Indo European Language Flashcards, test questions and answers
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What is Indo European Language?
The Indo-European language is a large family of languages that are spoken by over 3 billion people across the globe. The family consists of many different language groups, including English, Germanic, French, Spanish, Greek and Albanian languages. The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language is believed to be the ancestor of all these modern languages. It was likely spoken around 6,000 4,000 BC in what is now known as Ukraine and southern Russia. This ancient language has no written records but it has been reconstructed through comparative linguistics which looks for similarities between existing related languages. One of the most striking aspects of PIE is its incredibly rich vocabulary. Over 600 words have been reconstructed from this single ancestral language. Many words remain intact in various forms across different Indo-European languages today; some examples include ‘h2wey’ which means ‘water’ or ‘dheigh’ meaning ‘earth’. There were also strong lexical resemblances among grammatical structures within PIE such as verb tenses and declensions which are still present in many modern Indo-European tongues today. The grammar of PIE was also quite complex with sophisticated noun cases like nominative and accusative used to describe relationships between objects or ideas being discussed. A notable example is the root word *dheigh* which can take on 7 distinct meanings depending on how it’s declined; even more impressive is that these same meanings can be found in other descended IE tongues. Consequently we must assume that there was an established system governing syntax developed during this era too it just hasn’t survived into any written form yet unfortunately so we don’t know much about it other than what can be inferred through linguistic comparisons alone.It’s amazing to consider how far back our shared history goes when looking at the Indo European Language Family – stretching over thousands of years ago. Its legacy continues to live on today through its descendants: hundreds upon hundreds of world languages all derived from one common source the mysterious Proto-Indo European Language.