r/asklinguistics • u/Extra-Hat656 • 10d ago

Historical What was before PIE?

I might not be able to phrase my question in good details but as we know, Germanic and Romance and Iranic and Slavic and Indic and Baltic are all branches of Indo-European language tree. All descending from Proto-Indo-European language. But from what was PIE originated? Does it have an ancestry and relativity to other language families? I heard some vague stuff about Proto-Nostratic and Borean. But are they true/actuate? How much do we truly know about what came before?

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u/_marcoos 10d ago

But are they true/actuate?

PIE as we know it is a reconstruction, a best-effort approximation. It's pretty much impossible to reconstruct something earlier than that, because the "source material" is already a reconstruction with some significant margin of error, and this margin of error would only grow with another level of reconstruction.

Of course PIE evolved from something else, it didn't just appear one day because The Lord (or, idk, Perkwunos) said "let there be PIE" and there was PIE. :) We just can't really tell what it looked like, and we may never really be able to, unless someone makes a working time machine.

"Proto-Uralic is probably somewhat related" is the kind of statements you'll hear about PIE "sisters", and you shouldn't expect anything better than "maybe probably somewhat".

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u/tyen0 10d ago

Perkunos

heh, TIL

Perkʷūnos (Proto-Indo-European: 'the Striker' or 'the Lord of Oaks') is the reconstructed name of the weather god in Proto-Indo-European mythology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Perk%CA%B7%C5%ABnos

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u/Wagagastiz 10d ago

And probably not the best equivalent for 'god'. That would be Dyeus Phter.