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Indo-European evolution of the concept "two"
Guest
1
2015/09/09 - 6:01pm

Not a question, but something I found on Mental Floss that I thought would be of interest to forum members. The graphic could be better ... it's hand drawn and hard to read in places. Read the text below the graphic to learn what the asterisks mean. Anyway, I found it interesting so here it is:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/68281/evolution-two-indo-european-language-family

Makes me wonder what came before *dwóh. They call the hypothesized source at the center "Proto-Indo-European."

What amazes me most is the striking similarity (as they noted) of the sounds in all those branches. You don't get that with more complex concepts (love, hate, war, peace). Maybe it's the fundamental nature of counting and the importance of conveying amounts that drives those similarities. I believe some of the first writing was based on the need to account for trade transactions. Correct me if I'm wrong. No idea if spoken language followed the same patterns.

Would love to see a similar diagram for "one." Might try to hack one together via Google Translate.

Robert
553 Posts
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2
2015/09/11 - 11:07pm

It could be to send air through the 2 sides of the mouth, and maybe flash your 2 canines a little.  The same might also  be  said of the instances that apparently differ:    iki (Turkish), èjì (Yoruba), ni (Japanese), kaksi (Finnish).

 

Can the alphabets be pictographical?  Here's a collection of 'eye's  that seem to be staring at you.

oko Polish
ull   Catalan   (Picasso style)
oje  Danish
oog Dutch     (Picasso style)
ollo Galician
je    Creole
ido  Hausa
auga Icelandic
anya Igbo
nun    Korean
ta       Lao
eye    Norwegian
olho   Portuguese
akha  Punjabi
aesa Sinhala
ojo    Spanish
oga   Swedish
oju    Yoruba
iso    Zulu

Guest
3
2015/09/12 - 3:01pm

When I read Robert's list, I couldn't help but wonder if there was a connection to: ogle (v) to look at intensely. Especially with the Dutch and Swedish versions.

So I checked my favorite online source, and sure enough, here's what I found:  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ogle

Given the root, you think modern German would sound closer than ansehen or beäugeln.

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