this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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What are your thoughts on Proto Indo European? (piefed.world)
submitted 2 days ago by daggermoon@piefed.world to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
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I've been reading about PIE and i'm confused. As I understand, it is assumed to be the language spoken by Europeans 6,000 years ago. No written record of the language has ever been found so the language has been reconstructed through seemingly arbitrary means. So, In all likeliness actual PIE sounded very different. What makes this language (as it exists today) useful? This is essentially a conlang that is too complicated to learn. What am I missing? Sorry if I'm coming off as negative. I find PIE both confusing and fascinating.

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[–] Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

PIE is less of an language in the modern sense and more of an explanation aa to why so many languages have similar sounds. Why are "ma" and "pa" sounds used for mom and dad in so many unrelated languages? There has to be a common ancestor. This Wikipedia article has a list of a bunch of PIE words and their cognates

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 points 2 days ago

Well said.

It's more of a "there must have been a commonality at some point that's the root of all these languages that have so many shared sounds"