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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Dum in Czech and Latin
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2024 22:43:21 +1300
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On 25/10/2024 6:51 a.m., Ed Cryer wrote:
> Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>> On 2024-10-24, Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:
>>
>> [Czech]
>>>> For example, the word for "house" is "dům". Its declensions might look
>>>> like this:
>>>
>>> It's probably from Latin "domus".
>>
>> You might think that, but the etymological consensus is that Slavic
>> "dom" and Latin "domus" are cognates, both going back to PIE *dṓm.
>>
>> The -ů-/-o- alternation in the Czech word is a common pattern, due to
>> a soundshift from earlier long ó > uo > ů [uː]. Polish has a similar
>> alternation -ó- [u]/-o-, albeit not in this word.
>>
> 
> Indo-European was never a language. Nobody ever spoke it. It's a 
> collection of similar bits and pieces of language assembled with 
> hindsight. And when it comes to Proto-Indo-European, well, .... castles 
> in the air.
> It's as if you were to walk through a junk-yard of old and trashed cars, 
> find similarities, and build families of them. And then you examine the 
> families, and find similarities in those, whence you construct a 
> previous family.
> Given some perseverance you might fathom it back prior to the Tower of 
> Babel, and find some original lingo that all the homines sapientes 
> coming out of Africa spoke and understood.  (:-
> 
> Ed
> 

I haven't seen this kind of radical I-E skepticism around here since the 
Indocentrics of yesteryear, now thankfully departed. Do you have an 
alternative explanation for the many resemblances among I-E languages on 
which scholars have based their reconstruction of the proto-language? 
Does your skepticism apply to all the other language families and their 
associated proto-languages?