Proto
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That's the title of a brand new (3/13/25) book by Laura Spinney, author of Pale Rider, a noteworthy volume on the 1918 influenza pandemic. Here she is interviewed (6/7/25) by Colin Gorrie (the interview is too long [58:14] to post directly on Language Log):
Proto-Indo-European Origins: A Conversation with Laura Spinney
Follow along with the interview by using the transcript (available on the YouTube site; it shows up on the right side).
The whole title of Spinney's remarkable tome is Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. As Gorrie explains:
This book integrates linguistics, archaeology, and genetics to give us an up-to-date overview of Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancient language that English and many other languages ultimately descend from. Our conversation is wide-ranging, touching not only on the linguistics but also on what we can reconstruct of the culture of the speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and the light it sheds on later history and literature.
Blurb:from the publisher (Bloomsbury)
Daughter. Duhitár-. Dustr. Dukte. Listen to these English, Sanskrit, Armenian and Lithuanian words, all meaning the same thing, and you hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely journeys. All four languages-along with hundreds of others, from French and Gaelic, to Persian and Polish-trace their origins to an ancient tongue spoken as the last ice age receded. This language, which we call Proto-Indo-European, was born between Europe and Asia and exploded out of its cradle, fragmenting as it spread east and west. Its last speaker died thousands of years ago, yet Proto-Indo-European lives on in its myriad linguistic offspring and in some of our best loved works of literature, including Dante's Inferno and the Rig Veda, The Lord of the Rings and the love poetry of Rumi. How did this happen?
Acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney set out to answer that question, retracing the Indo-European odyssey across continents and millennia. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the silk roads and the Hindu Kush. We retrace the epic journeys of nomads and monks, warriors and kings – the ancient peoples who carried these languages far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists on a thrilling mission to retrieve the lost languages and their speakers: the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists who have reconstructed that ancient diaspora. What they have learned has profound implications for our modern world, because people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.
Tocharian
Spinney does a particularly good job on Tocharian. Incidentally, in the chapter on Tocharian in the book, she quotes and discusses my favorite "love poem".
See "Tocharian love poem" (4/1/20) — with transcription (and photograph of the manuscript), translation, and lengthy bibliography
Selected readings
- "Where did the PIEs come from; when was that?" (7/28/23)
- "The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe" (1/6/09) — classic post by Don Ringe
- "Horse and wheel in the early history of Indo-European" (1/10/09)
- "Indo-European "cow" and Old Sinitic reconstructions: awesome" (2/16/20) — with lengthy bibliography
- "More on IE wheels and horses" (1/10/09)
- "Inheritance versus lexical borrowing: a case with decisive sound-change evidence" (1/13/09)
- "The linguistic history of horses, gods, and wheeled vehicles" (1/13/09)
- "Some Wanderwörter in Indo-European languages" (1/16/09)
- "Don Ringe ties up some loose ends" (2/20/09)
- "The place and time of Proto-Indo-European: Another round" (8/24/12)
- "Proto-Indo-European laks- > Modern English 'lox'" (12/26/20)
- "'Skin' and 'hide' ('pelt') in Old Sinitic and Proto-Indo-European" (11/7/20) — with a very lengthy bibliography
- "Proto-Indo-European in Prometheus?" (6/8/12)
- "The burgeoning of Indo-European and the withering of many other languages" (4/29/25)
- "PIE *gene- *gwen-" (8/10/23) –with implications for "gender"
- "Proto by Laura Spinney review – how Indo-European languages went global: The fascinating story of the ancient words that survive in the mouths of billions of speakers today", Henry Oliver, The Guardian (4/10/25)
- [Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto]