Indo-European

[Thom Harrison]

Indo-European is reconstructed.  A professor with whom I once studied
Sanskrit for a while said that if you combine Sanskrit consonants with Greek
vowels, you very nearly have Indo-Eupean.

I'll leave him to debate the matter with his peers, but Holger Pederson's
book, The Discovery of Language: Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth
Century gives some pretty good insights into the process during the century
in which it occurred.

Thom


-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Kammert [mailto:write at SCN.ORG]
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 12:00 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Indo-European


I am an 8th grade teacher, and I am planning a unit on the evolution
of the English language.  I have a couple books with some ideas.  The
books talk about the ancestor of English (and all western languages?),
Indo-European.  It seems (Am I right here?) that the idea of the
Indo-European language is a hypothesis.  Since Indo-European was a
prehistoric language, there is no written record of this language, and
certainly no recording of this language.  How do linguists know anything
about the Indo-European language when there is no record of the language?
Before I start this unit in March, I'd like more information.  I don't
want to give my students false information, and I sure want to be able to
explain where the idea of the Indo-European language came from.
Feel free to answer me off-list.  I don't know if my question is so
elementary that I should be embarrassed to ask you all.
<write at scn.org>
Thank you,
Jan Kammert