Indo-European Words For Two

Why are all these words related?

The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language was spoken around 6000 years, somewhere on the border between Europe and Asia. Since then, the language has spread and split up into many different languages in Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. Now, nearly half the world speaks an Indo-European language.

Because all these hundreds of Indo-European languages are related, many of their words are related too. The words these languages use for numbers are a good way to show this. These words have been passed down through the millennia, and over time they have mutated into the words used in the 445 or so Indo-European languages spoken today. Of course I couldn’t make an image with that many languages, so I picked these 75 languages and crammed them all together in one image! The different colour schemes highlight the different sub-families of the Indo-European family.

What the hell is going on with Armenian?

I’ve had dozens of people comment on this, so I reckon I should definitely try to give an answer.

While most of the words in this image seem to have evolved fairly logically from the previous word, Armenian… is a definite exception.

There are other examples of an Old Armenian “erk-” coming from an Indo-European “dw-” (see erkn from *dwey- and erkar from *dweh₂ro-), so it’s widely accepted that it really did evolve from the PIE word.

However, it’s hard to imagine how “erku” could have come from *dwóh₁, and there is debate among linguists about how this could have happened. One possibility is: *dw- > *dg- > *tk- > *rk- > erk- and another is *dw > *dg > *rg > *erg > erk. I’m no expert in Armenian historical linguistics though, so I can’t really tell you much more, sorry.

What do all the little *asterisks mean?

In historical linguistics, asterisks are used to show that a word is not attested. This means that these languages did not have writing, and so there is no direct evidence that these words existed. Instead, these words are reconstructed from the words that evolved from them. By looking at the common sound changes in all these languages as they evolved, we can work out what the ancestor words sounded like.  And for all these words, the original word in PIE has been reconstructed as *dwóh₁.

Why isn’t the ___________ language shown here?

I’ve had a few people ask me why their language isn’t shown here. There are a couple of reasons I didn’t include different languages:

1. It isn’t an Indo-European language.

Most of the languages in the world aren’t Indo-European. Even in Europe, we have Turkic languages (like Turkish), Uralic languages (like Finnish and Hungarian), and language isolates like (Basque). These languages are not thought to be related to or descended from Proto-Indo-European, and so their words are not related. They don’t belong on this image.

2. It is an Indo-European language, but I didn’t include it for space reasons.

There are over 400 living Indo-European languages, and even more that are extinct. In my image I tried to focus on more widely spoken and well known living languages. Apologies to speakers of Low German, Afrikaans (which uses the same word as Dutch), Occitan and the hundreds of other languages I didn’t make space for.

 

Why should you like Starkey Comics on Facebook?

I’d love to make more images like this! The more people like my page, the more it will persuade me to get off my arse and devote more time to making colourful and interesting images. I don’t like adverts, and I’m not trying to make money off this hobby, so all I’m really getting out of this is the joy of sharing something I’m interested in, and something I’ve made, with people who find it interesting too <3

And don’t forget to check out all my other language related images here!

And if you want to really support me and encourage me to make more content like this, please consider donating to me on Patreon. Everything I make, I share for free, but it would make my day if you’d help me with some of my expenses.

 

Credit for a lot of the data in this image goes to Wiktionary, which provides very detailed and accurate etymologies. If you want to know where a word comes from, and the words that it’s related to, Wiktionary is an amazing resource.