is it possible to construct a Proto-Native-European?

Latin wasn't restricted to a village and a few villages around it, but an entire region (Latium), and it was inhabited by iron-age peoples who technologically (and if the we take the Falisci, Oscans and Umbrians, also linguistically) not very different from their iron age neighbours.
small part of Latium is "old Latium" where latin was spoken in time frame I mentioned
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Latium

in whole Europe there could have easily been many much larger regions where language of hunter gatherers could easily survive... so, it is not safe to assume....

e.g. neolithic farmers would spread in planes and river valleys but not in high mountains...

so it is quite possible that old inhabitants would gather in some of such regions and after getting stronger conquer larger areas and impose their language....

consequently if we want to look into proto-native-european and we assume it was not PIE (which is not really safe to assume) we should look in shared non-IE vocabulary between geographically remote and isolated places not interesting for neolithic farmers...
 
Very interesting. Do you have a list of these words, or could link us to a website.

these are the words i remember:

Etruscan "tume" (tomb or to bury) Hungarian "temet" (bury) from "tom" (to put in) + "et" (live in) -- maybe related to τύμβος
Etruscan "cel" (arise) Hungarian "kel" (arise)
Etruscan "cul" (underworld) Ugro_Finnic "*kul" (death)
Etruscan "zat" (battle) Hungarian "csata" (battle)
Etruscan "zilac" (star) Hungarian "csilag" (star)
Etruscan "zin" (make) Hungarian "csin" (make)
Etruscan "cexa" (love) Hungarian "kegy" (love)

but i don't know the source of those Etruscan words (except the first one), they might be invented.
 
the PIE root *uer means "river" so the ones in *ver may be just PIE. The ones with "sal, if they are somehow salty rivers, may be another PIE root. *al means "to grow" or "to begin" so if those were settlements their root can be PIE. The one which is non PIE is *dur

Nope I think the *dur is clear IE,
word cognates with IE words for water υδωρ edu udens jur dwr etc(greek brygian latvian armenian welsh)
just compare river Oder Eder and the rest, they just seem to mean water,
 
these are the words i remember:

Etruscan "tume" (tomb or to bury) Hungarian "temet" (bury) from "tom" (to put in) + "et" (live in) -- maybe related to τύμβος
Etruscan "cel" (arise) Hungarian "kel" (arise)
Etruscan "cul" (underworld) Ugro_Finnic "*kul" (death)
Etruscan "zat" (battle) Hungarian "csata" (battle)
Etruscan "zilac" (star) Hungarian "csilag" (star)
Etruscan "zin" (make) Hungarian "csin" (make)
Etruscan "cexa" (love) Hungarian "kegy" (love)

but i don't know the source of those Etruscan words (except the first one), they might be invented.

The Etruscan words as such are not invented (from what I can tell), but their meaning appears to be invented, or just taken from Hungarian without caring what the word means in Etruscan. One example is the Etruscan word "zilac", which means "leader" or "chief" (it is found in the Pyrgi tablets), and which in that list is listed as "star".

Given how far removed Hungarian is from Proto-Uralic, it would seem very unlikely that Hungarian and Etruscan words would be that similar. It's also highly suspicious due to a clear lack of sound correspondence: Etruscan "zilac" is corresponded with Hungarian "csilag", but Etruscan "cexa" is corresponded with Hungarian "kegy". So, apprently Hungarian *g corresponds to both Etruscan *k and *ks. Which one is it?

I'm aware that there have been proponents of a relationship between Etruscan and the Uralic languages (or just Hungarian alone, which makes even less sense, given how well-established it is that Hungarian is an Uralic language!), notably Mario Alinei (the same person who is a proponent of the Paleolithic Continuity "theory"), but in my opinion that is complete bogus.
 
I'm aware that there have been proponents of a relationship between Etruscan and the Uralic languages (or just Hungarian alone, which makes even less sense, given how well-established it is that Hungarian is an Uralic language!), notably Mario Alinei (the same person who is a proponent of the Paleolithic Continuity "theory"), but in my opinion that is complete bogus.

Yes, probably.

I don't find the PCT absurd in itself, especially its time scale which is, in terms of linguistic variation (= how fast a word changes its meaning and its phonetic features) much more realistic than the other ones (Invasionist and NDT). BUT, it has a huge inconsistency : according to this model, there is no pre-IE languages. Nor people nor anything : the IE have always been there from the beginning.

Thus, it cannot explain Iberic, Tartessian, Minoean, Basque etc... and Etruscan. Therefore, the necessity to connect Etruscan to a post-IE superstratum (Uralic e.g.).
 
To answer the question asked in the title of this thread, I would say yes it is possible, at least partially; but as it has been said : there was probably not one but several different pre-IE language families or phylla - and the chance that they were connected with basque or semitic sounds rather unlikely to me : we have a tendancy to use exclusively existing languages to imagine linguistic distributions old from 4000 years and more, forgetting that many language families became extinct in the meantime, and that we, in fact, now almost nothing about the languages spoken.

The European hydronymy has been mentioned, and if I take into consideration only the hydronymy of France, which is the only one I know, it appears clearly that none of the rivernames are IE, nor basque, nor semitic. Thus, it is something else (called "Ligurian"), unconnected to any known languages.

Back to the question :if you consider in English a word like "dog" or "bird" which has no cognate in any other language, two possibilities are offered to you :

1- This is an IE word which PIE etymon has still not been identified.

2- This is an indigenous pre-IE word.

Personnaly, I don't believe in the 1, and here is the reason why : the IE language phyllum is very well documented, the reconstruction of proto-IE has been worked on during two centuries by generations of linguists, imagining sometime even the most absurd semantic distortions and phonetic combinations to connect every single word to a proto-IE etymon, and if, in spite of this, it has been impossible to connect a lexical item to any proto-IE etymon, then it is not IE.

Now, how could we reconstruct a word ? From a single reflexe ("dog" or "bird", which are completely isolated) it is impossible : we need at least two reflexes in neighbouring language families (IE or not) : if you have a reflex in German, another one in Polish, and none in the other IE language families, then you can assume that it is either a borrowing from a neighbouring non-IE language family or from a pre-IE substratum.

If it is connected to a word from another language family (eg. Danish "pige", a non-IE word which has a cognate in Finnish - piika, "waitress" ), then you can rule out the possibility of a pre-IE word.

If you cannot, then there are not many remaining possibilities. In fact only the two abovementioned ones.

Let's take a concrete example : the Gaulish word congestlos (hostage) has cognates only in Celtic (Welsh gwystl, Old Irish gell, etc.) and in Germanic (OHG gîsal, Danish gidsel, etc.). It is to be found in no other language families than these two, being they IE or not.

From all these reflexes, you can reconstruct an etymon *gheistlo- of which you can assume reasonably that it is pre-IE. You can also assume (unreasonably) that it is IE, but you will have to deal with a significant problem : explaining why it left not a single trace in the other IE languages. In terms of probability, it looks quite unrealistic. But not impossible though. I don't close any door.

As a matter of fact, there is a quite significant number of lexical roots common to Celtic and Germanic : some being loanwords (mostly from Celtic to Germanic), but other being inherited from a common source (historical phonetics can demonstrate it, I could use an example but I fear that my post is already too long).

As a rule, "mainstream" historical linguistic does not consider the pre-IE question as a serious issue. I would say that 99% of the brain energy is devoted to connect all the words of the IE languages to PIE etymons, at any cost (semantic distorsions, games with metathesis laryngeals, creation of new affixes, etc.). If you talk about pre-IE substrata or people or whatever connected with "indigenous europeans" to most academic linguists, they will laugh loudly at you and send you back to your sandpit, generally using more insults than arguments.

Archaeologs, naturally much less eager to consider positively the PIE thing for obvious reasons are more open to pre-IE debates.
 
To answer the question asked in the title of this thread, I would say yes it is possible, at least partially; but as it has been said : there was probably not one but several different pre-IE language families or phylla - and the chance that they were connected with basque or semitic sounds rather unlikely to me : we have a tendancy to use exclusively existing languages to imagine linguistic distributions old from 4000 years and more, forgetting that many language families became extinct in the meantime, and that we, in fact, now almost nothing about the languages spoken.

The European hydronymy has been mentioned, and if I take into consideration only the hydronymy of France, which is the only one I know, it appears clearly that none of the rivernames are IE, nor basque, nor semitic. Thus, it is something else (called "Ligurian"), unconnected to any known languages.

As a rule, "mainstream" historical linguistic does not consider the pre-IE question as a serious issue. I would say that 99% of the brain energy is devoted to connect all the words of the IE languages to PIE etymons, at any cost (semantic distorsions, games with metathesis laryngeals, creation of new affixes, etc.). If you talk about pre-IE substrata or people or whatever connected with "indigenous europeans" to most academic linguists, they will laugh loudly at you and send you back to your sandpit, generally using more insults than arguments.

Archaeologs, naturally much less eager to consider positively the PIE thing for obvious reasons are more open to pre-IE debates.

I agree for the most you wrote
but I am not so severe as you concerning academic linguists - I suppose they had admitted some subratum words not explained by IE (even if it is true some reconstruction try to find out an IE etymology even when very
"acrobatic" sometimes... reducing the number of considered non-IE words...)
concerning the rivers, I believe that the most of them was attributed IE origins... not all of them:
coming further back in this thread, I red the theory about 'finnic' Venetic and I find the methodology explained in the link as very unreliable ("instropection method", language for itself and the context without firstable any attempt to compare it to other known languages? ancient or modern: surely necessary, BUT NOT SUFFICIENT -
Reconstruction of etymologies for ancient names is still today a hard work and man needs more than the necessary power of imagination to confirm is hypothesis! -
 
I agree for the most you wrote
but I am not so severe as you concerning academic linguists - I suppose they had admitted some subratum words not explained by IE (even if it is true some reconstruction try to find out an IE etymology even when very
"acrobatic" sometimes... reducing the number of considered non-IE words...)
concerning the rivers, I believe that the most of them was attributed IE origins... not all of them:
coming further back in this thread, I red the theory about 'finnic' Venetic and I find the methodology explained in the link as very unreliable ("instropection method", language for itself and the context without firstable any attempt to compare it to other known languages? ancient or modern: surely necessary, BUT NOT SUFFICIENT -
Reconstruction of etymologies for ancient names is still today a hard work and man needs more than the necessary power of imagination to confirm is hypothesis! -

If you take the names of the 4 main French rivers : Loire, Seine, Garonne and Rhône, in at least two of them you will find pre-IE roots :

- Garonne, contains two characteristic "Ligurian" items : kar (rock, same root as in French "carrière") and onna (source or river, I've seen both explanations) hence "river with rocks".
- Seine, Sequana in Latin, a Ligurian compound sawk (holly) + onna (river) hence "holly river"
- Loire, Liger in Latin and Rhône, Rhodana in Latin have several explanations (Celtic, Ligurian and Germanic), of which none is satisfactory as far as I know.
.
There is a good chance for river names to be pre-IE since people generally never change the names of the rivers : it's useless. You may rename a city, a country, something you can own, but not a river which is generally a border. See for ex. the American river names.

About the Academia and the pre-IE question, my own experience is globally negative. In all the conferences I attended the resistance against pre-IE etymologies was huge, albeit some people are still intellectually curious and open to new interpretations. Not many though...
 
Kentel, I absolutely agree regarding the general pre-IE question, but I must remain scepticism regarding the question of a reconstructability, and also the question how many languages there possibly were in pre-Indo-European Europe (read: one wouldn't necessarily end up with one language family even). What might be added is that with many terms we do not know where they were picked up. For examples, might have been picked up into Proto-Celtic (wherever that was spoken?), but they also might have been picked up earlier else at a much earlier stage (at a stage much closer to Proto-Indo-European). A good example would be the word for bull/auroch in many Indo-European languages (Irish "tarbh", Welsh "tarw", Latin "taurus", Greek "tauros", Lithuanian "tauras", Polish "tura"), which has a cognate in the Semitic languages, but has no cognate in the "eastern" Indo-European languages.

In regard for river names, I also absolutely agree. The best example for that are actually the modern United States: many names are obviously Native American derived, even if the ethnic group and language from which the river name is derived was completely wiped out.
 
If you take the names of the 4 main French rivers : Loire, Seine, Garonne and Rhône, in at least two of them you will find pre-IE roots :

- Garonne, contains two characteristic "Ligurian" items : kar (rock, same root as in French "carrière") and onna (source or river, I've seen both explanations) hence "river with rocks".
- Seine, Sequana in Latin, a Ligurian compound sawk (holly) + onna (river) hence "holly river"
- Loire, Liger in Latin and Rhône, Rhodana in Latin have several explanations (Celtic, Ligurian and Germanic), of which none is satisfactory as far as I know.
.
There is a good chance for river names to be pre-IE since people generally never change the names of the rivers : it's useless. You may rename a city, a country, something you can own, but not a river which is generally a border. See for ex. the American river names.

About the Academia and the pre-IE question, my own experience is globally negative. In all the conferences I attended the resistance against pre-IE etymologies was huge, albeit some people are still intellectually curious and open to new interpretations. Not many though...

Kentel, is it true that the only explanation for the French river name Var (South east France) is the Sanskrit Vār-? Ironically, the Var river is located in the real Land of Liguria.
 
Kentel, I absolutely agree regarding the general pre-IE question, but I must remain scepticism regarding the question of a reconstructability,

It is always a quality to be sceptical in such matter, but here, you shouldn't : phonetic rules are very reliable, and very regular. All German words, f.ex., abide by Grimm and Verner's Law and by the Old High German Consonant Shift. You would hardly find any exception. the latin "piscem" equates the german "fisch" (f/p) according to these laws, as well as "pater" equates "father" (f/p) and both equate ultimately a PIE *p. Thus, don't be sceptical, I assure you that the device is very safe :)

But now, you can question the reality of these reconstructed languages : was there really a proto-Germanic (or proto-something-else), was there really a PIE language, or are these reconstructed words only some kind of mathematical models ? Honestly, we don't know. Nobody has ever been able to find a single archaeologic remain of the proto-IE people, and the general phonetic features of the PIE languages are globally unrealistic. So...

and also the question how many languages there possibly were in pre-Indo-European Europe (read: one wouldn't necessarily end up with one language family even). What might be added is that with many terms we do not know where they were picked up. For examples, might have been picked up into Proto-Celtic (wherever that was spoken?), but they also might have been picked up earlier else at a much earlier stage (at a stage much closer to Proto-Indo-European).

Thanks for this very interesting comment.

If you consider the language map of Europe today, and put, say, in red all the places where an IE language is spoken, and in green all the places where a pre-IE language is spoken. Appart from basque, all your map will be red (I put appart the Uralic languages which are peripherical in our map).

Now consider the same map 3000 years ago, it will be full of green spots : In France, you will have Aquitanian and Ligurian, in Italy: Etruscan, North-Picenian, Rhetic and Sicane, In Greece :Minoan, in Spain: Basque, Iberic and Tartessian, in Anatolia : Hatti... All of them are pre-IE languages, none is related to another one, none is related to any known language. How much phylla does it makes ? And we are talking only about the languages we know ! Think of all the ones which disappeared without leaving any trace - appart from the river names, precisely.

Proto-Celtic and Proto-everything are very well described by historical linguistics. I should say : if such languages did exist, we know almost everything about them - no mystery here :). As you seem to be especially interested in the Celtic languages, and as you speak obviously German, I would recommand you the reading of this book (still very actual in spite of his age) in case you didn't read it yet.
 
A good example would be the word for bull/auroch in many Indo-European languages (Irish "tarbh", Welsh "tarw", Latin "taurus", Greek "tauros", Lithuanian "tauras", Polish "tura"), which has a cognate in the Semitic languages, but has no cognate in the "eastern" Indo-European languages.

Yes, very interesting, I didn't know that.

I don't rule out the possibility of a Semitic influence. The most striking example I know is the Germanic word Earth/Erde/Jord which has obvious cognates in Arabic ارض ('rts or "artz") and Hebrew הארץ ("aretz", like in the beginning of the Bible: ץראה תאו םימשה תא םיהלא ארב תישארב, in other words : bereshith bara Elohim eth a-shamim ve eth a-aretz, "God created the sky and the Earth", I don't write that to show off with my Hebrew but to show how old the word maybe since it is found in a book written almost 1000 years BC).

As a matter of fact, and now we are talking about such odd correspondances, I found many of them between Ancient Egyptian and some IE languages. Here are a few examples from my notebook :

Egyptian "di", "to give" and Latin "dare" (French "donner"); a very frequent verb especially in offering formulas ("hetep di nesw Asir" = the king gives and offering to Osiris)

Egyptian set, "chair" and Latin "assidere", "to sit", also in Germanic and ultimately the PIE root *sed

Egyptian mer, "love" and Latin "amor"

Egyptian in (through, over) and PIE *en ("in")

Egyptian wp ("pronounce "wup") and Latin aperire, English open, etc, PIE *upo

Some others between Slavic and Egyptian :

aped, "bird", and Polish "ptak" (same meaning)

rem, "fish" and Polish "ryb" (same meaning)

m, "with" and Polish instrumental ending -em (same meaning)

etc, I have many of them actually. I promised myself I would wrote a paper about that one day, but for the moment I have no clue about the cause of these correspondancies...
 
In regard for river names, I also absolutely agree. The best example for that are actually the modern United States: many names are obviously Native American derived, even if the ethnic group and language from which the river name is derived was completely wiped out.
To give some examples, for those unfamiliar with eastern USA naming patterns, here are a few names from my immediate area. The Lenepe were the Native American people living in this area. They are usually called Delaware by those who are not Lenape.

Susquehanna River Lenape: Siskëwahane
Lehigh River Lenape: Lechewuekink
Conshohocken Lenape: Kanshihakink
Tulpehocken Creek
Hopatcong
Lopatcong

A huge number of the local creeks (which in Ireland would be called rivers, but are under 10m), have Lenepe names and we don't even realize it.

It's almost as if they never left, but they did leave, after the Treaty of Easton in 1758, and now are mostly in Oklahoma. Easton is the place of my birth.
 
Would've been over ten thousand years ago. There's no other proto-languages which go back that far. Additionally, not all Native American languages probably even came in one wave. Seems to have been three major waves, the first around 12-14kya being the Paleo-Indian migration from Beringia from the eastern Siberian area, who gave rise to most Native Americans supposedly all the way down to South America (but there is the Solutrean theory that some in the eastern U.S. arrived from Europe and some in the Tierra del Fuego from Australoid populations but this is rather unlikely). The second wave came around 6-8kya from what I remember, bringing the Na-Dene languages from central Siberia, supposedly linked with Yeniseian ones like Ket, based on similarities with things like Navajo, Tlingit, etc. The final one was the Eskimo/Inuit people who arrived later, probably no earlier than 4 thousand years ago, but they stuck to the far north and Arctic regions.

I don't see how they can reconstruct it with such limited evidence, since it's hard to tell how much they changed over time with no records. I heard some try to link some Native American languages with certain Turkic or Altaic ones also, but it may just as well be coincidence.
 
Here are some similiraities between IE and Semitics words. Some could be borrowings.

Akk. appāru ‘wild boar’Ger. Eber, OE eofor < *ebura-, Lat. aper, Pol. wieprz ‘boar’, Greek kápros
Arab. ˀaḥadun, ˀwāḥidun ‘one’, ḥidatun ‘be the only one’ (the root ḥid- ~ ḥad-)

  • Pol. jeden ‘one’ < IE *ed-oinos;
  • Pol. dziewięć, Gr. ennéa < IE *ed-newm̥ ‘nine’
Arab. ˀakara ‘to plough’, Hbr. ˀikkār ‘farmer with no own land’, Akk. ikkaru, inkaru ‘(little) farmer, ploughman’ (? < Sum. engar)Engl. acre (formerly ‘field’), Ger. Acker ‘field’ (formerly ‘meadow’), Lat. ager ‘field, ploughland’, Gr. agrós, Skr. ájra- ‘pasture; field’; usually interpreted as IE *aǵro- from the root *aǵ- ‘to drive (cattle)’
Arab. ˀalfun ‘thousand’, Akk. alpu ‘cattle’, Phoenician ˀ-l-p ‘ox’Engl. calf, Ger. Kalb < PG *kalba- (referred, probably incorrectly, to IE *gel-bh- ‘to swell’, cf. Lat. globus ‘globe’)
Arab. ˀarḍun, Hbr. ˀereṣ ‘earth’, Akk. erṣetuEngl. earth < *erþō, but also Gr. erā and Welsh erw ‘field’
Arab. ˁanzatun ‘goat’, Akk. enzu, ezzu, azzatu, ḫazzatuthe hesitation k- ~ 0- similar like in Akk. ḫ- ~ 0-:

  • Pol. koza < IE *koǵā, Alb. keth, kedhi ‘kid’ (cf. Engl. kid), OE hǣcen (see also Tatar käǯä, Chuv. kačaga);
  • without k-: Skr. ajā́, Lith. ožỹs, ožkà;
  • Gr. aĩks, D aigós, Arm. ayc, Skr. eḍa- ‘kind of sheep’, Av. izaēna- ‘of leather’
Arab. ˁaqrabun ‘scorpion’, Akk. aqrabuEngl. crab, Ger. Krabbe and Krebs, Gr. kárabos ‘crab’ and skorpiós
Ugaritic ˁ-ṯ-t-r-t ‘Ashtarte – Ishtar (goddess)’, Phoenician ˁ-š-t-r-t (hence Arab. ˁaštarūtu), Akk. ištaru < *ˁiṯtar- < *ˁičtar-

  • Gr. ástēr ‘star’, Lat. stella < *sterela, Engl. star < steorra, Ger. Stern < sterno < IE *H2ster-;
  • possibly Engl. iron, Ger. Eisen < *īsarna- (from Celtic)
Arab. baˁlun ‘lord; husband; sir’, Hbr. baˁal ‘sir; god's name’Celtic Bel ‘god's name’, Slavic bol- ‘more’ (cf. Pol. Bolesław), Skr. balin- ‘strong, powerful’, Gr. bélteros ‘better’, Frisian pall ‘strong, hard’, Lat. dē-bilis ‘weak’
Hbr. barzel ‘iron’, Akk. parzillu (in other AA languages the same root denotes other metals, e.g. Egyptian b-j-ˀ ‘copper’, Chadic and Cushitic bir- ‘iron’, ‘silver’ or ‘metal’ in common)

  • Lat. ferrum < *fersom ~ *fersilom;
  • with a shift and a meaning change Pol. srebro ‘silver’ < PS *serbro, Lith. sidãbras, prus. sirablan, Engl. silver, Ger. Silber, Goth. silubr; bask. zilhar;
  • perhaps also Gr. sídēros ‘iron’, Dor. sídāros (cf. the Lith. form!)
Arab. burrun ‘wheat’, Hbr. bār ‘threshed grain’

  • Pol. perz ‘wild wheat, Triticum repens’ < pyrь, OCS pyro ‘spelt, Triticum spelta’, OE fyrs ‘wheat-grass’, Gr. pȳrós ‘wheat’, Old Lith. pūras ‘grain of wheat’;
  • maybe also Pol. ber, gen. bru < PS bъrъ ‘a gender of millet, Setaria sp, Panicum miliaceum or Milium effusum’
Akk. dunnunu ‘fortified’

  • Engl. down ‘sand-drift’ < OE dūn ‘hill’ < *dūna-, a Germanic borrowing from Celtic dunum ‘stronghold’;
  • the same in PG *tūnaz > Engl. town, Ger. Zaun ‘fence’
Arab. darkun, darakun ‘way, round’, Hbr. derek̲ ‘way’Pol. droga ‘way’, Russ. doróga < PS *dórga < IE *dhorHg- without convincing IE etymology
Arab. dārun ‘house’, dūrun ‘houses’, dāˀiratun ‘circle’Engl. thorp, Ger. Dorf < PG *þurp-, Lat. turba ‘mob’, Gr. túrbē ‘confusion’; Engl. twirl < PG *þweril-
Akk. dūru ‘long time’Lat. dūrāre ‘to endure, to persist’, skąd Ger. Dauer ‘duration’
Arab. d̲irāˁun ‘arm’, Hbr. zərōăˁEngl. steer < PG *steur-
Akk. epūšu ‘sacrifice, offering’Lat. opus, D operis < *opes-is ‘work’, OE efnan ‘to make’ < *ōbjan < *ōp- ~ *op- ‘offering’, Skr. apas ‘work’
Akk. gadū ‘kid’, Arab. gadjunEngl. goat, Goth. gaits, Lat. haedus (cf. also ˁanzatun above)
Arab. gamalun, gamlun ‘camel’, Hbr. gāmāl, pl. gəmallīm, Akk. gammalu

  • Engl. camel < Lat. camelus, Gr. kamēlos ‘camel’, Russ. komolyj ‘hornless’;
  • Lith. kumelỹs ‘horse’, kumẽlė ‘mare’, Latv. kumē ̧ļš ‘foal’, Skr. kumārá- ‘baby, son, child’;
  • Lat. caballus ‘horse’, Pol. kobyła ‘mare’, OTurk. käväl, Pers. kaval ‘swift horse’;
  • Lat. cabō, gen. cabōnis ‘horse’, Fin. hepo ‘steed’, hevonen ‘horse’;
  • Pruss. camnet ‘horse’, Pol. koń < PS *kom(o)nь (cf. komonica ‘birdfoot trefoil, Lotus’) < *kamni-
Hbr. gal ‘wave; spring’ (in Chadic and Cushitic sim. ‘river, lake’)Engl. well, Ger. Quelle ‘spring’ without IE etymology
Arab. ġaranun ‘eagle’, Akk. urinnu, erūHittite ḫara(n), OE earn, Ger. Aar, Swedish örn, Ger. Adler < *edel-ar ‘a noble bird of pray’ < *arnu-, *arōn ‘eagle, bird of pray’, Pol. orzeł ‘eagle’ < PS *orьlъ < *orilo-, Gr. órnīs, órnīth- ‘bird’
Arab. ġirnīqun, ġurnūqun ‘crane’

  • Engl. crane, Gr. géranos < IE *gerH-no-;
  • Pol. żuraw < *žeravjь, Lith. gérvė, Lat. grūs < *gerH-w-
Arab. ġurābun ‘raven’, Akk. āribu, ēribu, ḫērebu ‘raven, crow’, Hbr. ˁōrēb̲ ‘raven’

  • Engl. crow (echoic?);
  • raven < PG *xrabnaz, Lat. corvus, Gr. kóraks
Arab. ḫuffun ‘paw, foot; shoe, slipper’Engl. hoof < PG *xuf-, Pol. kopyto ‘hoof’ with unclear -yt-, Skr. śapha < IE *ḱopH-
Arab. ḫarīfun ‘autumn’, Akk. ḫarpu

  • Engl. harvest, Ger. Herbst ‘autumn’ < PG *xarbista < IE *karp- with untypical -a-;
  • also Lat. carpere ‘to pick fruit’, Gr. karpós ‘fruit’;
  • unclear reference to Engl. harp, Ger. Harfe < PG *xarpō
Akk. ḫussu ‘reed hut’Engl. house < PG *xūs
Ugar. ḥrt ‘to plough’, Hbr. ḥrš, Akad. erēšu ‘till land’Hitt. ḫaršawar ‘tillage, agriculture’, ḫarš- ‘to tillage without the help of an animal’ (< IE *Har-s- ?)
Arab. kalbun ‘dog’Hitt. ḫuelpi ‘newborn animal’, Engl. whelp < PG *xwelp-, Welsh colwyn
Arab. labwat-, labāt- ‘lioness’, Akk. labbu (labˀu, lābu) ‘lion’, Hbr. poet. lāb̲īˀ (together with normal ˀarjē < *ˀarwaj); Hbr. lajiš, Arab. lajṯun, lājiṯun (maybe contamination of the previous and *najṯu- > Akk. nēšu, but also Arab. nahhāsun, nahūsun, minhasun)Pol. lew < PS lьvъ < OHG lëwo < Lat. leō, Gr. léōn, līs
Arab. lawḥun ‘lath, board’, lawḥatun ‘shield’Engl. lath < OE *læþþ and lætt (from Nordic), without etymology
Arab. lisānun ‘tongue, language’, laḥwasa ‘to lick’, Hbr. lāšōn ‘tongue, language’, lāqaq ‘to lick’

  • Engl. tongue, Goth. tungo, Lat. lingua, Old Lat. dingua, Skr. juhū-, jihvā-, Avestan hizū, hizvā, Pol. język, Pruss. insuwis, Lith. liežùvis, Gr. glõtta, glõssa, glátta, maybe also Lat. gingīva ‘gum (of a tooth)’, Gr. gamphēlaí ‘muzzle, mouth’;
  • Pol. lizać ‘to lick’, Lith. liẽžti, Skr. lḗḍhi, líhati, Gr. leíkhō, Lat. lingō, Engl. lick
Arab. malaga ‘to suck’Engl. milk < PG *mel(u)ka-, borrowed to Slavic (Pol. mleko), together with Old Pol. młodziwo ‘beestings, colostrum’ instead of *młoziwo from IE *melHǵ- ~ *mlaHǵ-t-, Lat. lāc, lactis, Gr. gala, galaktos, also Georgian rʒe < *mlǵe
Akk. manū ‘to count, to measure’, Arab. manā ‘to check, to try’, Hbr. mānā(h) ‘to count’ (maybe of the root *man ‘to think’, related to Nostratic *manu ‘think’ in Altaic, Uralic, Dravidian, IE)

  • Engl. moon < PG *mēnō, Engl. month < PG *mēnōþ < IE *mē-n-, Lat. mēnsis < IE *mē-n-s-, Pol. miesiąc ‘month’ < PS *měsęcь < IE *mē-s-;
  • Skr. māti ‘to measure’, Lat. mētior ‘t.s.’, Hittite meḫḫur ‘time’, Pol. mierzyć ‘to measure’, miara ‘a measure’ < měr- < IE *mē-, *mē-t-, *mē-r-, *mē-n- < *meH-;
  • Engl. meal < *mē-l- ‘meal time’;
  • Gr. métron ‘a measure’, Lith. me͂tas ‘year’ < IE *me-t-;
  • Gr. medímnos, médimnos ‘a measure of grain’, OE metan, Ger. messen ‘to measure’, Lat. modus ‘a measure’ < IE *me-d-, *mo-d-
Arab. muhrun ‘foal’, Akk. mūruEngl. mare, ir. marc ‘horse’ < IE *mark-, also Mongolian moŕ ‘horse’< *mori, Korean mal < Middle Korean mằr
Arab. nahrun ‘river’, Akk. nāruPol. Ner ‘name of a river’ < Nyr, nur ‘diver, loon’, zanurzać się ‘to plunge, to dive’ < IE *nuHr-, nouHr-, cf. also nora ‘burrow, den’, Lith. nérti < *nerH- ~ *norH-
Hbr. pā(j) ‘mouth’, st.constr. pī, Akk. pū, Arab. fumunPol. pić ‘to drink’, Lat. bibere and pōtāre, Skr. pāti, pipati ‘he is drinking’ (IE irregular *pei-, *pō-, *pipe-, *bibe-)
Akk. padānu ‘path’; bask. haran < *padanEngl. path, Ger. Pfad < PG *paþ- (? from Iranian path-)
Akk. perdu ‘horse, mule’, Hbr. pered̲ ‘mule’, and also Arab. farasun ‘horse’, Hbr. pārāš ‘equipage’; Arab. faraˀun ‘onager, wild donkey’, Akk. parû, paraḫu, Hbr. pereˀ (with related words in Cushitic, Chadic and Omotic); cf. also Syrian bardūnā ‘mule’, Arab. bird̲awn- ‘not thoroughbred horse’, Eth. bāzrā ‘mare’; cf. also Arab. barīd- ‘carrier horse’ (from Greek?)Ger. Pferd ‘horse’ < OHG pferīd, pferifrīd < PG *parafrid-, from Lat. verēdus,*paraverēdus ‘carrier horse, huntsman's horse’ (from that also Gr. béraidos, beredos), from Gallic (Welsh gorwydd ‘horse’)
Hbr. pered̲ ‘odd number’, Arab. fardun ‘one, the only one’Pol. pierwszy ‘first’, Engl. first, Gr. prõtos, Lat. prīmus; also Georgian p̣irveli, Turkish bir ‘one’, Mongolian bür ‘everyone’, Korean piroso ‘in the beginning’, Japanese hitótsu < *pitə- ‘one’, from Altaic *bi̯uri
Akk. puluḫtu ‘fright, fear’Engl. fright < fryhta < *furxtīn, Goth. faúrhts ‘fear’
Arab. qadda ‘to cut’, qaṭṭa ‘to cut off’, Hbr. qāṭam ‘to cut down’Engl. cut, OIc. kuta, with no further etymology
Arab. qāla ‘to speak’

  • Engl. call from Nordic kalla, Briton galw; Pol. głos ‘voice’ < PS *gols-, Ossetian γalas < *golḱ-;
  • Gr. kaléō ‘to call, to name’
Arab. qāma ‘to stand up, to become’Engl. come, become, Goth. qiman, Skr. gámati, gácchati ‘goes’, Lat. veniō, Gr. baínō (with irregular change *m > n) < IE *gʷem-
Akk. qarābu ‘war, battle’, Hbr. qərāb̲, maybe also Arab. qurḥatun ‘wound, injury’OE here ‘army’, Ger. Heer < PG *xarjaz; cf. also herald < *xariwald-
Arab. qarjatun, qirjatun ‘housing estate, town, village’, Aram. qurəjātā, Phoenician qart ‘city, town’, Ugaritic q-r-tPol. gród ‘(old) city, castle’, Engl. yard, Lith. gar̃das, Skr. gr̥has ‘house’, Tocharian A kerciye
Arab. qarnun ‘horn’ (also ‘vertex’, not related to qarana ‘to bind, to tie’)

  • Engl. horn < PG *xurnaz, Lat. cornū, Skr. śŕ̥ŋga-;
  • Gr. karā ‘head’ (> Lat. cara ‘face’ and Engl. cheer) < IE *ḱr̥-H-;
  • Gr. kéras ‘horn’, Persian sar ‘head’ < IE *ḱer-H-s-;
  • Lat. cerebrum ‘brain’ < IE *ḱr̥-H-s-ro-;
  • Gr. kraníon ‘skull’ (> Lat. cranium and Pol. migrena < French migraine < hemicranium) < IE *ḱr̥-s-no-;
  • Engl. hornet < PG *xurznuta, Lat. crabrō, Pol. szerszeń < PS *šŕ̥š-en-;
  • Gr. krios ‘ram’ < IE *ḱr̥-ī-;
  • Engl. rein-deer < OE hreinn < PG *xrajna ‘horned animal’ < IE *ḱr̥-oi-n-;
  • Engl. rinder-pest < OE hrind ‘ox’, Ger. Rinder ‘cattle’ < PG *xrinda;
  • Pol. krowa ‘cow’, Russ. koróva < IE *ḱr̥-Hw-;
  • Lat. cervus ‘deer’, cervix ‘neck’ < IE *ḱr̥-w-;
  • Engl. hart < PG *xerutaz < IE *ḱer-u-do-;
  • Gr. korynē ‘club, cudgel’, koryphē ‘head’, korymbos ‘the highest part’
Arab. qatala ‘to kill’, maybe also Arab. qatta ‘to tell lies’Engl. hate, Ger. hassen < PG *xat-; OE heaþu ‘war’, Ger. Hader ‘quarrel’ < PG *xaþ-; Gr. kḗdō ‘I worry’, Welsh cas ‘hate’, cawdd ‘anger’; maybe also Engl. kill, quell, Old Irish. at-baill ‘he is dying’ < IE *gwel-
Arab. qaṭara ‘to drip; to cover with birch tar’, qaṭrānun ‘birch tar’, Hbr. qəṭār ‘incense’Ger. Ruß ‘soot’ < PG *xrōtō, probably unrelated to Engl. rot, rust < PG and IE *ru-
Hbr. qōp ‘ape, monkey’, Egyptian kefiON api, Engl. ape, Germ. Affe, ORuth. opica, Skr. kapí-
Akk. sīsū, Hbr. sūs ‘horse’Luwian azzuwa < IE *eḱwos ‘horse’
Akk. šaḫū ‘pig’ (perhaps also Egyptian šˀy)Lat. sūs, Gr. hūs, sūs < IE *sū- ‘pig’
Hbr. šeb̲aˁ, šib̲ˁā ‘seven’ (m and f resp.), Akk. šiba, šibittu, Arab. sabˁun, sabˁatun < PSem *šibˁum, Egyptian *'safxaw, Shilha saEngl. seven, Ger. sieben, Lat. septem, Pol. siedem < IE *septm̥
Hbr. šēš, šiššā ‘six’ (m and f resp.), Arab. sittun, sittatun, Eth. seds, sedestū, Aram. šeṯ, štā, Ugaritic ṯeṯ, Old South Arab. s-d-ṯ < PSem *šidṯum; Egyptian *sar'saw, *saj'saw, Shilha sd̲is

  • Engl. six, Ger. sechs, Lat. sex, Gr. heks, Pol. sześć, Skr. ṣaṣ < IE *ksweks (the presence of *k- is proved with Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Indo-Iranian facts);
  • Finnish kuusi < *kuute, Hungarian hat < *kūt- ~ *kutt-;
  • Dravidian *caru;
  • Georgian ekvsi
Akk. šalḫu, šulḫu ‘wall’ (cf. also Egyptian swˀḥ.t ‘stronghold’) or Hbr. ṣēlāˁ, Arab. ḍilˁun ‘rib’, Eth. ṣəlle, ṣəlla ‘beam’Ger. Säule, OE sȳl < PG *sūlj- ‘column’
Arab. tajsun ‘he-goat’, Hbr. tajiš, Akk. daššu, taššu, but also Hbr. dīšōn ‘aurochs, Bison bonasus’, Akk. ditānu, didānu ‘t.s.’Ger. Ziege, OHG ziga ‘she-goat’ < PG *tīgō (unknown outside German), Alb. dhi < IE *dīk-, maybe related to Pol. dziki ‘wild’, Old Pol. dziwy, dziwoki, Lith. dỹkas
Arab. tawˀamun ‘twins’Engl. twins < IE *du- ‘two’
Arab. ṯawrun, Akk. šūru ‘bull’

  • Engl. steer, Goth. stiur, Avestan staōra < IE *steuro-;
  • Pol. tur ‘urus, Bos primigenius’, Lat. taurus ‘bull’, Gr. tauros < IE *tauro-
Arab. wajnun, Hbr. jajin ‘wine’Engl. wine, Gr. (w)oĩnos, Lat. vīnum; Hitt. wijanaš, cf. also Georgian γvino
Arab. waqā ‘to preserve, to defend’Engl. wake, watch, wait < PG *wak-, *waxt-, Lat. vegere ‘to be active’, Skr. vāja ‘strength, speed’
Arab. warada ‘to come’, wardijānun ‘guardian’Engl. guard < Old French garder < Frankish warden
Akk. zību ‘sacrifice, offering’OE tiber ‘sacrifice, offering’; Ger. Ungeziefer ‘vermin’
 
Thanks for your list Spongetaro : it's great !

Let's see now if the phonetic correspondancies are regular.
 
Here are some similiraities between IE and Semitics words. Some could be borrowings.

yes that is true,

many times I spoke about Pelasgians and possibility that Both IE and Semitic spoken in Near East,

If search better you find many more, according Yehunda they are 16 000 words that connects Proto Semitic with PIE.

and that is part of what supporters of Indo-Hettit or Greco-Armenian theory suggest,

that connection is giving IE as very new language about 2500-3000 BC and mainly connects it with high irrigation
 
I thinks that the Afro asiatic loanwords could have occured when Sredny Stog and Yamnaya people from the Steppes encountered the Late Cucunteni people who where maybe EV13.
 
It is always a quality to be sceptical in such matter, but here, you shouldn't : phonetic rules are very reliable, and very regular. All German words, f.ex., abide by Grimm and Verner's Law and by the Old High German Consonant Shift. You would hardly find any exception. the latin "piscem" equates the german "fisch" (f/p) according to these laws, as well as "pater" equates "father" (f/p) and both equate ultimately a PIE *p. Thus, don't be sceptical, I assure you that the device is very safe :)

Kentel, my scepticism wasn't so much towards the methodology of language reconstruction itself (which, as you pointed out, are very reliable - even though there have been incidents in the past when I've been shouted at for proposing exactly that ;) ), but regarding the question of a language reconstruction of a "proto-pre-indo-european" language if we consider the very limited corpus.

But now, you can question the reality of these reconstructed languages : was there really a proto-Germanic (or proto-something-else), was there really a PIE language, or are these reconstructed words only some kind of mathematical models ? Honestly, we don't know. Nobody has ever been able to find a single archaeologic remain of the proto-IE people, and the general phonetic features of the PIE languages are globally unrealistic. So...

I do not think that the question *if* there was a Proto-language is the important question, but more the question how representative the reconstructed proto-language is actually of the actually of the real proto-language that was spoken at some time in the past. The best example for this dichotomy would be differences between a reconstructed Proto-Romance language and the actual historic Latin (since here we have the possibility to actually take a more than extensive look at the ancestral language that is unattested in most other cases). In so far, I think that criticism of the standard reconstructions of PIE are probably valid: for example, as you pointed out, the suggested phonology of PIE is rather unlikely - and one might be even going ahead and claim that it's too heavily based off Classical Greek and Sanskrit. Conversely, I think for instance the Glottalic Theory is the very opposite: it's too Armenian-based, and many of the developments that make sense under the traditional model (e.g. Grimm's Law) make even less sense in a Glottalic context.

Thanks for this very interesting comment.

If you consider the language map of Europe today, and put, say, in red all the places where an IE language is spoken, and in green all the places where a pre-IE language is spoken. Appart from basque, all your map will be red (I put appart the Uralic languages which are peripherical in our map).

Now consider the same map 3000 years ago, it will be full of green spots : In France, you will have Aquitanian and Ligurian, in Italy: Etruscan, North-Picenian, Rhetic and Sicane, In Greece :Minoan, in Spain: Basque, Iberic and Tartessian, in Anatolia : Hatti... All of them are pre-IE languages, none is related to another one, none is related to any known language. How much phylla does it makes ? And we are talking only about the languages we know ! Think of all the ones which disappeared without leaving any trace - appart from the river names, precisely.

The point that I have been trying to raise is how much diversity can be realistically assumed for pre-Indo-European Europe? At the bare minumum, we could say all of the above mentioned language families were part of one language family, and at the opposing extreme most or all of those were not closely related with each other.

Proto-Celtic and Proto-everything are very well described by historical linguistics. I should say : if such languages did exist, we know almost everything about them - no mystery here :). As you seem to be especially interested in the Celtic languages, and as you speak obviously German, I would recommand you the reading of this book (still very actual in spite of his age) in case you didn't read it yet.

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that the link appears to be broken.
 

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