Talk:Proto-Indo-European language

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Proto-Indo-European language was a Language and literature good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 9, 2007	Good article nominee	Not listed

Desinence?

Isn't a "desinence" always an ending, suffix, or terminator?

Title

Why is this not Indo-Germanic languages? 79.106.203.121 (talk) 16:14, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why would it be? Remsense诉 16:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why would it not be? 79.106.203.121 (talk) 17:37, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your comments suggest a lack of familiarity with the literature on the subject. A glance at the bibliography should have been sufficient. --Pfold (talk) 18:19, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At a glance I see no mention in the article that the family has been called Indo-Germanic (for the most distant subfamilies); that name is out of fashion in English, but not wholly forgotten, and I think it is still usual in some other languages. Whether the article ought to mention it, and how, is worth some consideration. —Tamfang (talk) 05:04, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Historical terminology is relevant and can have a mention with due weight, but not here. The main article for all things Indo-European is Indo-European languages; "Indo-Germanic" is mentioned there. –Austronesier (talk) 05:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good enough for me. —Tamfang (talk) 00:11, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article is inconsistent on whether Proto-Indo-European is an ancient language or an Industrial-Age invention by scholars

Sometimes you get trolled by The Almighty Idahoan. Remsense诉 20:43, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

When I'm typing this protest, the article contains the text "Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family", and also contains "...; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages." That agrees with my understanding, and what I've heard and read everywhere else.

But this article also contains the text "PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE..." and the text "As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other ...".

Well, wait a second. If it's a language invented/reconstructed by scholars, there's no guarantee (and in fact odds are against) that this language is the ACTUAL language that was REALLY spoken by any ancient people. Regardless of what I've read elsewhere, Wikipedia ought to at least take note of the fact that the pieces of text I've quoted can't both be correct. Either "Proto-Indo-European" is the word for the reconstructed language, or it's the word for a language that we KNOW (from whatever historical and archaeological evidence) was spoken by an ancient people millennia ago. It may be true (by an astronomically LUCKY outcome that every "best guess" as to language-divergence IS the actual language-divergence that occurred) that our most LIKELY (or simplest, or most logical) reverse-engineerings of EVERY language-change really do bring us to a language that really was spoken by real ancient people. But even if we HAVE won this absurdly-difficult lottery, there's no way anyone alive today could KNOW, or PROVE, that the INVENTED language "Proto-Indo-European" really IS that language lost so long ago.

So, no, let's not be talking about the people who spoke "Proto-Indo-European" (at least, not any people before the 18th century)! There never WERE any such people. This article absolutely should not flip back and forth between saying that "Proto-Indo-European" is the name of the reverse-engineered language (which dovetails all of today's Indo-European languages into an ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICAL parent-language) and saying that "Proto-Indo-European" is the name of an ancient language actually spoken by real people thousands of years ago. And let me conclude with another expression of dismay as to Wikipedia's standards, once again putting mutually-inconsistent statements into the same article, which as often as not I can read only after clicking away a banner asking me for money.2600:1700:6759:B000:E894:BFCC:705D:880 (talk) 19:56, 13 July 2024 (UTC)Christopher Lawrence Simpson[reply]

This critique would also apply for any "language" as an abstract object of study. If you insist otherwise, then that is a problem you have with historical linguistics as a science. It is not that confusing if one chooses to straightforwardly digest the article and its sources as written. Remsense诉 19:59, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Remsense here; we all know PIE is a construct which has been proposed to explain various extant linguistic phenomena. In that way it's no different from other scientific models we often refer to as concrete realities, say the Big Bang or Pangaea. Those are both theoretical constructs about which we are constantly learning new particulars. So, as PIE is far and away the model supported by most scholars (even with various detail differences), it makes sense to me to refer to it as the article does. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 20:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think everyone except for Randy in Boise is with Remsense here. –Austronesier (talk) 20:35, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Opening sentence: 'Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.'

The opening sentence does not say that the topic of this article "Proto-Indo-European language" is a language.

More accurate might be to say "Proto-Indo-European language is a postulated ancestral language that is the common ancestor of the Indo-European language family". The wording is borrowed from the Wiki article on proto-languages. Truly it is a language that is an ancestor or is suggested to be an ancestor, not an ancestor.118.210.119.62 (talk) 18:08, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's fine the way it is. Really, it's more accurate to primarily characterize it as a reconstruction than as a language as such, if that makes sense. Remsense ‥ 论 18:12, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Phonetics?

Would a section on phonetics be doable? At the very least an explanation of h₁ and h₂, accent marks on consonants such as ḱ, and under-circles such as on ŕ̥, and other such diacritics. Thisisnotatest (talk) 21:19, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]