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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[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Excellent!

I'd hoped McWhorter's course (Language Families of the World) would've gone into this kind of detail, but its more of a 100-level course exposing students to the concepts and scale of language families.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I have this book. It's by no means a bad book; it's a great starting point, the info there seems to be well researched, and the main focus seems to be on the language diversity attested around the world. But yes, if you're looking for depth it feels like missing stuff. (It doesn't even mention the Macro-Ge and Tupi families ;_; )

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yea, it's a great introduction. I have his History of the Alphabet course, too.

Would've enjoyed having him as a prof!

The History of English podcast is really interesting too. Probably nothing you don't already know, but good to pass on to people asking questions.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 21 hours ago

I wasn't aware of this podcast, so thank you for the rec!