Indo-European and Celtic linguistics

This Excel file is a WORK IN PROGRESS on Indo-European basic lexicon, aligning PIE reconstructions from IEW, LIV and Mallory-Adams with intermediate reconstructions of IE sub-families found in several other sources (mainly Brill / Leiden etymological dictionaries): see dedicated sheet for details on sources.
Reconstructions with a green background have more complete data than those with a white background.
This DRAFT database is intended as a stepping stone for researchers who want to explore external genetic relationships between Indo-European languages and other language families.

Throughout history, the Druids have always been seen as sorcerers who had a strong bond with nature. Ancestral knowledge holders within Celtic society, directed all religious activity as the highest authority linked to the gods, practiced human sacrifices and festivals organized as Imbolc, Beltaine, Lugnasad or Samain, etc.. all aspects of which are discussed in this article.

In co-operation with Szczecin University, the Department for Sorbian Studies and the Department for Slavic at Leipzig university announce the Xth Celto-Slavica and invite papers. The conference will take place in Leipzig from the 26th to the 29th of October 2022, with academic sessions on the 27th and 28th. The Leitmotif is “Highlights in Celtic and Slavic: Comparanda and Inspirations”. The conference is open to anybody interested in the fields of linguistics, literature, culture (past and present) in Celtic and Slavic areas, in particular when touching upon cross-border issues.
The following schedule is planned (https://www.philol.uni-leipzig.de/sorabistik/institut/celto-slavica-conference#c684686):
Wednesday, 26th of Oct, evening céili (https://www.philol.uni-leipzig.de/sorabistik/institut/celto-slavica-conference#c684686)
Thursday/Friday, 27th/28th of Oct, academic sesions, venue: Albertina/Leipzig university (https://www.philol.uni-leipzig.de/sorabistik/institut/celto-slavica-conference#c684686);
Amongst others with Prof. John Koch and his plenary talk on "Some implications for Celtic origins of recent archaeogenetic evidence for Late Bronze Age migrations in western Europe" and Prof. Séamus MacMathúna and "Reflections on some Celtic, Scandinavian and Slavic Comparanda"
Saturday, 29th of Oct, trip to sound archive in Berlin (Humboldt-University) by bus 

This is the sixth and final “The Source Code 2.x” document stemming from “The Origin of the Indo-European Languages1” (2012), where it was shown that each phoneme in PIE roots had its own meaning and that PIE roots actually were descriptions of the concepts that they referred to. As explained in that original document, PIE roots (each one of them with its own lexical meaning) had a CVC basic structure where each phoneme had its own general sense which, for consonants, changed to just the opposite, within the same concept, when placed at the end of the root. The concept that the word referred to was indicated by the initial consonant while the closing one determined the final meaning of the word.

For example, the PIE consonant usually represented as bh indicated “expansion, growth, external addition” as initial element while it meant “absorption, inwards addition” as final consonant. A related phoneme, p, conveyed a sense of “body, physical accumulation” at the beginning of the root which shifted to “physical lack / loss” at the end of the root. The meaning of each phoneme is shown in a simple equivalence table (the “Source Code”) in page 5 below.

This new document, focused only on PIE roots, explains the meaning of over 2500 of them, adding more than 400 roots to the previous list and significantly improving the equivalence table included in previous versions.

Section 1 revisits the structure of the PIE words, indicating the meaning of each phoneme while Section 2 includes a list of “deciphered” PIE roots with some of their derivatives in old and modern languages.


Fernando Villamor
atin.belaur@gmail.com

This is part 3 of 11 parts of a table that contains a reconciliation of Indo-European, Hurrian, Hittite, Georgian (Kartvelian), Finnish (Uralic) words, including a confirmation of Etruscan words. The latest update of this table Is 6.12.21 and can be accessed through the link below.

Hittite dictionary update includes Concordance. This work includes Hittite words gleaned from internet sources, including the University of Texas  but predominately from Lia Liberian (aka Pema), an undergraduate of VU University Amsterdam who uploaded her Hittite-English Dictionary to academia.edu on March 6, 2018. I, myself, have been building a table of Indo-European words that reconciles to Uralic, Baltic, Georgian, Hurrian, Akkadian and others that may show light on the development and migration of the Indo-European languages. To fold Liberian's work and other dictionaries into Indo-European Table1, it was essential to convert them into this English-Hittite Dictionary. Just as the Copeland-Akkadian-English Dictionary grew into a Concordance, so too has the Copeland-English-Hittite Dictionary. The Concordances were made possible through the works of Etruscan Phrases Indo-European Table 1.

This paper is intended for scholars who would like to evaluate the theory that Basque ultimately derives from Indo-European, but find published evidence on this subject either too complex (my JIES paper) or too terse (my self-published dictionary).
This paper therefore provides a linear, step-by-step introduction to this theory, in four stages:
1. an overview of Pre-Basque, as reconstructed by Michelena and Trask;
2. a gradual illustration of the most secure Indo-European etymologies of Pre-Basque basic lexicon (with intermediate lists of corresponding sound laws);
3. a list of less obvious etymologies;
4. a summary of sound laws.
This linear organization of the subject matter should enable scholars to evaluate the theory in a matter of hours, without going through the painstaking details, cross-references and revisions in the JIES paper.

(from a work published in 1981) This table shows an unusual spectrum of cognates: Indo-European - Sanskrit, Avestan, Persian, Belarusian, Croatian, Polish, Romanian, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Latin, Irish, Scots-Gaelic, Welsh, Italian, French, English, Etruscan, Hittite, Tocharian, Luwian;; in addition, Hurrian, Urartian, Akkadian, Georgian, Latvian, Baltic-Sudovian, and Finnish-Uralic. Overlaying the Semitic Sumero-Akkadian cognates in this table has produced an unusual Concordance. The Concordance is also part of our Copeland-Akkadian-English.Dictionary which integrates the findings in our Indo-European Table. Part 2 (http://www.maravot.com/Indo-European_Table1A.html) includes our integrated Akkadian-Indo-European Table. Click on it for the most current version.

This is Part 10 of a 11 Part table of Indo-European words, as they relate to the Etruscan/Latin languages as well as each other. We have added non-Indo-European languages to the table because of a continuing pattern of liaisons. These include Finnish, Latvian, Georgian and Hurrian, Urartian and Akkadian when possible. The liaisons are placed in color. Purple-colored words are generally with East Anatolian, Hittite, etc. liaisons; orange, east European to west European links,  Red, Latin liaisons, and Green Celtic/ western liaisons. Throughout the 11 tables one will find interesting liaisons between Irish and Scots-Gaelic, and Georgian, causing one to muse whether those connections had to do with the early movements of the Celts from the Caucasus Mountains involving the transport and practice of metallurgy, perhaps focused upon the need for tin. Albanian is of interest in terms of probably originally been located near the Caspian sea and having similar liaisons with the area. Romanian is of interest in terms of identification of liaisons that may reveal the root Thracian language.  What appears to be the case is that Romanian is predominately a mix of Latin,  Gaelic,  and Slavic. Many Romanian Latin liaisons curiously reflect Etruscan declensions. The Shift from Latin to Etruscan seems very similar to the shift from Latin to Romanian, as well as French.
Because of formatting problems with the PDF file, viewers may find the web page http://www.maravot.com/Indo-European_Table1E.html (link below) easier to work with.

(from a work published in 1981) This table has Indo-European, Hurrian, Georgian (Kartlevian), Latvian (Baltic), Finnish (Uralic), Hittite, Akkadian and Altaic selections. We have colored words that may be related among the various languages/families. The coloring provides an unusual view of the spectrum of the cited languages. A Concordance of the cited languages is available in our Copeland-English-Akkadian Dictionary, our English-Hittite Dictionary Dictionary, an English alphabetized index to the Indo-European Table and our work, "Indo-European-Eurasian Words Linking Ancient Pastoralists." (350 pp.)

This paper builds on previous explanations of the Gaulish verb au̯u̯ot / αυουωτ - and its regional variations - attested in several inscriptions from modern France. In order to account for this obscure verb, I will examine comparative evidence, mostly data from the Insular node of the Celtic branch and from the Germanic branch, as well as with other Indo-European daughter-languages, in some instances. Ultimately, this article's objective is to offer evidence for the existence of a different way of conjugating the preterit tense in Gaulish, which stems from the ablaut processes used to conjugate the preterit in Proto-Indo-European - a shift from the full-grade to the o-grade in the singular and to the zero-grade in the plural - somewhat similar to the ā-preterit developed by the ancestors of the Brythonic and Goidelic languages.

This chapter examines research carried out to date on the Sky Bear and seeks to demonstrate the implications of this line of research for ―cultural astronomy‖. It begins by reviewing research that has been done cross-culturally on bear ceremonialism, focusing on the role of circumpolar stars, Dipper stars and stars adjacent to them, and how they came to be integrated, cognitively, into an over-arching cosmology shared by different hunter-gatherer populations across the N. Hemisphere. Next, using three mutually reinforcing ethnographic datasets, the manner in which, specifically in Europe, this archaic worldview, characterized by embodied reciprocity, allowed humans, animals and nature to be bound together. The cosmology, grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears, integrated skyscape and landscape into a single interlocking reality. Furthermore, the worldview can be understood as embodying a ―relational epistemology‖ or ―relational ecology‖. This more culturally-informed approach coincides with the goals of ―cultural astronomy‖ as well as the methodology and goals of the emerging field of archaeological ethnography. The reasons that these particular sky resources were chosen to project this set of spirtual beliefs skyward are also addressed. In the final section I suggest that the skyscape acts a kind of mnemonic device. As such, it is a cognitive resource, readily available to the social collective in question, which can act as a repository for past beliefs. Anchoring key components of a cosmology in the stars above allows the resulting skyscape to act as an enduring ―memory bank‖. In short, the datasets analyzed facilitate the reconstruction of a European-wide ethno-cultural substrate that points to an archaic relational cosmovision and the belief that humans descended from bears as well as providing evidence for the way that skyscape and landscape were integrated into this cosmology.

One of the reasons for the hesitation of scholars  to accept
the Indus valley civilisation as vedic is that the Rg veda has
several passages referring to Asva-the horse in the modern sense of the term and the veda itself states that its horse has 34 ribs whereas a modern horse usually has 36 ribs.
According to the  prevalent history of Bharata varsha as told by western scholars the Indus Valley Civilisation belonged to the
Dravida/Munda people and the vedic people(Aryans) reached India around 1900 BCE only . But in reality the Indus civilisation is vedic and the vedic people were in the Indus Valley at least from 6000BCE as seen from the excavations.
If an unknown script can explain the known myth and known history of a nation,what more proof is required to show that the script belongs to the same people.The script of Egypt explains
their myth and history.The script of Sumer,Akkad or Elam does the same.So it is natural for the Indus script to denote the myth
and history of the Hindu/Sindhu / Sarasvati/ vindu/vipra/sura/ bhuusura/bhudeva/bharata/Kuru/Pancala/Somaka  people.Hence we shall try to understand a bit of Indian history through the Indus script.We shall presently see  evidences pointing to the existence of the Aryans in the Indus Valley several millennia prior to the so called Aryan arrival  in the Indus valley.
In the last  articles we have looked into the writing of the Harappans in the early Ravi/Kot Diji phases and concluded that they are the same vedic people of the mature Harappan phase;we have  compared an inscribed  Ravi sherd showing  presence of the Pancalas/ Bharatas in the Indus valley before 3300BCE and a Taxila coin showing their presence in Taxila around 200 BCE confirming the continuity of the vedic civilisation in the Indus Valley from the early Harappan days;we have seen how an indus seal
portray the story of Ahalya described in later literature;
we have explored the universal idea of the mount of the dead Concept In The  Worship Of The Sun God .
We have gone into  the issue of the vedic horse and the number of its ribs and the birth of Kharoshti and Brahmi from this horse’s mouth. We have also looked into the relation of the
Iranian supreme god Ahura Mazda to the Harappan Sarasvati.
We have looked into the evidence of animal sacrifices from Harappan times to the present  to show the continuity of vedic civilisation from Harappan times to the present.
We have identified the mysterious vedic soma,
that was used by the ancient sages as a health tonic for the priestly class and the kings .
We have identified agni,agnishtoma, agnikshetra, saptavidha etc. in the IVC seals which are evidences of the right decipherment of the Indus Script.
We have seen that Kalibangan was the centre of Kali/Hali worship.
We have also gone into a Dilmun seal showing Pancala Gavaamayana.
In this article we are looking into the meaning of the avabhritasnaana associated with the Vedic ritual of Sarasvatiya Satra.

This hymn pertains to the river crossing event of the Rigveda.

A massive and continuous flood stopped the Bharatas in their tracks. Their guide Vishwamitra then organised a sacrifice and composed this hymn to mollify the rivers' fury. Amazingly, the rivers did subside for a while, just enough for the army to cross over.

This fresh translation of Rig Veda's hymn 3.33 brings out the meaning clearly. It shows there was no real or imaginary dialogue between the sage Vishwamitra and the rivers. Rather, this was Vishwamitra's prayer to the rivers in which the Bharata army joins in at the very end.

As is well known, Old Irish presented a morphological and functional distinction between the copula and the so-called 'substantive verb'. While in the present indicative the former is based on the PIE root *h es-1 and the latter on PIE *steh-2 , all other tenses and moods of both verbs are formed from the PIE root *bhuH-. Although these forms have often attracted the attention of scholars, several details of their prehistory are still unclear. This article will focus on the origins of the preterital forms: in particular, a solution for the striking difference of vocalism between the 3rd singular of the substantive verb (boí) and the copula (absolute ba, conjunct-bo,-bu) will be proposed. It will also be shown that the answer to this specific problem can shed some light on the Irish differentiation of the two forms of the verb 'to be', a process which, as will be suggested, may depend on the same mechanism which brought about the long-debated distinction between absolute and conjunct flexion in Old Irish.

Claudine Gauthier. Les Carnets de Bérose n° 1, Lahic / DPRPS-Direction des patrimoines, 2013.
Bien qu’ayant été le berceau de l’Académie celtique, la France sera la dernière nation européenne à accueillir, dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle, une étude institutionnalisée des traditions populaires, alors conçue comme une branche de la philologie. Cet exemple représente un cas typique, inédit, fortement influencé par un contexte historique singulier, tant du point de vue de l’histoire des sciences que de l’Histoire tout court.
Il faut attendre, en effet, les efforts scientifiques de jeunes savants formés aux méthodes allemandes, pour que cette science, qu’on leur a inculquée outre-Rhin, parvienne jusqu’au sol français. Or leur conception de la philologie reflète des cadres de pensée typiquement allemands qui permettent d’expliquer, en partie, l’implantation difficile de cette discipline dans notre pays. Cet aspect est fondamental, car il a un rôle à jouer après les conflits franco-allemands du XIXe siècle.
Les sciences ne sont pas à un moment : elles se font (Renan). Le lecteur pourra ainsi constater, au long de cet ouvrage, tout le poids des circonstances historiques sur la volonté de la IIIe République de s’opposer, à ses débuts, au développement de l’étude du folklore en France, celle-ci étant en effet fortement associée à l’Allemagne en raison de ses liens à la philologie, mais aussi aux travaux des frères Grimm et à l’effort nationaliste qui les sous-tend. Ce destin singulier révèle non seulement l’influence de la situation politique de l’époque, le poids de facteurs culturels propres à ce pays, mais aussi celui de choix personnels. En envisageant le parcours de cette discipline à travers le prisme des premières revues françaises de philologie ayant accueilli des études de folklore, Claudine Gauthier a ainsi pu préciser son analyse en restituant tout le poids de la micro-histoire, c’est-à-dire celle des hommes qui œuvrent au façonnement d’une discipline, sur la constitution et l’évolution de cette science. Leurs choix institutionnels masquent, en effet, également des prises de position scientifiques individuelles, comme parfois des querelles plus ou moins larvées. Les conclusions de Cl. Gauthier ont pu être affinées grâce à l’étude de la correspondance entre Henri Gaidoz et F.-M. Luzel qui révèle des éléments historiographiques qui demeureraient, autrement, ignorés. Ainsi, au travers des chapitres consacrés aux fondateurs du folklore philologique, aux revues qu’ils ont créées ou à la Société de linguistique, qui les réunissait, c’est également la sociabilité des premiers folkloristes français qu’analyse cet ouvrage. Il permet aussi de mettre en évidence la double singularité de la France : dernier pays européen à mettre en œuvre l’étude scientifique des traditions populaires, elle sera également le premier pays à l’exclure du champ de la philologie. Le folklore, dans le contexte scientifique de la France de la fin du XIXe siècle, ne parvient à s’y maintenir qu’au prix du sacrifice de sa composante philologique, en passant dans le domaine des sciences sociales.
Ce volume réunit, sous une forme largement remaniée et réactualisée, la majeure partie des travaux d’historiographie accomplis par Claudine Gauthier. Ils étaient jusqu’à présent dispersés au sein de Bérose, encyclopédie en ligne sur l’histoire des savoirs ethnographiques, et étaient complétés par un travail de synthèse — Philologie et folklore. De la définition d’une frontière disciplinaire (1870-1920), Carnets du Lahic, n° 2, 2008 —, également repris ici mais, en revanche, seulement de manière partielle. Il inclut aussi la réédition d’un article co-écrit avec Claude Gaignebet sur les Kryptadia, recueils de folklore obscène qui sont d’une importance toute particulière pour l’historiographie du folklore de la fin du XIXe siècle car, si l’initiative est française, les principaux folkloristes européens ont rapidement été impliqués dans cette vaste entreprise.
(In memoriam Claude Gaignebet; 1938-2012)

The Elephant is an animal found only in India and Africa. If this animal were to be mentioned in the Rigveda, it would be a clear proof that the Events described in the Rigveda took place in India. However, this translation shows that the words from the Rigveda commonly understood to denote the elephant, actually refer to another animal. This animal is not found in India.

This article provides phonetic, lexical and grammatical
evidence that Basque is an Indo-European language. It
provides a brief history of previous research into the
origins of Basque; a short description of the genesis of this
article; a description of the methodology adopted for the
present research; an overview of Michelena’s internal
reconstruction of Pre-Basque; 23 sets of chronologically
arranged sound laws linking Proto-Indo-European to Pre-
Basque; Indo-European etymologies for 75% of the Basque
native basic lexicon, with systematic cross-references to
regular sound laws; Indo-European etymologies of some
Basque bound morphemes, including case markers; a
discussion of the findings; and Indo-European etymologies
of 40 additional, non-basic lexical items

My article  "Evidence for Basque as an Indo-European Language" was published in the Journal of Indo-European Studies (volume 41) as a discussion paper, i.e., it was followed by other specialists' comments, and by my reply to such criticisms. To provide a more complete picture of my research on this topic, I provide my reply to criticisms as well.

In ancient times both Celtic and Baltic languages were spread in the vast areas of central and northern Europe. It's possible that Celtic and Baltic tribes met on the trade route Amber Road which took place from the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea since the 16 th century BC. In this paper I want to consider a grammatical feature that is common to Celtic and Baltic languages: nominative singular case marker-as that is seen best in Scottish Gaelic (and also traced in Old Irish, Irish, Cornish, and Welsh) and Lithuanian, and also about some common place names and a common god.

According to the  prevalent history of Bharata varsha as told by western scholars the Indus valley civilisation belonged to the
Dravida/Munda people and the vedic people(Aryans) reached India around 1900 BCE only . But in reality the Indus civilisation is vedic and the vedic people were in the Indus Valley at least from 6000BCE as seen from the excavations.
If an unknown script can explain the known myth and known history of a nation,what more proof is required to show that the script belongs to the same people.The script of Egypt explains
their myth and history.The script of Sumer,Akkad or Elam does the same.So it is natural for the Indus script to denote the myth
and history of the Hindu/Sindhu / Sarasvati/ vindu/vipra/sura/ bhuusura/bhudeva/bharata/kuru/pancala/Somaka  people.Hence in this article we shall try to understand a bit of Indian history through the Indus script.We shall presently see  a few evidences pointing to the existence of the Aryans in the Indus Valley several millennia prior to the so called Aryan arrival in the Indus valley.
In this article we are looking into the writing of the Harappans
in the early Ravi/Kot Diji phases and conclude that they are the same vedic people of the mature Harappan phase.

The aim of this article is to reveal a numeral *tek 德 'ten' in Koguryeo(or Koguryo) language in Eastern Asia with a place-name in 757 CE, a lexicalized numeral *dek 'ten' in Finnish, and a lexicalized numeral *tek 'ten' in Celtic Corni sh, compared to tek 'hand(s)'in Ainu, because we might see diffusion of microlith culture from Altai.

According to the  prevalent history of Bharata varsha as told by western scholars the Indus valley civilisation belonged to the
Dravida/Munda people and the vedic people(Aryans) reached India around 1900 BCE only . But in reality the Indus civilisation is vedic and the vedic people were in the Indus Valley at least from 6000BCE as seen from the excavations.
If an unknown script can explain the known myth and known history of a nation,what more proof is required to show that the script belongs to the same people.The script of Egypt explains
their myth and history.The script of Sumer,Akkad or Elam does the same.So it is natural for the Indus script to denote the myth
and history of the Hindu/Sindhu / Sarasvati/ vindu/vipra/sura/ bhuusura/bhudeva/bharata/kuru/pancala/Somaka  people.Hence in this article we shall try to understand a bit of Indian history through the Indus script.We shall presently see  a few evidences pointing to the existence of the Aryans in the Indus Valley several millennia prior to the so called Aryan
arrival in the Indus valley.
In the last  article we have looked into the writing of the Harappans in the early Ravi/Kot Diji phases and concluded that they are the same vedic people of the mature Harappan phase.
In this article we compare an inscribed  Ravi sherd showing  presence of the Pancalas/ Bharatas in the Indus valley before 3300BCE and a Taxila coin showing their presence in Taxila around 200 BCE confirming the continuity of the vedic civilisation in the Indus Valley from the early Harappan days.