For example, the word for "house" is "dům". Its declensions might look
like this:
It's probably from Latin "domus".
Latin, on the other hand, was a living language. It was the native
tongue of a group of people who inhabited N. Italy.
Christian Weisgerber wrote:
On 2024-10-24, Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:
[Czech]
For example, the word for "house" is "dům". Its declensions might look >>>> like this:
It's probably from Latin "domus".
You might think that, but the etymological consensus is that Slavic
"dom" and Latin "domus" are cognates, both going back to PIE *dṓm.
The -ů-/-o- alternation in the Czech word is a common pattern, due to
a soundshift from earlier long ó > uo > ů [uː]. Polish has a similar
alternation -ó- [u]/-o-, albeit not in this word.
Indo-European was never a language. Nobody ever spoke it. It's a
collection of similar bits and pieces of language assembled with
hindsight. And when it comes to Proto-Indo-European, well, .... castles
in the air.
It's as if you were to walk through a junk-yard of old and trashed cars,
find similarities, and build families of them. And then you examine the families, and find similarities in those, whence you construct a
previous family.
Given some perseverance you might fathom it back prior to the Tower of
Babel, and find some original lingo that all the homines sapientes
coming out of Africa spoke and understood. (:-
Ed
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