Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!supernews.com!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!news2.dg.net.ua!carrier.kiev.ua!not-for-mail
From: Martin Karlsson <martin.karls...@visit.se>
Newsgroups: lucky.freebsd.chat
Subject: Re: Sanskrit numbers (was: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c))
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 07:52:23 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: unknown
Lines: 50
Sender: n...@horse.lucky.net
Approved: newsmas...@lucky.net
Message-ID: <20020522175216.GA2441@foo31-146.visit.se.lucky.freebsd.chat>
References: <20020522115950.D47352@lpt.ens.fr> <Pine.SOL.3.91.1020522125123.29827A-100000@travelers.mail.cornell.edu> <20020522192335.P47352@lpt.ens.fr>
NNTP-Posting-Host: horse.lucky.net
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
X-Trace: horse.lucky.net 1022140343 46294 193.193.193.118 (23 May 2002 07:52:23 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: usenet@horse.lucky.net
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 07:52:23 +0000 (UTC)
Delivered-To: freebsd-c...@freebsd.org
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <20020522192335.P47352@lpt.ens.fr>
X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5970 BE22 2C33 4D8F 53FD  7E34 66FF 9332 9C92 4660
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.1i
List-ID: <freebsd-chat.FreeBSD.ORG>
List-Archive: <http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/> (Web Archive)
List-Help: <mailto:majord...@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=help> (List Instructions)
List-Subscribe: <mailto:majord...@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=subscribe%20freebsd-chat>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:majord...@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=unsubscribe%20freebsd-chat>
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
X-Comment-To: Rahul Siddharthan

* Rahul Siddharthan <rs...@online.fr> [2002-05-22 19.23 +0200]:
> cj...@cornell.edu said on May 22, 2002 at 13:14:14:
> > 
> > Well, yeah, they're related languages. :)  They're both descended from 
> > Proto-Indo-European.
> 
> They undoubtedly have some sort of link, but is this
> "proto-Indo-European" some sort of guess or reconstruction, or is
> there actual evidence for it somewhere?  

Well, it is a guess, supported by "evidence" which make it possible
to reconstruct. As there are no written records of anything PIE,
the thing linguists do is to look at languages _not_ related to the
IE-family.

English Swedish Finnish
king    kung    kuningas

Finnish is a non-IE language, and kuningas is a very "un-Finnish"
word, and thus probably a loan (from another (IE) language). Now,
because we know about Grimm's law, and Werner's law, it's possible
to apply sound-changing rules _backwards_, and arrive at the
conclusion that the word for king in PIE probably was (something 
like) kuningaz.

> How do people arrive at "Hoi(H)nos" and "h3ekteh3" (how do you
> pronounce those "3"s?) in PIE?  Who are the people who spoke it --
> the Aryans who are believed to have originated from around the
> Caspian Sea?  If so, how do we know anything about their language
> -- is there any kind of record they left behind at all? 
> 
> Yes, I suppose I could try look up the book you cited, but I'm
> lazy :)
 
Try:

The English Language. A Historical Introduction
by Charles Barber, for a bit of light reading :)

Hope I got this more or less right ;)

Cheers,
-- 
Martin Karlsson                                                   _
GPG/PGP public key: 0x9C924660             ASCII ribbon campaign ( )
                                       -against HTML, vCards and  X
                              -proprietary attachments in e-mail / \

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message