Catalan, preserved as Donar; it has no connection to Dios, which comes from the genitive form of Jupiter. Jupiter is "Ius Pater" and this from old Italic "Dious Pater", in Greek, the Genitive form of Zeus is Dios, and in Old High German "Tyr" is written Ziu. These all stem from the Pre-IE word for the sky. Dios Pater (Greek) or Dious Pater (Latin), and by extension Zeus and Iouis (Jowis) mean Sky, or the Sky father.
@@RoderickVI Latin "dare" is the original form, "donare" is some kind of back-formation from the noun "donum".
@@RoderickVI Why are you so sure of how and where those words came to be? Why do you always ignore Slavic languages? What if it was the other way around. And those words are related with each other but came from proto slavic. Why can't that be?
Just found your channel. It looks incredibly interesting, hope to check out more of your work soon.
English "eye" - german "Auge" - polish "oko".
Spanish ojo (the Spanish J sounds a bit like the wh in "who")
Гамма читается как Г, В, Й,
Око/Очи от watch
ochi
and Albanian 'sy'. All from PIE 'h3ókws'
In Kazakh (Turkic) to read/study is oku(оқу).
Interesting to hear that PIE has been tied to a specific people in a specific place. Never hear this before. Thanks!
I must be imagining the but could G'ew be the source of the word ewer , a large jug ?
Not at all. "ewer" comes from the French descendant of aquarium.
This content is really interesting, greetings from Kazakhstan :)
When you say that you know the pit grave culture only dealt with one type of metal because they had only one word for it, how do you reconcile that lack of words with the fact that *we* have only been able to reconstruct a handful of their words? Did they truly only have one generic word meaning ‘metal’ or have we merely been unable, to date, to uncover them?
Fine I’ll say it. This is my favourite RUclips channel.
This is really well made, thanks!
A nitpick: the word Kurgan is pronounced with a hard G.
As for pouring as a ritual, we have evidence of libation in classical Antiquity, as well as proto-German and proto-Norse runic inscriptions with just one word 'alu', most likely meaning ale, a ceremonial drink.
Thank you, I was going to chuck in a disclaimer that I'd never actually heard 'Kurgan' pronounced! I'll bear that in mind :) And I'm not that familiar with classical religious practice, but that doesn't surprise me! Pouring seems to have significance in a lot of world religions, Indo-European or otherwise.
@@simonroper9218 Hey Simon, are you planning on releasing a part 2 of your "Interview in Old English" video?
@@GrandRunemaster I am, hopefully with a slightly higher production value! It should be out in early January
See as an example the Latin "ALI-mentum" (food, nourishment), and "ALU-mnus" (pupil, i.e. who is nourished with knowledge).
@@GiandomenicoDeMola that's right, the Germanic root is related to the Italic one.
Fascinating video. I would be very interested in seeing further examples if you choose to do a "part 2"
You have an error in Devanagari script at 6:25 - the "i" letter is turned in a way when it precede consonant, so it should be before "t"
The short i was my bane trying to learn Sanskrit (besides trying to memorize sandhi rules). I'd ALWAYS forget to write it before its consonant, and have to erase or squeeze it in.
Is it? जुहोर्ता I read this. The diatric which you think is wrong isn't a diatric. It's a half r sound. र् like the word "work" is written as कार्य
if you will look at the transcription below the ending is "ti" but not "rta", and there is still a visual difference between र्ता and त ि
@@YuryPanikov initially I thought so but that might be a keyboard problem. I tried to search the world online but couldn't find it.
But the transcript does verify that there is a mistake.
He also didn't make any attempts at pronouncing the aspirated consonants. Seems he has little interest outside of Germanic stuff
Cognates are a fascinating topic. There are many words where it is easy to see the connections between even relatively distant languages within the Indoeuropean family. I think the first deciphered sentence of Hittite (by Bedřich Hrozný, a Czech professor) had the word water in it very similar, it was: "Ninda-an ezzatteni, waatar-ma ekuuteni" Bread (you will) eat, water (you will) drink." That ninda is taken from Sumerian (bread) but the rest of these words are fairly similar. Ezzatteni to Eat/essen/jíst etc. Waatar is perfectly clear, ekuutteni for drink is quite probably related to "aqua" as this is what people drink most often, at least at that time. Cognates are my passion, but I dare to look for them on a global scale, and they exist. It would be interesting to know what you think about this. I have a few e-booklets in the series 123+ Words from the Proto-World and the last one, Fire Burn Kindle Ignite is free today and tomorrow - and what I found may surprise you, but the words related to fire (fyr, pyr, palo, pul etc.) are everywhere - Ancient America to Asia to Europe to Ancient Australia. Water is also omnipresent with slight variations, often in the form "aqua" and similar, also globally. There are at least 100 such words that look like global cognates that I already collected.
Persian words: Madar Pedar Baradar. English translation: Mother Father Brother
Iranian languages originated from india I think right or no?
@@ThePersianKickboxer In Polish it is : Matka Ojciec (very different) Brat and Sister is Siostra
The term 'daughter' is also from Farsi 😊
That's correct we say 'dokhtar' .It means girl. It's funny how are connected like that. i even think that Europeans and Iranians looked very similar in physical appearance prior to Arab, Turk and Mongol invasions and subsequent 'mixing' (rap3) of the Iranian people
" The way we speak with each other nowadays, tell us about the way they thought back then "
I just never thought of it in that way, and it hurts.
A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished.
He who is grateful for the existence of music.
He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology.
Two workmen playing, in a cafe in the South, a silent game of chess.
The potter, contemplating color and form.
The typographer who set this page well, though it may not please him.
A woman and man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.
He who strokes a sleeping animal.
He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.
He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.
He who prefers others to be right.
These people, unaware, are saving the world.
Mind. Blown... I'm late to the party here, but digging back the layers of language here makes me think of religious connotations. I was looking at one of your Old English videos and then this one and realized that, very simply, when you peel back the layers of languages, these earlier languages, earlier cultures, likely passed on their religions, too, and they evolved in new regions along with the languages. When you strip back to the cognate and walk forward, you can see how one god can become multiple names and associated with different attributes, because of various climates and evolving languages... You can see how God (the word itself) becomes God in English today, but if you go to the Proto Indo-European, how many different branches come off of the original word from pour/cast? Are people pouring their beliefs / love? Sacrifice? We don't know for sure, but the end NAME changes. Þórr vs Þunor vs þonar. God vs Deus vs θεός
Yum Blackberries!
For me some clever Eastern Europeans R1a came to India about 4000 years ago , influenced their religion, culture , language, number's figures and military. Some other branches lived all over Eastern Europe, shared similar languages.