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The History of English Podcast
Episode 7: More Indo-European Words
00:30:49
We complete our review Indo-European words which have impacted modern English. Social terms are explored to provide an insight into Indo-European society and culture.
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Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. In the last episode, we began to look at some of the specific words used by the original Indo Europeans, many of which are still found in various forms in modern English. In this episode, I want to continue looking at some of the original Indo European words. Many of the words in this episode relate to the society and culture of the Indo Europeans, so these words will begin to reveal more about who these people were. Remember that as linguists began to reconstruct these words, they were not really sure who these people were. They had some guesses and made certain assumptions, but they didn't really know when or where these people lived. So the language helps to narrow the range of possibilities. In the last episode, I pointed out a few clues, like the existence of honeybees and beech trees. And we'll look at all of these clues in an upcoming episode of the podcast. But for now, let's look at some more words which the Indo Europeans used to learn a bit more about these ancient people. Let's start with some of the kinship and family terms. The Indo European language contained the original version of the words father and mother. We've talked about the word father quite a few times in this podcast. Remember that the word in Latin was pater and the word in Old English was fatter. Both words originated in the original Indo European language, as did the word for mother. We also find the original version of the words brother and sister, which were pronounced something like bra, ter, and suser. So these words haven't changed very much in Modern English. And speaking of brother and sister, we also find the root of the word sibling. The original Indo European root produced the Old English word sib, meaning kinsman in a more generic sense. And the Old English word sib later produced sibling in Modern English, meaning a brother or sister. Specifically, sib is also the original suffix of the word gossip, which was godsib originally, meaning the offspring of one's godmother or godfather. A godsib was someone who was like an immediate family member but wasn't actually related, and thus someone with whom he might share secrets about others. Thus the word gossip. The same Indo European root word also produced the word self and even the sui. In suicide, we also find the original version of the word nephew, but in the original Indo European language, the term was nepat, and it meant any male descendant other than a son. So it was a very general term which included a grandson, a stepson, as well as a sibling son in the sense that it's used Today, and it continued to be used in this general sense in both Old English and Middle English before the English word nepha died out, as has happened with so many modern English words. The modern English word nephew comes from the same original Indo European word, but it comes in through French and ultimately through Latin. The original Indo European word nepot evolved into nepetim in Latin, where it was also used in the same general sense of a male descendant other than a son. And it's from this same Latin word used in this general sense that we get the modern English word nepotism. But the word found its way into French and eventually into English after the Norman invasion in a male and female form, the male form eventually becoming Anglicized as nephew, and the female form came from French as niece in almost the same form which we have today. But again, both niece and nephew were used in a more general sense. In Middle English, niece could refer to a granddaughter, and nephew could refer to a grandson. It wasn't until the 1600s that the terms became restricted to their current meanings as a sibling's daughter or son. But also note one other somewhat subtle point. The words niece and nephew come from an original Indo European word meaning a male descendant. There's no reconstructed Indo European word for a female descendant in this same sense. And in fact, linguists have noted this fact about the original Indo European language. There are lots of roots for male kin terms, but much fewer for female terms. In the same sense that there was a word which meant male descendants other than a son, there was also a word which meant adult male relatives or ancestors. Other than a father, this word could refer to a grandfather or an uncle or other adult male relative. This word has been reconstructed as something like awo. This original word found its way into both the Germanic languages and Latin, and very early on its meaning came to be limited to a parent's brother. In both language families, the Old English version of the word has died out. But the Latin version was borrowed into English from French after the Norman invasion as uncle, which eventually became the word uncle. But again, the term aunt or aunt doesn't have any known Indo European roots. So we have this phenomenon where terms related to male kin survive in nearly all Indo European languages. But similar terms for the wife or wife's family are rare, and they are variable in Indo European languages. This has led linguists and language historians to conclude that Indo European speakers inherited their possessions, their rights, and their duties from their father's bloodline. And these kinship terms, when viewed in the way they were originally used, they suggest that brides lived with their husband's family after marriage. So, in short, the original Indo Europeans were probably a patriarchal society where male authority and male bloodlines controlled. So now let's look at some religious terms. As you may recall from an earlier episode, the Indo Europeans had a word for God which was a combination of sky and father. In Sanskrit, it was Dauspita. In Latin, it was Jupiter, which later became Jupiter. In Greek, it was Zuspater, which was later shortened to just Zeus. So all of these terms were connected and originally meant sky father in the original Indo European language. Historians have concluded from the use of sky father that the original Indo Europeans believed in a male sky God. So now let's turn our attention to the political structure of these people. What kind of political structure did they have? Well, there's a reconstructed Indo European word which means tribal or clan chieftain. So historians have concluded from this that they were organized into small groups or clans rather than large, more organized kingdoms. In an upcoming episode, we're going to put all these pieces together and try to determine exactly who these original Indo Europeans were. And based on this evidence, given the time and location where these people would have lived, the archaeological evidence provides more information about these people. As we'll see, the evidence reveals that these people adopted a herding economy based around cattle, sheep and goats around 5200 BC. And the burial evidence indicates the first appearance of tribal chiefs or village chiefs a short time later, based upon burial customs and artifacts which have been uncovered at burial sites. So we start to see a convergence of linguistic evidence and archaeological evidence as we put these pieces together. But again, more on all of this in an upcoming episode. Now, the burial evidence also reveals that a few burials were more lavish than those of the typical tribal chief. This suggests a more prominent leader existed as well. And as we look at the words of the original Indo Europeans, we find a word which has been reconstructed as Reich, which meant to lead or set things straight. This word also apparently referred to another kind of powerful leader or officer other than a tribal chief. And we know this in part because the same original Indo European word rekha can be found in lots of words in modern English as well as other Indo European languages. It's the root of words like regulate and regulator which reflect the original meaning of the word in the sense of setting things right or one who sets things right. And in fact, it's the root of the word right as well. We also find it in the word correct, where it's reflected in the rect part. And again, it's used in the sense of setting things right. So we have regulate, write and correct. But what's really interesting is the appearance of this same root in many words for kings and other prominent leaders in modern English and other Indo European languages as well. So, for example, in Latin we have the word rex, which meant king in Latin. And we see that word occasionally in English. We even see it in the word T Rex for a dinosaur, meaning literally king of the dinosaurs. It's also the root of the word rix, which meant king in Celtic, and raj, which was king in the old Indic language in India. It's also the root of the word regal and royal in modern English, Both of those terms coming from French and ultimately from Latin. And it's the root of the word Reich in German, as in the Third Reich. So the connection of this root word meaning to regulate or set things right with the many words we have for kings or royalty suggest that there was a prominent leader whose job was to regulate certain matters or set things right. So let's turn our attention to certain terms that the Indo Europeans had to reflect relationships, specifically relationships between people. So let's break down the Indo European society a bit more down to this personal level to see how Indo Europeans interacted with each other. In modern English, we have the words donate and give. And in modern usage, we consider these words synonyms. In other words, they mean basically the same thing. Both of these words, give and donate, come from separate Indo European root words. But here's what's interesting. The Indo European root for donate produced words meaning to give in most dialects, but it also produced a word meaning to take in the ancient Hittite language. And the Indo European root for give produced words meaning to give or donate in most dialects. But it led to a word for take in Irish. And there are other examples of this give take phenomenon in other Indo European languages. The same root words produced words meaning give in many dialects, but take in other dialects. This suggests that the Indo European people believed in reciprocal gift giving. The presentation of a gift required a counter gift. In other words, the acts of giving and receiving were part of a single process of exchange. So the root word for this process passes on as give in some languages and take in other languages. A similar phenomenon occurs with the guest host relationship. In modern English, the words guest and host are two distinct roles. The host owns or possesses a certain piece of property, and the guest is the person who's invited or welcomed by the host as a visitor. But interestingly, both of these words, guest and host, derive from the same Indo European root word which was gasti, ghosty, eventually produced the modern English word guest. And the g became silent in another variation of the word and became host. The fact that guest and host came from the same word suggests a specific set of cultural rules in which guest, host relationships were intertwined. There were mutual obligations of hospitality, as we'll see in an upcoming episode. The original Indo Europeans were a nomadic people with a culture built around cattle raising as well as sheep, goat and horse domestication. They were always on the move, looking for new pastures and lands. As a result, these tribes often came into contact with each other and passed through each other's territories. So today's host might be tomorrow's guest. So this word originally had a reciprocal or dual meaning, but the guest was also a stranger, which meant that there was always a degree of uncertainty and possible hostility. That's why the original Indo European word gosti is also the root of the word hostile in modern English. And we also get the word ghost from this original word, a ghost being a form of a house guest. And we also get the word hospital from this same root word. And interestingly, the Latin noun hospice also meant both host and guest. So it was a direct descendant of the original Indo European word. And it carried the same dual meaning that the original Indo Europeans had. According to the Romans, every hospice, meaning host or guest, should be friendly or hospitalis. The term eventually became hospitum to mean a place where people were welcomed by a friendly host in exchange for payment of a specific price. This is the root of hospice, hospitality and hotel. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims from Europe began to travel to the Holy Land and a military order of monks established a place in Jerusalem to welcome and treat sick and injured pilgrims. This order was called the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. And this was the root of the use of the word hospital as a term to refer to a place for treating sick people. So from this single Indo European word we get guest, host, ghost, hostile, hospice, hospitality, hotel and hospital. So if this word is the root of hostile, because a guest or host could be unfriendly, what about actual conflict between people or groups? It's also interesting to note that the words for war in the original Indo European languages are not cognate with each other. In other words, the word came into the respective languages later and doesn't appear to be in the original Indo European vocabulary. This indicates that the term is associated with long term armed conflict between two or more political units or city states or nation states. But it did not exist during the Indo European era. Historians now know that raiding did occur between the various Indo European clans or tribes and that it was actually quite common, even a ritual or rite of passage for certain young men. But this was not the same as war in the sense that we would later know it. So let's turn our attention to numbers, because all of our basic numbers come from the original Indo Europeans. Numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and hundred, which we've talked about quite a bit in this podcast series. One thing that's really interesting about these numbers is they suggest that the original Indo Europeans tended to count by tens, basically the same as we do today with the metric system. So for example, the word hundred literally meant a sum of 1010s. All modern English numbers are based on repeating increments of 10. Ten tens in a hundred, ten hundreds and a thousand, etc. And of course, even when we count basic numbers, we do so in tens. So after 20 we go to 20, 1, 22, 23, all the way to 29, then start with a new set of 10 with 30, 31, 32, all the way to 39 and so on. The point here is that we still count in tens. And when we look at the language of the original Indo Europeans, we see that the original Indo Europeans also counted in tens. And this may seem obvious today, but it's important to keep in mind that not all ancient cultures counted by tens. Even today we count by twelves for certain things. A dozen eggs, 12 inches and a foot, 12 months in a year, each day is divided into two 12 hour increments. Even 360 degrees in a circle is based on increments of 12. The ancient Babylonians used a base system of 60 in counting. So we may get the tendency to count certain measurements in increments of 12, either directly or indirectly from the Babylonians. And I say may because frankly I haven't researched it thoroughly and, and I can't say that definitively. But Indo European cultures like the ancient Greeks and Romans used a base system of 10, just as we do today. So some of our tendency to measure certain things in increments of 10 come from these Indo European sources. But the point here is how a small and seemingly unimportant fact like the numbers used by these ancient people can have a significant impact on the way we do things and the way we think about things today. The Indo Europeans also had words for colors, and some of these words are the roots of the words we have today in modern English. We have the words black and white, these colors may seem like polar opposites, but the original Indo European word for black is also the root of the word for white in many Indo European languages. Once again, just like with guest and host, we have one of those Indo European root words that produces two seemingly contradictory words. The original Indo European word bel meant burn, flash or shine. As a result, it's the root of the word black, which refers to something burnt or blackened. But that same original Indo European word is also the root of the Latin word blancus, which meant white, as in something bright, which is in the process of burning. And it's still found in many Latin derived words for white, like the French word blanc and the Spanish word blanco. That's why those Latin derived words for white resemble the English word for black. Black, blanc, blanco. But in English, black means black. But French blanc and Spanish blanco both mean white. The point here is that the French and Spanish versions of the words come from the same original Indo European root word, but they change to reflect the brightness produced by a fire that's burning. But English didn't borrow the same word for white. The English word white comes from the Old English word wheat, which comes from Old Germanic. The Old English word derives from a different Indo European root word, which was quintos. But that word also meant bright in the original Indo European language. So it was just a different word that the Indo Europeans had, not the same root that we have for the word black. You might also note the similarity of the word white with the modern English word. What? Remember in the Grimslaw episode, I talked about the origin of the word what it was originally kwot in the original Indo European language, and it became k in Spanish and k in French in Old English. The K sound shifted to an H sound under Grimm's Law. And it became what The H sound at the beginning was dropped over time, and we ended up with the modern English word what. The same thing happened with white. It began as quintos in the original Indo European language. And the K sound had shifted to an H sound under Grimm's Law in the Germanic languages, and it became huntos. And again, the H sound dropped off at the beginning. And the first two letters H and W were shifted to wh to reflect that the W sound was the primary consonant at the beginning. So white what when all of these words went through the same general process. And that's why all of those words begin with a wh spelling, even though the H is basically silent today. The Indo Europeans also had a root word for the Modern English word red, and this root word is found throughout the Indo European languages. The English word red is cognate with the French word rouge and the Spanish word rojo. It also appears in the modern English word rust, which comes from Old English. Again, all of those words came from the same original Indo European root word meaning Russian red. The Indo Europeans also had a word which was pronounced something like spec, which meant to look. And that word is the ultimate ancestor of the modern English words spectate and spectator and lots of other words, as we'll see in a second. But I should note that the word look is an Old English word of unknown origin. It's not related to this ancient Indo European word, even though it has essentially the same meaning in modern English. Like the modern English word look, the ancient Indo European word spek could mean the act of looking at something, or it could mean how something looked, as in he looks at the sunset or he looks very sick. The word speck could also be used both ways. Spec is also the root of the Latin word specara, which is actually the source of the words spectate and spectator, which I mentioned earlier. But it's also the source of words like spectacle, speculate, inspect, aspect, suspect, and conspicuous, all having to do with the way something looks or an aspect of something which can be observed or discerned. That same Indo European word spic also produced the words spy and espionage, which when the French borrowed the terms from the Franks, who were another Germanic tribe, who, despite their Germanic origins, are ultimately responsible for the founding of the modern French state. The word speak evolved into early Greek as well. Remember, the Greek language is also an Indo European language. But the Greeks reversed the p and the k in the original Indo European root word speak, and they came up with the Greek word scopion, which eventually finds its way into English as scope, as in telescope, microscope, and periscope. Again, all having to do with the process of looking at something. The Greek version also found its way into English as the word skeptic, as in to see through something or look at something critically, and it may be harder to see it. But the Greek version of the word also finds its way into certain early religious terms like episcopalian and bishop. In these words, the term is being used in its sense as an overseer. Now let's turn to a word which the Indo Europeans had for man. In fact, the Indo Europeans had two words for man. They had the word man, and they had a separate word, wiro, which meant man as well. Both of these words came into Old English from the Indo European root word mon. Old English also had the word mon, but it was used in a much more general sense at the time, meaning a person, as in mankind, like all men are created equal. It could be used in reference to both males and females, men and women collectively. But the other Indo European root word wiro, specifically meant males. In other words, it had basically the same meaning as the modern English word man. It strictly referred to males, adult males really. So in Old English, man meant person and wer meant man. And Old English also had the word wif, which meant woman. Now, we rarely see the use of the word wer as man in modern English, but there are a couple of examples. The best example is probably werwolf, which literally means man wolf. We also see it in a word from the period of the Germanic tribes before the Anglo Saxons became the English. The term was wergeld, which literally meant man money. Amongst the Germanic tribes, if a member of one family killed a member of another family, the dispute could be resolved with the payment of money from the murderer's family to the victim's family to compensate for the killing. There were very specific rules to determine the rate of compensation. This was the wergeld. So we see the use of were as man in that word. That same Indo European root word which produced the Old English word were is also the source of the word world, which basically meant the home of man. During the Middle English period, wer, meaning man, started to disappear and the word man began to be used in its place to mean an adult male. But man also continued to be used in a more generic sense to refer to people. This dual usage still exists in modern English and it creates problems where we don't want to be sexist. So we often have to modify the word man when it's used in its original sense as persons or humans. So we take a word like mankind and we have to make a new word to accompany it, like womankind. Or we have to change a word like chairman, which initially used the word man in its generic Old English sense. And we now have to create a more gender neutral term like chairperson. So this is the challenge we have in a modern society, using words that have changed their meaning over time. I mentioned that Old English used wer to refer to a man and wif to refer to a woman. Of course, we still have wif in modern English as the word wife, but again, the sense has changed from a generic term for an adult woman in its original usage to its modern usage as the word wife, meaning a term for married woman. We still see the initial generic use of the term in a few older words which still linger into modern English, like midwife and even the phrase old wives tale, where the sense is just a woman, not necessarily a married woman. Some people believe wif also goes back to Indo European roots. But outside of the Germanic languages, the only possible cognates appear to be in the Tekarian language discovered in China. And even then, the reconstructed roots don't directly relate to women or females. So the Indo European roots of weaf are uncertain at best. It's probably best to just say that its roots are unknown. There's one other final aspect of Indo European vocabulary that I want to point out. The linguistic evidence suggests that the original Indo European speaking people practiced epic poetry, a form that used stock phrases, some of which show up in poetry preserved to the present day in works like the Iliad and other ancient texts. These include terms like driving cattle and the phrase undying fame, as well as the stock phrase immortal gods. These stock phrases can be traced back to the original Indo European language, and they've been used ever since in epic poetry and other writings and texts throughout the Indo European languages. So that concludes my look at specific Indo European words, many of which have come down to us in modern English. But just as importantly, these words help to paint a picture of who these original Indo Europeans were and how they lived. And we're going to put all of these pieces together very shortly to try to determine exactly when and where they lived. And based on archaeological evidence and other historical records, we'll try to identify exactly who these people were. But before we do that, I want to turn away from the vocabulary or words which these Indo Europeans used, and I want to spend a few minutes on how they used those words, specifically their grammar. This may seem a bit boring, but it's actually very important as it helps to introduce some concepts which are essential to understanding Old English. So in the next episode, which may be a short episode, I'm going to look at the original Indo European grammar, and then we'll put all of the pieces of evidence together to determine exactly who these Indo Europeans were. So until next time, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast.