Indo-European language varieties

[Vijay]

To change the subject completely

I'm actually glad you did this because I really do mean this to be about all kinds of Indo-European language varieties, not just Indo-Aryan, plus the discussion was kind of going to Indic scripts, which are another issue entirely.

Wiktionary lists many different alternatives for various forms of the verb quethen (link). I assume the variation is at least partly scribal and partly dialectal. Does anyone know which set of forms would have been used in the East Midlands dialect? Especially regarding the past participle, which has like six different forms with and without prefixed y-.

I don't know, but maybe this would help.

[Sol717]

To change the subject completely: Wiktionary lists many different alternatives for various forms of the verb quethen (link). I assume the variation is at least partly scribal and partly dialectal. Does anyone know which set of forms would have been used in the East Midlands dialect? Especially regarding the past participle, which has like six different forms with and without prefixed y-.

Probably the following if you're aiming for something like Chaucer (educated late 14th c. London speech):

• Infinitive: quethe, quethen
• Present stem: queth- (add the appropriate endings, so e.g. quetheth say.3SG[IND], quethe, quethen say.PL)
• Finite past: quod, quoth (plurals of course get the appropriate endings added; the same with past subjunctives insofar as they exist)
• Past participle: quede, queden (forms with -th- are also possible)

As you can see, there's still quite a bit of variation, but it's a bit more manageable than what Wiktionary has.

Of course the normal orthographic variation applies, so you can get thorn instead of th, -yn instead of -en, but you can ignore all of that. However, there's one factor that makes all of this irrelevant: by Chaucer's time, quethen was falling out of use, except for in the past singular quod, quoth. You may want to consider using speken, seyen, tellen etc. instead.

[Vijay]

Is there any reason to believe that Cimmerian wasn't just an Iranian language?

[WeepingElf]

Is there any reason to believe that Cimmerian wasn't just an Iranian language?

No valid one, at least. You are perhaps referring to Holzer's idea that the Cimmerians spoke "Temematic", which IMHO makes no sense in this part of the world. IE languages with odd developments are always ones in peripheral areas. The Cimmerians, however, were smack in the middle of the IE world, and if they didn't speak just an Iranian language, they'd have spoken something intermediate between Iranian, Balto-Slavic and Thracian, sharing all developments those branches shared, which "Temematic" so much is not.

[Frislander]

Apparently, at least in standard Odia, words never end in a consonant, always in a vowel, and the default vowel is always [ɔ], so e.g. Bhuvaneswar (the capital of Odisha) is [bʱubɔneswɔɾɔ].

This isn't really all that surprising, I suppose this would have been the state of Magadhi Prakrit too, only surprising in that it remained and there wasn't any later syncope as in Eastern Magadhi varieties like Bengali and Sylheti (which incidentally tend to leave the original *ɔ in the writing by not using the virama to suppress the inherent vowel).

Speaking of Sylheti, it's the only IE language I've seen which could be argued to have no inherent /k/, because original IA *k was spirantised /x/ when not geminated or next to a high vowel (though the modern language is obviously messy and from what I can tell there does appear to be an incipient contrast between the two emerging), on top of the spirantisations of *p and *c to /ɸ/ and /s/ respectively, e.g. /aɸne/ "2SG formal", /san/ "moon", /xoɸal/ "forehead" from *kapāla, /xala/ "black" vs. /kita/ "what?", /duk/ "sorrow".

Also it's the only Indo-Aryan language I've seen that's entirely ditched the aspiration contrast, with both viced and voiceless aspirates seemingly leaving a high tone (though the history is messy as heck and honestly I have no idea what's going on and I'm trying to learn the language).

[Vijay]

Is there any reason to believe that Cimmerian wasn't just an Iranian language?

No valid one, at least. You are perhaps referring to Holzer's idea that the Cimmerians spoke "Temematic"

No, tbh, I had no idea of any of that and was just wondering why Wikipedia makes it look like Cimmerian may have been another branch of Indo-European altogether.

Apparently, at least in standard Odia, words never end in a consonant, always in a vowel, and the default vowel is always [ɔ], so e.g. Bhuvaneswar (the capital of Odisha) is [bʱubɔneswɔɾɔ].

This isn't really all that surprising, I suppose this would have been the state of Magadhi Prakrit too, only surprising in that it remained and there wasn't any later syncope as in Eastern Magadhi varieties like Bengali and Sylheti (which incidentally tend to leave the original *ɔ in the writing by not using the virama to suppress the inherent vowel).

Yeah, of course! I'm mostly surprised because I didn't have any idea about this in Odia and the Romanization often suggests otherwise.

Speaking of Sylheti, it's the only IE language I've seen which could be argued to have no inherent /k/, because original IA *k was spirantised /x/ when not geminated or next to a high vowel (though the modern language is obviously messy and from what I can tell there does appear to be an incipient contrast between the two emerging), on top of the spirantisations of *p and *c to /ɸ/ and /s/ respectively, e.g. /aɸne/ "2SG formal", /san/ "moon", /xoɸal/ "forehead" from *kapāla, /xala/ "black" vs. /kita/ "what?", /duk/ "sorrow".

Also it's the only Indo-Aryan language I've seen that's entirely ditched the aspiration contrast, with both viced and voiceless aspirates seemingly leaving a high tone (though the history is messy as heck and honestly I have no idea what's going on and I'm trying to learn the language).

Aww Siloti <3

EDIT: I also just learned a bit about the conflicts and debates over standardization in Albania.

[WeepingElf]

Is there any reason to believe that Cimmerian wasn't just an Iranian language?

No valid one, at least. You are perhaps referring to Holzer's idea that the Cimmerians spoke "Temematic"

No, tbh, I had no idea of any of that and was just wondering why Wikipedia makes it look like Cimmerian may have been another branch of Indo-European altogether.

Wikipedia tends to err towards caution, and it is not certain that Cimmerian was an Iranian language - as I wrote, it could be something intermediate between Iranian, Slavic and Thracian. Only Holzer's "Temematic" theory is extremely doubtful, since one would not expect such a divergent language in a location as central as this.

[Vijay]

No valid one, at least. You are perhaps referring to Holzer's idea that the Cimmerians spoke "Temematic"

No, tbh, I had no idea of any of that and was just wondering why Wikipedia makes it look like Cimmerian may have been another branch of Indo-European altogether.

Wikipedia tends to err towards caution, and it is not certain that Cimmerian was an Iranian language - as I wrote, it could be something intermediate between Iranian, Slavic and Thracian. Only Holzer's "Temematic" theory is extremely doubtful, since one would not expect such a divergent language in a location as central as this.

Okay, but all the specific words Wikipedia cites also seem to be of Iranian origin, so why could it be something intermediate between Iranian, Slavic, and Thracian?

[WeepingElf]

No, tbh, I had no idea of any of that and was just wondering why Wikipedia makes it look like Cimmerian may have been another branch of Indo-European altogether.

Wikipedia tends to err towards caution, and it is not certain that Cimmerian was an Iranian language - as I wrote, it could be something intermediate between Iranian, Slavic and Thracian. Only Holzer's "Temematic" theory is extremely doubtful, since one would not expect such a divergent language in a location as central as this.

Okay, but all the specific words Wikipedia cites also seem to be of Iranian origin, so why could it be something intermediate between Iranian, Slavic, and Thracian?

I don't know. Ask the one who wrote that Wikipedia page, not me

[Vijay]

Is it just me, or do people seem to talk more about Lithuanian than about Latvian for some reason?

[Qwynegold]

Is it just me, or do people seem to talk more about Lithuanian than about Latvian for some reason?

Yeah, it's because Lithuanian is supposed to be the "oldest" IE language.

[Richard W]

Is it just me, or do people seem to talk more about Lithuanian than about Latvian for some reason?

Lithuanian seems more conservative, which in so far as it is true, is a perfectly valid reason.

[Linguoboy]

My ex, who used to speak Latvian, calls Lithuanian “Old High Latvian”.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Question about Latin.

If declensional endings were lost everywhere (except Romanian which maintains a vestigal case system) why weren't verb endings affected to the same degree? Is this because most case ending are single vowels while most verb endings are vowel + consonant or consonant + vowel + consonant and less prone to weakening/deletion?

[zompist]

Question about Latin.

If declensional endings were lost everywhere (except Romanian which maintains a vestigal case system) why weren't verb endings affected to the same degree? Is this because most case ending are single vowels while most verb endings are vowel + consonant or consonant + vowel + consonant and less prone to weakening/deletion?

In part, it's phonological bad luck. Lose the final -m, the ā/a distinction, and the ō/u distinction, and you've merged a lot of the nominal case forms.

By contrast. e.g. rogō/rogās/rogat were not merged, and the stress change in rogāmus/rogātis was enough to resist even the powerful grinding mechanism of French.

[Linguoboy]

In part, it's phonological bad luck. Lose the final -m, the ā/a distinction, and the ō/u distinction, and you've merged a lot of the nominal case forms.

Which I guess explains how Romanian managed to retain some, since it merged the rounded vowels differently.

But Romanian is also very innovative in some of its case endings (similar to how, say, Celtic and Germanic languages were in analogically extending plural endings to classes of nouns which has lost them) which I think shows that there was pressure to retain them. Traditionally, the explanation is that it was surrounded by other languages (e.g. Greek, Proto-Slavic) with robust inflectional morphology but that seems like a weak explanation given that Western Romance was in contact with Proto-Basque and Germanic--though the fact that most Germanic varieties went on to drastically simplify their case systems as well suggests some sort of Sprachbund effect.

[WeepingElf]

Romanian has suffixed articles, which kind of reintroduced case to the nouns. Languages which have more case distinctions in pronouns and articles are not uncommon, especially not in Europe. You can see that, for instance, in German, where many nouns no longer distinguish case but the articles still do.

[Otto Kretschmer]

When did Russian gain stress timing and started having vowel reduction?

[Vijay]

Wasn't Russian always stress-timed? I would expect that it was Old East Slavic that lost pitch accent.

Standard Russian has vowel reduction but is a relatively new development. Some varieties of Russian (particularly Northern Russian) have less vowel reduction than others, and other East Slavic varieties also have vowel reduction, so I would guess this is also an old development in those varieties.

[Seirios]

Romanian has suffixed articles, which kind of reintroduced case to the nouns. Languages which have more case distinctions in pronouns and articles are not uncommon, especially not in Europe. You can see that, for instance, in German, where many nouns no longer distinguish case but the articles still do.

I find German's declension pattern really interesting, almost as one of "maximal economy", where the case info is marked once early and they do not bother marking the same info twice:

[m. nom.|dat.]
neu-er | neu-em;
ein-∅ neu-er | ein-em neu-en;
d-er neu-e | d-em neu-en.