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From: kthier@festival.ed.ac.uk (K Thier)
Subject: Re: original Indo-European words
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Organization: Edinburgh University
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 18:46:24 GMT
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ab113 (fgao@interaccess.com) wrote:
: If I recall correctly, linguists have possibly identified where proto-IE was
: spoken by the appearance of several geographically words in most 
: Indo-European languages.  Without getting into too much detail, I think
: one of these is a words for salmon, which we carry down into English as
: "lox".  Another is a word for "birch".  From these clues, linguists can make
: a reasonable guess as to where proto-IE was spoken.

: My question is, what are some of the other words that fall into this list?

father, mother, brother, sister, day, certain words for water,etc.

Unfortunately, this does not lead to definite conclusions about where
the indo-European languages come from.By many scholars, Proto IE is now considered a
scholarly system to describe relationships rather than an actual spoken
language.
If you have some German, read Pokorny's "Vergleichendes Woerterbuch der
Indogermanischen Sprachen". Lots of Roots, but traditional ie
intellegible for non-professionals.

Catriona

