2.1 Schleicher's fable
August Schleicher was a German linguist, born in 1821. In his main work, A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, he tried to reconstruct parts of PIE. An English translation of parts of this book is available online.
Schleicher believed that language was an organism that could be explained by looking at species and variety, using much the same terminology as that associated with biology. Indeed, his work is very much in the same spirit as Darwin’s. Schleicher was the first linguist to use trees to indicate language genealogy. He developed what is known as the Stammbaumtheorie (family tree theory).
To illustrate what he thought Proto-Indo-European might have looked like, Schleicher wrote a short fable using reconstructed elements of the language (Schleicher, 1868). Views of what PIE was like have changed considerably since Schleicher’s time, and indeed there have been a number of revised versions of the fable. Here is Schleicher’s own version, with an English translation:
Schleicher (1868)
Avis akväsas ka
Avis, jasmin varnā na ä ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vāgham garum vaghantam, tam, bhāram magham, tam, manum āku bharantam. Avis akvabhjams ā vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti manum akvams agantam. Akväsas ä vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnäm avisāms karnauti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka varnā na asti. Tat kukruvants avis agram ä bhugat.
English translation
The sheep and the horses
[On a hill,] a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: ‘My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses.’ The horses said: ‘Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool.’ Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.
The translation will not enable you to work out much about PIE, but it is possible to develop some idea of what a few of its words mean. Work out as many meanings as you can. What is the word for ‘sheep’, for example, and ‘man’, and so on? Some of Schleicher’s PIE words may well remind you of words in PDE (Present Day English, you will recall from 1.3), or other languages you might know. For example, the word for ‘heart’ in Schleicher’s version of IE is kard. English has words like cardiology and cardiac which will ring bells (the ancient Greek is, incidentally, kardia); this example will come up later in the chapter (in Table 2.2).
If you want to look further into PIE words, there are several dictionaries online (for example at Indo-European Dictionary Translator). There is also, believe it or not, a ‘Schleicher’s Fable’ interest page on Facebook.
2.2 Germanic language differences
Here are some words with roughly the same meaning in seven Germanic languages. Three of the languages are West Germanic; one of them (Language A) is English. The other four are North Germanic. Based on this very small selection of words, which languages do you think are West Germanic, and which North? Think about this before you read below the table.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| year | år | år | jaar | år | Jahr | ár |
| week | vecka | uge |
week | uke | Woche | vika |
| child | barn | barn |
kind | barn | Kind | barn |
| to love | älska | elske |
liefhebban | elske | lieben | elska |
| girl (maid) | flicka | pige |
meid | pike | Mädchen | stelpa |
| sheep | får | får |
schaap | får | Schaf | fé |
B is Swedish, C is Danish, D = Dutch, E = Norwegian, F = German, G = Icelandic. The West Germanic languages are English, Dutch and German (A, D and F). The others are North Germanic.
In some cases these words show clear differences. For example, the English, Dutch and German words of ‘year’ all have a ‘y’ or ‘j’ at the beginning, and the others do not. To love is also an easy one. But sometimes there are ‘anomalies’ that muddy the picture a little. The English child is not like the Dutch and German at all (and indeed the origin of the English word is uncertain). Also, though some of the Swedish words are very similar to the Danish and Norwegian, the Swedish for girl, flicka, is not. You must be prepared to expect many anomalies when looking at word families and origins.
Some of these words show characteristics that can be generalised. Proto-Germanic /j/ at the beginnings of words was dropped in the North Germanic languages, and this is shown by the different forms of year. Sometimes an initial /w/ got dropped too, as suggested by the week words.
Incidentally, on the topic of sheep, the North Germanic ‘fa-’ base probably gives us the name of the Faroe Islands; they are the ‘sheep islands’. Another ‘sheep island’ is Sweden’s Fårö, where the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman lived and died.
2.3 The OED
The OED (for Oxford English Dictionary) is mentioned and used a great deal in this book. The dictionary was first mooted in 1857, when The Philological Society of London called for a new English dictionary to be produced. It has been in continual development since then. The first CD-ROM version of the dictionary was published in 1992, and a version of this is now available to buy. There is also an online version of the dictionary. Access is by subscription, and many academic institutions worldwide hold subscriptions, particularly through their libraries. If you are studying at an institution, it is well worth finding out whether it subscribes. The printed version of the dictionary has now been phased out.
One reason why we mention the OED so much is because it includes a great deal of historical information. Word origins (etymologies) are thoroughly covered, and the dictionary includes many ‘citations’, actual instances of the word in use over time. The first citation may well not be the first ever usage, but its date will give an indication of when the word came into the language. We will refer to OED citations a lot in this book.
As an introduction to using the OED online, try looking for the word hoard – a word that appears in the title of Chapter 5, which is about OE vocabulary. Once you are on the OED’s website, put the word into the ‘Quick search’ box. You will be taken to a page that shows that there are two associated nouns, and one verb. Click on the first noun. The page you are taken to shows three main meanings, with the first divided into two sub-categorisations, (a) and (b). Associated with each meaning are a number of citations. Under hoard (n1) there are seventeen, the first dated 937. If you click on the blue portion indicating the citation’s source, it gives you more information about that source, including other citations in the dictionary from the same place.
In the top left corner of the hoard (n1) page is information about pronunciation, forms, and etymology. After the main meanings of the word, at the bottom of the page, some compounds are mentioned. Notice also that on the far right of the page is a table showing the dictionary entries that come immediately before and after. This is useful if you want to seek out items related to the one you have looked up. Notice also that by the side of two of the three meanings is the word ‘Thesaurus’. Click on that and you will be given a list of the word’s synonyms. Spend some time looking at what else is on the page. For general information about how to use the dictionary, click on the ‘help’ button at the very top of the OED page.