How did we found out how the various languages are all descendant from proto-indo European and how did we develop so many different languages?
In: Culture
Indo-European languages, spoken natively by 46% of humans, are descended from P.I.E. The proto language was derived backwards from the known I.E. languages, by scholars beginning from William Jones in the 18th century. Rebuilding proto languages is a kind of linguistic forensics: if there is no recording of the proto language, one takes a best-fit guess based on knowledge of known descendant languages, which have similarities, to take the words of the aforementioned William Jones, too great to be purely coïncidental.
language naturally shifts. language is shifting constantly, e.g. in the middle ages a word like “nation” was pronounced with a hard T instead of SH, or in modern times in the great lakes the pronunciation of long-a (e.g. trap) has been lengthening (tray-ap) over the last hundred years or so. when various people spread out and separate, their languages evolve separately, but if you look carefully there are still connections.
in hindu there are divine beings called ‘asuras,’ in norse religion the chief gods are called ‘aesir.’ these are related.
or if you want to get real fancy:
* greek: zeus
* latin: deus
* germanic: tyr (descended from tiwaz. tiwaz is also the name of an anatolian sun-god, in case it wasn’t obvious enough that these languages are all related)
* baltic: dievas
* hindu: deva
* hittite: sius
all from proto-indo-european dyeus, the god of the daylight sky (also called father, e.g. zeus pater, jupiter)
there are many examples of sounds preserved over the millennia tying languages all over europe and central asia to a single original language
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