The language that changed the world
Around half of the world’s population speaks a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. Most know little about it
May 8th 2025
Dante did like a category. Famously, he split sinners into different circles in Hell. Those who committed milder misdemeanours (the violent; tyrants) went in the outer realms; more serious sinners (bankers, naturally) he tortured farther in.
But he also categorised other things. Because Dante—a linguistic Darwin—held a heretical theory. Europe’s languages, he thought, had not been made in a single moment, in a biblical Babel, but had evolved. With the care of a Victorian naturalist, he thus split Europe’s languages into families by their words for yes: thus those who lived in southern France and said “Oc” spoke a “Langue d’oc”.
The truth of Dante’s Hell is debatable, but, linguistically, he was spot-on. Four centuries later, a British judge and polyglot called Sir William Jones arrived in Calcutta and was struck by the similarities between Latin and Sanskrit words for terms such as house (domus, dam) and god (deus, deva). Clearly they had “sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists”. The world’s languages were not a babel but a brotherhood.
“Proto”, a new book by Laura Spinney, a journalist who has written for this newspaper, offers a biography of that brotherhood—or rather its parent. For Jones’s “common source” now has a name: “Proto-Indo-European” (PIE). It was first spoken by as little as a few dozen people around the Black Sea then, roughly 5,000 years ago, spread with rapidity “from Ireland to India”. Today, its offshoots include Irish and Hindi—and more or less everything in between. Almost half of the world’s population speaks a descendant of it.
PIE is long dead, but traces of it remain caught, like insects in amber, in modern languages, allowing academics to bring it back to life. Scholars know its speakers (perhaps) had the wheel (*kwekwlos, in PIE’s odd transcription, seen in English “circle” and “wheel” itself); and fields (*h2egros—“agriculture”) and drank mead (*medhu). They know speakers found visitors irritating: the PIE word “*ghostis” gives English not just “guest” but “ghost”, and Latin its word for “host” but also “enemy”. (Everyone has had a guest like that.) Its ancient wordscapes are enlightening, if at times puzzling. A hero was “one who urinated standing up”—which feels like a low bar.
This book is at its best on the language: to learn that English “mother”, Latin mater and Sanskrit mata share a root provokes a pleasing etymological “Ah!” Its (lengthy) agricultural sections are drier and contain too many mentions of the word “goat”. Topics, like guests, can outstay their welcome. But logophiles will enjoy getting to know a little more about their *meh2ter (mother) tongue. ■
Around half of the world’s population speaks a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. Most know little about it
May 8th 2025
Dante did like a category. Famously, he split sinners into different circles in Hell. Those who committed milder misdemeanours (the violent; tyrants) went in the outer realms; more serious sinners (bankers, naturally) he tortured farther in.
But he also categorised other things. Because Dante—a linguistic Darwin—held a heretical theory. Europe’s languages, he thought, had not been made in a single moment, in a biblical Babel, but had evolved. With the care of a Victorian naturalist, he thus split Europe’s languages into families by their words for yes: thus those who lived in southern France and said “Oc” spoke a “Langue d’oc”.
The truth of Dante’s Hell is debatable, but, linguistically, he was spot-on. Four centuries later, a British judge and polyglot called Sir William Jones arrived in Calcutta and was struck by the similarities between Latin and Sanskrit words for terms such as house (domus, dam) and god (deus, deva). Clearly they had “sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists”. The world’s languages were not a babel but a brotherhood.
“Proto”, a new book by Laura Spinney, a journalist who has written for this newspaper, offers a biography of that brotherhood—or rather its parent. For Jones’s “common source” now has a name: “Proto-Indo-European” (PIE). It was first spoken by as little as a few dozen people around the Black Sea then, roughly 5,000 years ago, spread with rapidity “from Ireland to India”. Today, its offshoots include Irish and Hindi—and more or less everything in between. Almost half of the world’s population speaks a descendant of it.
PIE is long dead, but traces of it remain caught, like insects in amber, in modern languages, allowing academics to bring it back to life. Scholars know its speakers (perhaps) had the wheel (*kwekwlos, in PIE’s odd transcription, seen in English “circle” and “wheel” itself); and fields (*h2egros—“agriculture”) and drank mead (*medhu). They know speakers found visitors irritating: the PIE word “*ghostis” gives English not just “guest” but “ghost”, and Latin its word for “host” but also “enemy”. (Everyone has had a guest like that.) Its ancient wordscapes are enlightening, if at times puzzling. A hero was “one who urinated standing up”—which feels like a low bar.
This book is at its best on the language: to learn that English “mother”, Latin mater and Sanskrit mata share a root provokes a pleasing etymological “Ah!” Its (lengthy) agricultural sections are drier and contain too many mentions of the word “goat”. Topics, like guests, can outstay their welcome. But logophiles will enjoy getting to know a little more about their *meh2ter (mother) tongue. ■
