Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Proto-Indo-European/reply

We don't use ĝ or u̯ as letters, but ǵ and w, and diphthongs normally end in y or w as well.

I think a better term for language would be, which is commonly used to mean language in many descendants (including Latin, Slavic and Germanic). The accusative is.

means primarily "speak" or "sound out" so it's probably the best verb to use. Unfortunately, I don't know what its present tense is, which would be the tense to use for habitual statements like this. The only descendant that has a candidate for this is Sanskrit, which has two forms, vakti and vivakti. I don't know anything about Sanskrit but the first looks like an athematic present and the second like an i-reduplicated present (what the difference is between them I don't know). So I think we could have a wild guess and say it has an athematic present.

I don't think 'manus' was the IE word for human, and I'm not even sure it existed at all. But there is, which is the ancestor of Latin and Germanic.

The word for 'this' isn't, that word meant 'one'. For 'this' we can probably use.

For 'old' we can use.

So now we have:
 * Só dʰǵʰémō séneh₂m dn̥ǵʰwéh₂m (badly) wékʷti.
 * This human/person (NOM) old language (ACC) badly speaks.

But we can also try other phrases to suit our knowledge of PIE words. For example:


 * Só dʰǵʰémō séneh₂m dn̥ǵʰwéh₂m (well) ne wékʷti.
 * This person (NOM) old language (ACC) well not speaks.

Or:


 * Só dʰǵʰémō séneh₂s dn̥ǵʰuh₂és (much) ne wékʷti/wóyde.
 * This person (NOM) old language (GEN) much not speaks/knows. (This person does not speak much of the old language)

Or even:


 * Tósmey dʰǵʰm̥éney/dʰǵʰm̥néy séneh₂s dn̥ǵʰuh₂és (much) ǵnéh₃tis ne ésti.
 * This person (DAT) old language (ACC)) (much) knowledge (NOM) not is. (PIE had no word for 'have', instead the dative was used with 'is', so read it as This person does not have much knowledge of the old language)

There are several different ways to phrase things like 'well', too. For example it could be translated at 'with ease' using an instrumental. 'badly' could be phrased as 'with difficulty'. We could also choose to use and  as terms for the user, or something else if we can find a PIE term for 'use' and 'user'.