Etymology: Some History of Proto-Indo-European

The origin of the word 'etymology' leads to an explanation of the basics of Proto-Indo-European, Grimm's Law, and comparative philology.

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[NativLang]

A mug of cocoa and some P.I.E. - what a delicious start to my day!
You're wise to stress repeatedly the hypothetical nature of Proto-Indo-European. Some out there (uh... me) have rushed over hypotheses in the reconstruction process, presenting it as a big reveal/unearthing. That leaves the door open for confusion when met with debates over phoneme inventories, less well-attested forms, fuzzy semantic frames...
Also, it never gets old seeing lopsided reflexes with initial Gmc consonants standing out thanks to Grimm's Law. Or doing the same with voiced aspirates, where Latin stands out and Germanic looks more conservative. Nothing beats Indic though.
Ahhh, you covered so much fun stuff here!

[dfiala]

12 seconds in and you already earned your like with the "etymology of etymology" bit.

Keep up the good work, hoss. Much love from Arizona.

[LouisHansell]

That was great! The issue with Grimm's Law actually being defined by Rask brings to mind Stigler's Law. Many laws and observations in science have been credited to individuals who didn't really discover them, but due to circumstances those laws and observations were named after them. For example, the Maunder Minimum was recognized before Maunder described it, but his name is on it. This phenomenon happens so regularly that it has its own name, Stigler's Law. And yes, Stigler would be the first to admit, he didn't discover this naming irregularity.

[PeelingFlame]

"Greek etimos may be related to..."
*has intense flashbacks to Age of Mythology*

[megret]

Cross pollination muddies the issues. The Japanese word for bread in “pan” which they got from the Portuguese

[adamwojcik]

Why are there so many goddamn content creators on YouTube worthy of my money? I only have so much, guys!

[lokeshchandak]

at 11:54 Dyeu-Pater sounds way to close to dev-pitr. which would translate to god-father/god-parent in Sanskrit, by whatever little understanding I posses. just a connection I noticed.

[stAmbientGrl]

I'd like for you to do a video expounding the etymology of "shining father" and how that ties into the history of world religions. That intrigues me.

[flamencoprof]

The first inkling I had of Etymology was in the Appendices of the book Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien. There were tables similar to those shown in this post. I never looked at nor heard language the same way again.

[Philrc]

I'm so pleased I've found this channel. The content is remarkable, packed with information and interest.

[Keronin]

This was a fascinating video! I love Etymology in general, so your whole channel has been great, but the whole meta aspect was awesome!

[MajorGeneralVeers]

The patron saint of the internet is Harambe.

[kimberlyperrotis]

Etymology is what fascinates me most about words. Someone once asked why I was always looking up words - was it to impress people with my vocabulary? I laughed, that was why she did it, she insisted. I always had a huge vocabulary and didn’t need to add to it, all constant-readers do without any effort, what I’m interested in most is where words came from. Plus, once a root or stem in another language is learned, is opens up many other related words, and vocabulary derived in modern times from Greek and Latin, especially.

[thomasvieth]

For a great many years now, I am a fan of the interpretation of (shams) ereb for Europe and (shams) asi for Asia. A professor for Old Turkish alerted me to that around 1990. (He didn't claim it to be Old Turkish but of Sumerian origin.)

[Adriana.Gabriela]

Here's a linguist having eargasms and braingasms 😂 great video!

[winandsingh]

This was unbelievably intense and captivating. Thank you so much.

[rouldennn]

Europa is an Akkadian word that relatively makes it to be Semitic derived. Eurobba (or Erebu, Orobba) in old Akkadian meant the sunset, and for the first time was used by the Greeks to call the western lands as Evropa. this word is related to some other Semitic words such as Qorub (which means the same thing, the sunset) and even the word Arab, which means the people who live in the west (not the west as we know today, but because the Old Arabs used to be living in western Arabian peninsula) - Although some have interpreted the word Arab as something else, it probably means the same thing.

[jamespurcer]

Fascinating. I would like to see an episode on the "Gregorian Calendar".

[FuckleberryHinn]

early Egyptians called the Scarab bettle "Kepher"
in German a "Kaefer" means beetle. i find that interesting.

[fidenemini]

Some idea about existance of indo-european language family was noticed even earlier. Around 1550 a scholar of Grand Duchy of Lithuania Michalo Lituanus ("Michael the Lithuanian") in his treatise De moribus tartarorum, lituanorum et moscorum ("On the Customs of Tatars, Lithuanians and Muscovites" ) in support of then popular among Lithuanian nobles legend about Lithuanians being descendants of Romans, gives an example of 74 Lithuanian and Latin words which are similar and with the same meaning.