Talk:Indo-European languages

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Inb4

Inb4 everyone rags on Smerdis for creating something irrelevant to the goals of the wiki. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 10:38, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh dear yet another "the subject of this article is blah blah stuff, oh and some people make odd claims about it." Merge the relevant bits into their appropriate artices, and delete this. Sophie^Wilder 10:51, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

This is just a stub for the moment, put together as an outline of the various things I'd ultimately want to see discussed in the article. One problem with breaking it up in the way you suggest is that it would entail specific sub-articles like Indo-European homeland hypotheses or Aryan conquest of old Europe to cover some of the specific claims that (IMO) could use debunking. Those articles might be even less welcome than this one. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 17:08, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

It wouldn't require stubs at all, just brief explanations in the relevant places. Sophie^Wilder 19:56, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

One problem is that the explanations will ultimately not be all that brief. At this stage this is an outline, and evidence will have to be mustered on its several points.

Do you really think that what I've put in Sanskrit really belongs, say, in India? That's about the current country, and a discussion of centum and satem dialects would strike me as somewhat out of place. The article that might be a best fit for most of the things I plan to discuss here is Aryan, but even that isn't the best of fits.

I had hoped this outline would at least convince others here that there is enough woo and wonderlore out there about Indo-European and its origins to support an article. The whole 'patriarchal Aryan conqueror' myth, through Robert Graves, became a part of the legendarium of Wicca, and a stock trope in dozens of fantasy novels from Mary Renault to Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as being important in Nazi Germany. Nationalistic claims seeking pride of place among the Indo-European languages has also generated dubious science. There is also some dubious science being done attempting to reconstruct deeper than the method allows, and many charges of pseudo-science and wishful thinking directed against those who claim they can; but those claimants include some respected scholars like Merritt Ruhlen and Joseph Greenberg. The theories of Nicholas Marr probably deserve their own article.

These subjects seemed to me to be squarely within the mission statement, and reasonably enough similar to articles we already have. Once more, it seems there's something I'm failing to understand. Fleshing this out will be a labor of some days, and I'm willing to undertake it in the fullness of time, but not if it's just going to be kicked aside. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 04:26, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

You've sold me. Carry on. PowderSmokeAndLeather: Say something once, why say it again?. 04:30, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Notes mostly to myself

• wp:Roger Pearson (anthropologist)
• wp:The Arctic Home in the Vedas
• wp:Alain de Benoist

- Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 01:04, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Germanic/Balto-Slavic relationship

What is the evidence for the assertion that "the Germanic languages on one hand and the Balto-Slavic languages on the other, are believed to be more closely related to one another than either group is to anything else"? I haven't read this from the academic community, and the lengthy paragraph about it is presented with neither citations nor evidence. ^{— Unsigned, by: 108.20.184.19 / talk}

Smerdis, I checked the source you provided for this claim (Chang et al.), and it says nothing of any sort of relationship between Germanic and Balto-Slavic (the one paragraph that mentions them together is in the context of Uralic borrowing from both branches). I also did my own research on the "technical details in the inflection of those language groups" and it turns out it's a grand total of one feature (certain suffixes beginning in -m- rather than -bh-), which could easily be an areal development rather than a cladistic one. Even the image next to the relevant paragraph (IndoEuropeanLanguageFamilyRelationsChart.jpg) shows Germanic in a clade with Italo-Celtic, not Balto-Slavic. Unless better sources are provided for the Germanic/Balto-Slavic connection, I am tempted to delete this claim from the article.--108.20.184.19 (talk) 04:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Smerdis died recently (User talk:Smerdis of Tlön#Rest in peace Smerdis). Bongolian (talk) 05:28, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh whoops, sorry...well now I feel like an asshole. Rest in peace, Smerdis.--108.20.184.19 (talk) 21:10, 12 January 2022 (UTC)