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Proto-Indo-European alphabet for kids (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works
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I saved this picture along with explanations of the words, but I lost the explanations, so I leave it to y'all to figure it all out for me again.

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[–] 7 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Why is it written twice ? Once "normal" and the other in italic ?

A : White (like "Albinos" => white)
Ē : Star (similar to English)
G : Gel (like French "Gel" means "Frost")
G^h^ : Grass (similar to English)
K^w^ : Maybe Worm (K^w^rmis => Wrms => Worms ??)
K : Heart (like French "Coeur", english phonetics like K-uh-r)
L : Leaf (similar to English)
M : Moon (similar to English)
N : Cloud ? (similar to Spanish "Nube")
O : Eight (similar to Spanish "Ocho", Italian "Otto")
P : Fish (similar to Spanish "Pescare")
S : Sun (a.k.a. "Sol")
T : Three (similar to English)
W : Water (similar to English)

I don't know for the others

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    B^h^: Blüte means flower in German (compare: blossom)
    Dʰ: *Dʰegᵘ̯ʰ: I found the translations burning/fever/day here, maybe the image shows the day side of earth or the indoeuropeans predicted the global warming?
    Ǵ^h^: Ast is branch in German
    H3: h₃okʷ -> Auge in German, eye in English
    N: Nebula in Latin, Nebel in German, Fog/Mist in English
    R: Could either be *rēt (stick, rod) or *rēd (advice - "Rat" in German, great grandparent of the English "to read")
    Ō: Probably an alternative writing of *k̑u̯on, dog (French chien, German Hund, English hound), afaik noone knows where the Old English dogga came from and why it replaced the already common hound
    U: Oxen
    Y: jég is ice in Hungarian, jää in Finish and Estonian, but those are not indoeuropean languages‽

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 month ago

    Why is it written twice ? Once “normal” and the other in italic ?

    It's imitating kids alphabet books where it first shows the print letters, then cursive.

    Pretty solid, I think all are correct (I checked a few, just to make sure). For *gel-, cf. Latin gelu 'ice', from there Italian gelato 'ice cream'. *neb^h^os yielded Slavic nebo 'sky', but it seems Latin nebula 'cloud' retained the original meaning (and thus Spanish).

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