How the proto-language differs from the ancient languages. An alternative view of a linguist: Old Russian is the proto-language of all other languages! Speech of the Rus: Gods speak Russian

If we compare pairs of languages from the Indo-European family, it turns out that in many of them there are more than 30% coincidences in the basic vocabulary, uniform stems and parallel lines of vowel alternation.

This fact arouses not only interest, but also a burning desire to quickly understand the similarities - after all, it is thanks to them that it will be three times easier to master a couple of languages.

The hypothesis of occurrence, according to the linguist Alexander Militarev, is associated with the emergence of man as a species. He also points to the theory of monogenesis (the origin of all languages of the world from one proto-language). His thoughts are shared by both anthropologists and geneticists. The main idea lies in the similarity of the sound and meaning of the stems in many languages. There are similar roots and grammatical structures that allow us to make an assumption about the existence of global etymologies. To prove this theory, it is necessary to draw parallels between the languages of each language family, find the same proto-language of each family, compare them with each other, find sound matches, etc. That is, it is necessary to tackle a stepwise reconstruction, which will give an answer to the question of the existence of a single proto-language.

Within the framework of such a study, only the Nostratic, Afrasian, Sino-Caucasian and Austrian macrofamilies have been more or less studied. They have lexical and grammatical similarities. However, A. Militarev suggests that when other macrofamilies are studied, it will be possible to prove their relationship. An important fact it remains that all languages have the same structure: they have vowels and consonants, major and minor members of the sentence.

A. Militarev believes that the proto-language of mankind disintegrated in the Eastern Mediterranean, where Israel and Lebanon are now. In this place, genetics recorded migration from East Africa about 40-50,000 years ago. But at the same time, African macrofamilies today are a secondary distribution of peoples who returned from Western Asia and, thus, "erased" the previously existing languages. The period of origin of the proto-language of the Eurasian family can be called the 15th millennium BC. However, even Militarev himself does not deny the division of languages in Africa, when there was a Khoisan family with clicking consonant-cliques.

It is logical that the more human groups diverge, the more languages move away from each other. Take, for example, which is radically different in, and. Or try comparing in Spain and Latin America... There is no doubt that, Spanish, portuguese languages originated from Latin. The only question that needs to be clarified is the following: did the world languages have a single proto-language or did they have several?

It is interesting that the Russian language is separated from the Ukrainian and Belarusian in the 6th century. But Ukrainian and Belarusian separated from each other in the XIV century. For such a clear method of separating languages, there is glottochronology, with the help of which it is possible to determine the moment of divergence of languages with an accuracy of 2-3 hundred years for every 2-3,000 years from us, as well as up to 500-1000 years at a "distance" of up to 10-12 000 years from our time.

30% of coincidences in languages are not accidental. It is in this number that common words related to anatomical terms, objects fall the environment, living things, some key verbs. But does this 30% match indicate that the language of Adam once actually existed? Linguists have yet to find out, and we will keep you informed of all the scientific breakthroughs on the way to the origins of human languages.

The first Indo-Europeanists did not understand either the true purpose of comparison or the importance of the reconstruction method (see p. 41). This explains one of the most striking misconceptions: the exaggerated and almost exclusive role that Sanskrit was assigned in comparison; since Sanskrit is the most ancient attested Indo-European language, it was elevated to the rank of prototype, that is, the proto-language. But it is one thing to assume that some Indo-European proto-language gave birth to the languages Sanskrit, Greek, Slavic, Celtic, Italic, and another thing is to put one of these languages in the place of Indo-European. This crude confusion has led to varied and profound consequences. True, such a hypothesis has never been formulated as categorically as we have just done, but in practice it was tacitly admitted. Bopp wrote that he "does not think that Sanskrit is the common source of Indo-European languages," thus allowing the possibility of the existence, at least problematically, of such an assumption.
This brings us to the next question: what does it mean when they say that one language is older or older than the other? Theoretically, three interpretations are possible here:

First of all, you can think about the absolute beginning, about the starting point of any language; but the simplest reasoning is enough to make sure that there is no language to which an age could be attributed, for any language at any moment is nothing more than a continuation of the state that existed before it. In this respect, the development of language differs from the development of the human race: the absolute continuity of language development does not allow us to see a generational change in it, and Gaston Paris rightly rebelled against the concept of “mother languages” and “daughter languages”, since such a concept implies discontinuity.

Therefore, it is not in this sense that one can say that one language is older than the other.

It is possible, further, to consider that one state of the language was attested in more ancient times than another: for example, the Persian language of the Achaemenid inscriptions is older than the Persian language of Firdousi. Since we are talking, as in this particular case, about two adverbs, of which one in the exact sense comes from the other and both are equally known to us, it is self-evident that under these conditions it is ancient. But if both of these conditions are not met, then antiquity has no meaning: for example, the Lithuanian language, attested only since 1540, is no less precious in this respect than the Old Church Slavonic, known from the 10th century, or even than the Vedic Sanskrit.
The word "ancient" can finally be applied to a more archaic state of the language, that is, to such a state when the forms in it are closer to their initial model, and this is independent of the question of dating. In this sense, one could say that the Lithuanian language of the 16th century is older than Latin language 3rd century BC NS.

So, if we attribute to Sanskrit a great antiquity in comparison with other languages, then only in the second or third sense, and in fact it is older than other Indo-European languages in the second and third sense. On the one hand, it is believed that the Vedic hymns are older than the most ancient Greek texts, on the other hand - and this is especially important - the sum of the archaic features preserved in it is more significant compared to other languages (see page 40).
Due to a rather vague idea of antiquity, which turned Sanskrit into something that predated all other languages of the Indo-European family, linguists, even having freed themselves from the idea that it was a proto-language, repeatedly continued to attach too much importance to the evidence of Sanskrit as one of the offshoots of the Indo-European proto-language.
In his Les origines indo-europeennes (see p. 261) A. Pictet, although he openly admits the existence of a primitive Indo-European people who spoke their own own language, nevertheless, I am convinced that first of all it is necessary to cope with the indications of Sanskrit, which in their value are superior to the indications of other languages of the same family taken together. It was this misconception that over the years obscured the primary problems, such as the question of the original vocalism.
This mistake was repeated many times in other, more specific cases. When studying individual branches of the Indo-European family, there was a tendency to consider the oldest known language to be an adequate and sufficient representative of the entire group, and no attempts were made to find out more precisely the nature of the initial state of the prototype of this branch. So, for example, instead of talking about the Germanic language, they did not hesitate to refer simply to Gothic, since it is several centuries older than other Germanic dialects; thus, he usurped the position of the prototype, the source of all other Germanic dialects. With regard to the Slavic languages, they were based for a long time exclusively on Church Slavonic (= Old Church Slavonic), known from the 10th century, because other Slavic languages have been known from later times.
In fact, it is extremely rare for two forms of a language fixed in writing at different times to represent exactly the same adverb at two different moments in its history. Most often we are dealing with two dialects that are not, in the linguistic sense, a continuation of each other. Of the exceptions that only confirm this rule, the most striking are the Romance languages in relation to Latin: ascending from French to Latin, we are always on a vertical line; the territory occupied by these languages coincidentally coincides with the territory where the Latin language was spoken, and each of them is nothing more than an evolved Latin language. Likewise, as we have already seen, the ancient Persian language of the inscriptions of Darius is the same language as the medieval New Persian. But the opposite is much more common: written records of different eras belong to different languages of the same family. So, the Germanic group of languages is consistently revealed to us in the Gothic language of Ulfila, which did not leave a continuation, then in the texts of the Old High German language, and even later in the monuments of the languages of the Anglo-Saxon, Old Scandinavian, etc .; and none of these languages or groups of languages is a continuation of the language attested earlier. This state of affairs can be represented in the form of the following diagram, where letters represent languages, and lines represent successive eras:


v
with. ... ...	... .D ....
1 J	1 J

Age 4 E
Linguistics can only rejoice at this state of affairs: if things were not the case, then the first language A known to us would already contain everything that can be extracted by analysis from subsequent states of the language, while, looking for the convergence point of all really represented languages A, B , C, D, etc., we will find a form older than A, namely the prototype X, and then mixing A and X will be impossible.

Finally, we got to the topic of linguistic kinship. I understand in general terms what it is, but still I would like you to somehow demonstrate it.

Yes Easy! Ty chula want time, how do you move Ukraine?

Ha ha! Yes. They spread on the mov.

Todi doesn’t explain why you so quickly saw on the food price. Ukrainian language It is very similar to Russian, its grammar does not differ that much, the vocabulary also basically coincides with Russian. There are some differences that create difficulties for understanding, but in general we understand Ukrainian speech well and can even get used to it, just by listening and imitating it.

The same cannot be said about the speech of other Slavic peoples, who have left us linguistically much farther. I will ask you in Czech: Věříš na zázraky? How do you answer?

I understood the first two words: believe and on... And for some reason I don't like the latter. Did you just say something bad?

No. I just asked if you believe in miracles.

Yah you! I do not believe in any miracles.

Okay, not a very good example. Let's simplify the task. Try to translate Polish: Zawsze niech będzie słońce, zawsze niech będzie niebo, zawsze niech będzie mama, zawsze niech będę ja!

Yes, this is a children's song: "May there always be sunshine ...". It's just not entirely clear how to accurately translate the words. zawsze and niech.

Word zawsze means "always", the word niech- "let be". You yourself see that there are languages that you can partially understand, even without knowing them. All this is due to linguistic affinity. So much for a miracle.

In this case, I gave examples from Slavic languages. But there are more distant languages. Try to translate, for example, such a simple Greek phrase: Η ελληνική γλώσσα δεν είναι εύκολη (I ellinikí glóssa den eínai éfkoli).

I didn't understand anything at all.

I said that the Greek language is quite difficult. It is really difficult and very different from the Slavic languages, although it is also closely related to them.

There are words in this sentence that you may know. For example, the Greek word γλώσσα (glóssa) "language", goes back to ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa) "language" from which the words come gloss and glossary... Attic form γλῶττα (glôtta) is also present in the word polyglot.

Exactly! But I would never have guessed in my life. If I knew the translation from the very beginning, then maybe the thought about the connection of the word γλώσσα (glóssa) with Russian gloss... But my fantasy just doesn't work.

But there are no words in this sentence that are related to Russian precisely at the ancient level? What other words in this "alien" Greek might I know? In my opinion, there are no more such.

As it is, Marin. You just can't see it without preparation. Words that have been borrowed and look similar to words in the source language are easy to define. Words that come from the proto-language are quite difficult to determine by eye. Word είναι (eínai) here is a relative of a well-known Russian verb. Can't you guess which verb I'm talking about?

No, somehow I just can't get my mind to this secret.

So be it, I will reveal the age-old secret. Word είναι (eínai) is the 3rd person singular form of the verb είμαι (eímai) "to be", which comes from ancient Greek εἰμί (eimí) "to be". (The words είμαι (eímai) and εἰμί (eimí) are generally not infinitives, but forms of the 1st person singular, but I usually translate this personal form into Russian with an infinitive, since we have this form as the main one.) εἰμί (eimí) is supposed to have evolved out of form *εσμί (esmí).

Now look at the following table and find ten differences.

Russian	Staroslav.	Ancient greek	Latin	Sanskrit
am	ѥcm	εἰμί (eimí)		अस्मि (ásmi)
esi		εἶ (eî)		असि (ási)
there is	ѥstъ	ἐστί (ν ) (estí (n))		अस्ति (ásti)
esmy	ѥsm	ἐσμέν (esmén)		स्मस् (smás)
este	ѥste	ἐστέ (esté)		स्थ (sthá)
the essence	sѫt	εἰσί (ν ) (eisí (n))		सन्ति (sánti)

These forms of the verb "to be" in different languages are among the most ancient. They have partially retained their appearance in modern languages, but this can only be found in comparison. By the way, it is comparison, if you remember, that underlies comparative-historical linguistics.

Wow! I now regained my sight a little, but I suddenly had two questions. First, how did these, as you say, ancient forms look then? Second, why the forms English verb be so different from the ones you brought? After all, English, as I understand it, is also related to Russian?

Undoubtedly, English is related to Russian. All Germanic languages are also Indo-European. And the corresponding Germanic verb forms also go back to the common ancient paradigm of the conjugation of the verb "to be", but there are changes of a slightly different nature.

Here's another comparison table. It features Proto-Indo-European (PIE), Proto-Germanic, Gothic, modern English and German forms.

	Teutonic	Gothic	English	German
* h₁ ésmi
* h₁ ési
* h₁ ésti
* h₁ sm̥ós
* h₁ sté
* h₁ sénti

As you may have already noticed, some of the English and German forms of the verb "to be" do not fit into the general scheme. The explanation is quite simple. English word are dates back to Old English earon and is, in fact, a form of a completely different verb that supplanted the original forms. German forms bin, bist are forms of the Germanic verb * beuną, which, by the way, is related to the Russian word to be... Linguists call this phenomenon suppletivism.

You know, now it seems to me that I know everything. Only I have one more question for this table. It might sound stupid, but I'll ask you anyway. Russian word there is akin to English is? Am I getting it right?

English is, French est, italian è , Czech je, Persian است (ast), Armenian է (ē) - all these are words that are related to Russian there is... (Of course, you should not mix this verb form with the infinitive there is in the meaning of "to take food." These are the usual homonyms.)

Now also Armenian? Yes, this is generally somewhere in the Transcaucasus! I'm confused. So which languages are considered Indo-European?

The Indo-European family of languages stretches from India in the east to Iceland in the west. This is its historical area, today Indo-European languages are spread on other continents. It is the largest language family in the world. The classification of Indo-European languages is quite extensive, so I will mention only the largest and most famous languages.

Indo-Iranian (Aryan) branch of the Indo-European language family includes: Nuristan (Ashkun, Vaigali, Kathi, Prasun), Indo-Aryan (Bengali, Gujarati, Maldivian, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sinhalese, Sindhi, Hindi, Kashi, Dardmi khovar, pashai, shina) and Iranian languages (Baluch, Dari, Kurmanji, Leki, Persian, Sorani, Tajik, Khazar, Central Iranian, South Kurdish). The ancient languages of this branch: Avestan, Old Indian, Old Persian, Median, Mitannian.

Separately distinguish Armenian (ancient Armenian) and Greek (ancient Greek). Sometimes they, together with Illyrian (Albanian, dead Illyrian and Messapian), Thracian (dead Dacian and Thracian) and Phrygian languages (dead Peonian and Phrygian), are combined into the Paleo-Balkan branch.

Slavic languages are divided into three subgroups: Western (Upper and Lower Sorbian, Kashubian, Polish, Slovak, Czech, Dead Polabian), southern (Bulgarian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin, as well as Old Church Slavonic) and eastern (Belarusian, Russian , Ukrainian, also Old Russian and Old Novgorod). Together with the Baltic (or Baltic) languages (Latgalian, Latvian, Lithuanian, dead Prussian), Slavic languages are often combined into the Balto-Slavic branch.

Germanic languages are also divided into two subgroups: Western (English, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Luxembourgish, German, Dutch, Low German, Frisian) and Northern (Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Faroese). Historically, there was also an eastern subgroup of Germanic languages (Burgundy, Vandal, Gothic), but it has completely died out to this day. The Germanic branch also includes the ancient Germanic languages: Old English, Old Saxon, Old High German, Old Norse and others.

The Italic branch of the Indo-European languages included two groups: the Osc-Umbrian (Osk, Umbrian) and the Latin-Falisca (Latin, Falisk). Today, all these languages have died out, but from Latin, as you know, the modern Romance languages developed. They include several subgroups: Balkan-Romance (Aromunian, Istro-Romanian, Meglen-Romanian, Moldavian, Romanian), Gallo-Romance (Norman, French and its dialects), Ibero-Romance (Spanish, Portuguese and other languages of the Iberian Peninsula: Aragonese, Asturleonian, Galician , Ladino), Italian-Romance (Italian and numerous dialects of Italy: Venetian, Corsican, Lombard, Neapolitan, Piedmontese, Sardinian, Sicilian), Occitan-Roman (Catalan, Provencal), Romansh (Ladin, Romansh, Friulian).

The Celtic branch is barely surviving today, but it once included a large number of languages and spread over large areas of Europe. It is customary to distinguish continental (all dead: Galatian, Gaulish, Celtiberian, Lepontic, Lusitanian), Goidel (Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic) and British Celtic languages (Breton, Welsh, Cornish, dead Cumbrian).

Two more large branches have not survived to this day: Tocharian (eastern Tocharian A and western Tocharian B) and Anatolian (Isaurian, Cilician, Lydian, Lycian, Luwian, Palai, Pisidian, Sidian, Hittite). By the way, they are very interesting for linguists, because they give a very good material for analysis, including etymological.

It would never occur to me to combine Persian or Old Indian with Russian. Of course, I am not an expert in these languages, but it seems to me that they cannot be similar to Russian in any way. These are languages of completely different cultures. And the belonging of Armenian to the Indo-European languages was unexpected news for me. I always thought that he was closer to other languages of the Caucasus.

I think if you show you some simple Sanskrit text, its transliteration and translation, then you can easily determine which words of the Old Indian language correspond to Russian. Sanskrit can hardly be called similar to Russian, but many words in this language are similar in form and meaning to Russian.

Just look at these words: उदन् (udán), ग्ना (gnā), धूम (dhūmá), नभस् (nábhas), त्रि (tri), जीवति (jīvati), भरति (bhárati), स्मयते (smáyate). How would you translate them?

I managed to find matches only for some words: ग्ना (gnā) - “wife”, धूम (dhūmá) - “thought”, नभस् (nábhas) - “sky”, त्रि (tri) - “three”, जीवति (jīváti) - “chew”, भरति (bhárati) - “take”, स्मयते (smáyate) - “laugh”. The meaning of the word उदन् (udán) is somehow difficult for me to determine.

I guessed almost everything, only धूम (dhūmá) is “smoke”, and जीवति (jivati) is “to live”. The word उदन् (udán) means “water” and the word नभस् (nábhas) means “cloud, sky”.

And can you find out more specifically about the proto-languages? You have already mentioned Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Slavic, Proto-German. I don't quite understand what it is? When and where did they exist at all?

Proto-language is some ancient language from which modern languages began to arise. Each language group has its own proto-language.

The Proto-Slavic language is the proto-language for all modern Slavic languages. It existed somewhere in the II-I millennium BC on the territory of Eastern Europe and began to disintegrate into dialects somewhere in the 5th century AD, when the Slavs began to migrate to the south and east. The final disintegration of the Slavic languages is attributed only to the XII century, when the so-called fall of the reduced ones took place.

Proto Germanic is the proto-language for all modern Germanic languages. It existed at about the same time as the Proto-Slavic, and spread from the north (Southern Scandinavia, Denmark, partly Northern Germany) to the south, west and east.

For all modern Romance languages, the proto-language was Latin (if you look deeper - Proto-Italian). We know a lot about Latin, since the heritage of Ancient Rome is great, we have many written monuments in this language.

The Proto-Indo-European language, in turn, is the proto-language for Proto-Slavic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Italian, as well as Prakeltic, Proto-Indo-Iranian and some other ancient proto-languages.

There are many hypotheses, each of which places the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans in its own area: the mound hypothesis of M. Gimbutas (initially the Volga steppes, then the northern Black Sea region), the Balkan hypothesis (the Balkan Peninsula), the Anatolian hypothesis of K. Renfrew (western Anatolia, Turkey), the Armenian hypothesis T.V. Gamkrelidze and Viach. V. Ivanova (Armenian Highlands). There are a few more hypotheses less popular today, which are shared only in some countries. For example, many Hindus think that the ancestral home of the Proto-Indo-Europeans is in India, but today this hypothesis is already untenable.

In Indo-European studies to this day there are disputes about when and where the Proto-Indo-European language originated. The time of the disintegration of the proto-language is usually dated to the III millennium BC, but it is possible that this happened earlier.

Yeah. To what science has come. And after all, what is interesting, such antiquities are being researched and even dated. Archaeologists at least have in their hands a material antiquity that can be subjected to radiocarbon analysis. How can you date the proto-languages? After all, this is not some kind of thing?

Glottochronology answers this question. This application of lexicostatistics, which precisely determines the time of divergence of two or more languages, sets the "half-life" of the vocabulary. That is, linguists can also do analysis like radiocarbon.

The American linguist M. Swadesh proposed a hypothesis according to which there is a vocabulary in the languages of the world that is relatively stable, that is, it may not be supplanted for a long time by borrowings or native words with different roots. If such words are repressed, then this happens rarely and (theoretically) evenly, linearly.

Based on this hypothesis, the time of divergence of languages is calculated mathematically. I will not describe the technique itself, it is rather complicated. If you want, you can find a description of the technique in the works and articles of our domestic linguist S.A.Starostin. He worked on this topic a lot.

Well. And I just wanted to ask how the calculation is carried out. So be it, let's skip the math part. Explain to me at least what kind of vocabulary is it that has "relative stability"? Can you give specific examples?

In the dictionary of all languages there are words that are not associated with any particular culture or peculiarities of local life. These are nouns associated with nature ( sky, Earth, stone, wind, water, wood, Sun, star, day, night), human ( Man, female, heart, head, leg, eye), relationship ( mother, father, brother, sister), any living creatures ( beast, a fish, bird), as well as simple pronouns ( I am, you, we), adjectives ( warm, cold, old, new), Verbs ( there is, drink, breathe, see, hear, know), numerals ( one, two, three, four, five). In many closely related languages, such words are similar.

Take a look at this table of lexical correspondences for Slavic languages.

Russian	Ukrainian	Bulgarian	Serbian	Polish


one	one	united	Gyodan
			two
			three
female	woman	wife	wife
Man	cholovik		muskarats	mężczyzna
mother	mother	undershirt	t-shirt
father	dad	bascha	òtats
wood	wood	darvo	other
eye			eye
			nose
heart	heart	srce	wed
there is	ust		esti
see	bachichi	vijdam	view(ј )children	widzieć
Sun	sun	slate	sȗnce	słońce
Earth	Earth	earth	land
night			but̑ћ
day	day		Dan

In this table, most of the words match. However, there are words that just don't fit into the big picture. For example, the Russian word eye(it is used more often than the original obsolete word eye) has nothing to do with Ukrainian eye or Polish oko... Polish word kobieta clearly not of the same root as Russian female or Serbian wife.

Some words of the language, as I said, drop out over time, are replaced by others. The farther apart the languages are, the more such departures. Here is the same table in which Russian, Lithuanian, German, Italian and Irish are already presented (all languages belong to different language groups).

Russian	Lithuanian	German	Italian	Irish


one


female	móteris
Man
mother				màthair
father	tė́vas
wood
eye

heart
there is	válgyti		mangiare
see
Sun
Earth	žẽmė
night
day

I want to draw your attention right away to the fact that some words that seem to be unlike Russian ones are actually related to them. For example, the Irish word bean comes from Prakeltic * benā where the initial * b originated from the Proto-Indo-European labiovelar consonant * gʷ... The whole word goes back to the Proto-Indo-European word * gʷḗn"Woman" from whom the Proto-Slavic * žena"Woman" (hence the Russian wife, Ukrainian woman, Serbo-Croatian wife etc.), Germanic words * kwenǭ"Woman" and * kwēniz"Wife" (hence the English queen"Queen"), ancient Greek γυνή (gunḗ) "woman, wife" and also the Sanskrit ग्ना (gnā) "wife", which you guessed recently. German Frau(from the Germanic * frawjǭ"Madam") and Italian donna(from latin domina"Madam") have a completely different origin.

German Herz, which is difficult to compare so easily with Russian heart, goes back to the Germanic word * hertô"Heart" (hence the English heart) and further to the Proto-Indo-European * ḱḗr"Heart" from where the Proto-Slavic * sьrdьce"Heart" (hence the Russian heart, Ukrainian heart, Serbo-Croatian wed etc.), Latin cor"Heart" (hence the French cœur, italian cuore, Spanish corazón), ancient greek καρδία (kardía) "heart", Sanskrit हृदय (hṛdaya) "heart". Irish croí and Lithuanian širdis, of course, also here.

Also quite interesting is the case with the word day... It goes back to the Proto-Slavic word * dьnь"Day", further to the Proto-Indo-European root * dyew-"Sky", from which the Latin also comes diēs"day". From the latter, as you might guess, comes the Spanish día and portuguese dia... Italian giorno and french jour, as it may seem, they have nothing to do with these words at all, but this is not so. Both words come from the Latin adjective diurnus"Day", which, in turn, is formed from diēs... This is not quite a direct etymology, but nevertheless the words are of the same root. There are also such confusing cases.

As you can see, the number of matches in this table is also quite large, but the number of retirements is much higher than in the first table. Complete tables of one hundred or two hundred words are called Swadesh lists. They calculate the exact number of dropped words, then calculate the time of divergence of the languages, the vocabulary of which is being analyzed. The calculation results do not always give a satisfactory result, but in general, the use of such a technique gives linguists a lot.

German Tag and english day, it turns out, are also associated with the Russian word day?

No, these words are not related to Russian day... They come from the Germanic word * dagaz"Day", which goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root * dʰegʷʰ-"burn". Hence the Lithuanian dègti"Burn", Russian burn, latin foveō Warm, Irish daig“Fire”, Sanskrit दहति (dahati) “to burn, burn”. I've heard this question many times. Apparently, many consider these words to be related.

Then my soul is calm. For many years I thought that day and day somehow related. I didn’t sleep at night. But it turned out that everything is so simple. And you just had to learn Lithuanian, Latin, Ancient Greek, Irish, Sanskrit and even Proto-Indo-European to boot. And then also come up with the idea of linking these words from the listed languages. What a trifle!

Would you like to humor? Sanskrit alone, by the way, is taught for many years and is not always mastered. Ancient languages are much more complex than modern ones.

You have cited so many words from the Proto-Indo-European language that it seems as if it is well known. Do we really know everything about him?

The Proto-Indo-European language is hypothetical. It was reconstructed on the basis of living languages, since none of us have heard it. Proto-Slavic, Proto-Germanic, Prakeltic and many other proto-languages were reconstructed in the same way.

You may have noticed that words from these languages have an asterisk (*) in their initials. This icon is called an asterisk, it indicates that this word has not been attested anywhere and that scientists only assume such a form. Therefore, we cannot know everything about the Proto-Indo-European language, but we can assume a lot.

How can a whole language be reconstructed? I will still believe that it is possible to somehow determine its age, but it seems to me that it is simply impossible to recreate from scratch what was once a living language.

Linguists are just doing the impossible - bringing the dead to life. Reconstruction of the proto-language is quite difficult. Different languages give us a lot of contradictory facts, besides, much has been lost over time, so the picture is incomplete in all respects.

The phonetics of the Proto-Indo-European language, as it may seem at first glance, is well known, but this is not so. Linguists use a compromise model. The consonant system in this model includes labial * m, * p, * b, * bʰ , * w, dental * n, * t, * d, * dʰ, * s, * r, * l, middle language * y, three rows of posterior linguals: palatoveralny *ḱ , *ǵ , *ǵʰ , velar * k, * g, * gʰ and labiovelar * kʷ, * gʷ, * gʷʰ, as well as laryngals * h₁ , *h₂ , *h₃ ... Five short vowels * i, * e, * a, * o, * u opposed to long *ī , *ē , *ā , *ō , *ū ... Some linguists believe that long vowels arose after the loss of laryngals. Also suggests the presence of four syllable sonatas *ṛ , *ḷ , *ṃ and *ṇ (consonants * r, * l, * n and * m between vowels), diphthongs from vowel combinations * e, * a and * o with non-syllable * i̯, * u̯(same as * w, * y) and some reduced *ə (it is considered by some to be a vocalized laryngal).

It is not always possible to reconstruct the grammar accurately and completely, since some nominal or verb forms could disappear without a trace, and it is simply impossible to reconstruct them on the basis of modern data. Similarly, if we did not know Latin grammar, then we would not be able to recreate at least one of the two forms of the passive voice in Latin using the material of all known Romance languages, since it has not been preserved anywhere.

Nevertheless, on the basis of the available data, it was established that the Proto-Indo-European language had a three-genus system (masculine, feminine and neuter), the noun changed in eight cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental, local, deferral) and three numbers ( singular, dual, plural). The verb had the categories of face, number, tense (present, imperfect, aorist and perfect), voice (active and medium) and mood (indicative, imperative, conjunctiva, and optative). It is also known that the noun, adjective, and verb could be thematic (stems ending in * o alternating with * e) and non-thematic (they did not have such a vowel).

When reconstructing vocabulary, many difficulties arise; it is not always possible to establish the exact meaning of an ancient root. But what can be "saved" from the destructive influence of time, they are trying to build into the reconstructed system of the proto-language. Thus, it is constantly being improved. The most brilliant scientists of the whole world have been working on this for decades.

How does lexical reconstruction work in general? Tell me at least briefly so that I understand where these words under the asterisk come from.

Linguists have a good visual model - the same Latin. We know that the latin word factum[ˈFaktum] “fact; done "turned into French fait, italian fatto, Spanish hecho, Portuguese feito, Romanian fapt... But if we did not know Latin at all, if all the written monuments in this language were destroyed in due time, and nothing reached us at all, we could theoretically guess what the word with the meaning "made" in this language looked like: we would know that it started with * f followed by some vowel (most likely, it was * a), and the vowel would have a combination of some consonant (plosive * k; compare also borrowings: English fact, German Faktum, Russian fact) and * t... We could reconstruct a hypothetical root * fakt- or something similar. By matching the following words with the meaning of "milk" in Romance languages: French lait, italian latte, Spanish leche, Portuguese leite, Romanian lapte, we would, by analogy with the previous example, say that their common root in Latin looked like * lakt- ... Indeed, these words come from the Latin form lactem("Milk" in Latin - lac), which we know very well.

Linguists act in a similar way when reconstructing Proto-Indo-European foundations. The only difference is that we know the Latin language, so we can check any of our guesses about the form of some obscure words, based on what we know. However, in the case of the Proto-Indo-European language, everything is much more complicated, since we did not have any initial data about it, except for modern words in Indo-European languages.

Let's consider such an example for the Proto-Indo-European language. Let's take a number of words with the meaning "door" from the Slavic languages: Russian a door, Ukrainian doors, Old Church Slavonic dvr, Serbian dvȃri, Bulgarian doors, Polish drzwi, Czech dveře... On their basis, the Proto-Slavic word is quite simply reconstructed * dvьrь"a door". This word in form and meaning resembles the ancient Greek θύρα (thúra) "door", Latin foris“Door, gate”, Sanskrit द्वार् (dvār), द्वार (dvā́ra) “door, gate”, English door"Door", gothic daur"Door", Persian در (dar) "door", Albanian derë"Door", Armenian դուռ (duṙ) "door" and Old Irish dorus"a door". It can be assumed that they are all related.

To determine what the common Proto-Indo-European root looked like, each phoneme of the given words should be analyzed. Beginner * d could be in Proto-Indo-European, but the ancient Greek θ (th) and Latin f talk about its aspirated nature. Thus, the Proto-Indo-European root begins with * dʰ... Also, by means of comparisons and assumptions, they determine that they were followed by a semi-vowel * w, also at the root there was a smooth * r... Between * w and * r there was a vowel * e or * o... That is, the entire root looked like * dʰwer- or * dʰwor-(from the latter comes also the Russian word yard).

The Indo-European root could overgrow with various suffixes, forming new words (as in Russian: a door, door, door etc.). Partly for this reason, some cognate forms do not always coincide with each other. Vowels in the root could alternate in different ways (in linguistics this is called ablaut), giving different results in modern languages, therefore sometimes the same root is presented in different versions.

Today, the reconstruction does not take much time, since almost all the correspondences between modern languages and Proto-Indo-European have long been known. With a thorough reconstruction, each phoneme should be substantiated by referring to similar cases, some laws, exceptions, of which a lot has accumulated lately. One such rationale can take ten pages. Thank God, almost all of this work has already been done. Back in the 19th century, it was wandering in the dark, but it gave a result.

Yeah. I can imagine how much information scientists had to process, who looked for these words, found matches for them. And all this without computers!

It was a routine job. But entire dictionaries of such roots and words were created that glorified the names of their authors. For example, Y. Pokorny's Indo-European dictionary, published in 1959, is very popular all over the world and is still considered one of the best.

Is it possible to speak in the Proto-Indo-European language, or at least write some kind of letter? Or is it not yet reconstructed to the point where it can be used for practical purposes?

You can talk and write a letter. They tried to do this back in the years when Proto-Indo-European began to be actively reconstructed. The German linguist A. Schleicher, already familiar to us, wrote a whole fable in this language, which today is known as "Schleicher's fable". Here is her text.

Avis akvāsas ka

Avis, jasmin varnā na ā 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. Akvāsas ā vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnām avisāms karnauti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka varnā na asti. Tat kukruvants avis agram ā bhugat.

Sheep and horses

A sheep [on] which had no wool (a shorn sheep) saw horses carrying a heavy cart [with] a large load, quickly carrying a man. The sheep said to the horses: my heart is crowded [in] me (my heart is sorrowful), seeing the horses carrying a man. The horses said: listen, sheep, the heart is crowded [from] what we saw (our heart is sad because we know): the man is the master, makes the wool of a sheep a warm clothing [for] himself and [the] sheep have no wool (the sheep no longer have wool , they are shorn, they are worse than horses). Hearing this, the sheep turned [into] the field (she ran away).

Schleicher's text, in fact, is far from the modern reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language, since it was written almost a century and a half ago and reflects mainly the features of Sanskrit, which Schleicher himself considered closest to the Proto-Indo-European language.

Today, almost every year, new versions of this fable appear, everyone is trying to leave their mark in linguistics. But Schleicher will not be surpassed by anyone, because he became a pioneer, a mad experimenter who sought to revive a long-extinct language and capture it in this text.

I liked the fable, but I can hardly read it correctly. But I easily recognized the word kard"heart". I now recognize him in any language.

But what about colloquial Proto-Indo-European? If I want to learn it to “communicate with the ancestors” or just for fun, then where can I look for educational material?

Some linguists today are creating their projects of a colloquial version of Proto-Indo-European, but I have doubts that the language they propose is close to the language spoken five or six thousand years ago. In addition, there are many simpler and popular languages that really should be taught. For example, Spanish or Portuguese.

If you really want to touch the ancient proto-language in its modern version, then you can look for the book of the Spanish polyglot K. Quiles "The grammar of the modern Indo-European language." Also quite interesting is the book by F. Lopez-Menchero "Preliminary syntax of the modern Indo-European language". I have these books in English, but to be honest, I have not mastered them to the end. In addition, I do not agree with all the provisions of these books, they contain very controversial statements.

I will definitely find and read them. And Spanish with Portuguese is next in line. So be calm.

In general, if we collect what we talked about above, it turns out that almost all the linguistic diversity of our planet in the historical perspective is compressed into some single proto-language. But we mentioned mainly European and partly Asian languages. What about other languages? For example, it is not at all clear to me where the place in this system is for Japanese or Chinese. Did they develop separately or are they also related to Indo-European languages?

I was waiting for you to ask about it. This question has been of particular interest to me lately. The fact is that, in addition to the Indo-European language family, there are several other large families in the world: Uralic (Samoyed and Finno-Ugric languages), Altai (Turkic, Mongolian, Tunguso-Manchu languages, as well as Korean and Japanese), Kartvelian (Georgian), Sino-Tibetan (Chinese and Tibeto-Burmese languages), Dravidian (mainly the languages of South India), Afrasian (Berber-Libyan, Cushite, Omotic, Semitic, Chadian languages, as well as Ancient Egyptian), Austronesian (numerous languages in Taiwan, in South-East Asia, Oceania and Madagascar) and others. For some of them, their proto-languages have also been reconstructed.

At the beginning of the 20th century, quite a lot was already known about the proto-languages. The well-known Danish linguist H. Pedersen, back in 1903, in one of his articles, expressed the idea that there are languages related to Indo-European at a more ancient level. His guess was very daring for that time.

Later, this idea of Pedersen was developed in the works of our domestic scientists: first V.M. Illich-Svitych, then A. B. Dolgopolsky, V. A. Dybo and S. A. Starostin. Based on the material of the Indo-European, Altai, Afrasian, Kartvelian, Dravidian and Uralic languages, they managed to reconstruct as a whole a significant part of this second-level proto-language using the same comparative method, but not in relation to living languages, but in relation to proto-languages. We can say that they have reconstructed the "proto-language" that existed more than ten thousand years ago. Illich-Svitych even wrote a short poem on it, repeating the feat of A. Schleicher. Here is her text.

There is something philosophical in this poem ...

This is not only philosophy, but also a challenge to scientists. Illich-Svitych, in fact, encrypted the instruction to future generations of linguists. I interpret it this way: “language is a ford across the river of time” - to understand it, you need to cross this river, that is, to overcome time; “He leads us to the dwelling of the dead” - he will reveal to us the secrets of antiquity, give us the opportunity to look at the world through the eyes of those who spoke the most ancient language; “But he who is afraid of deep water will not be able to get there” - who is afraid or does not want to look and see beyond the achieved (Proto-Indo-European level), will never reveal these secrets.

Does this "proto-language" have a name?

I almost forgot about the most important ... This "proto-language" in scientific literature is called Nostratic (from the Latin pronoun noster"our"). Have you never heard a name like that?

No, I have never heard of this. Perhaps in terrible dreams, but I, as a rule, do not remember them.

Is it in different languages Are there any matches from the families presented that can be recognized? I can hardly distinguish them even in Indo-European languages. How can one find any correspondence in this sea of words?

To be honest, I don't always notice them either. But using the already known correspondences between the proto-languages, I can link, for example, the Proto-Indo-European word * wódr̥"Water" (whence Russian water, english water"Water", Lithuanian vanduõ"Water", ancient Greek ὕδωρ (húdōr) "water", Latin unda"Wave") with the Proto-Uralian word * weti"Water", where the Finnish comes from vesi"Water" and Hungarian víz"water". In pranostratic, this word looked like * wete(compare with the last word in Illich-Svitych's poem).

Your favorite Proto-Indo-European word * ḱérd"Heart" (I already represented it in the form * ḱḗr without * d and with a long root vowel) very similar to Georgian მკერდი (mkerdi) "chest", which goes back to the Prakartvelian * mk̕erd-(initial consonant is a prefix). For them I have met reconstruction * k̕ærd and * k̕erd(in other notation systems, the reconstruction may look different, for example, as * k̥ärd∇).

There are quite a lot of such coincidences, but this is not yet enough to assert that such similarities are not due to coincidence or ancient contacts of native speakers. Yet the very possibility of the existence of an ancient Nostratic proto-language seems very likely, I personally believe in it.

According to the theory of monogenesis, all people with their languages left a single tribe and subsequently, settling around the planet, began to lose cultural and linguistic ties. The carriers of the Nostratic proto-language are one of the branches of these people who roamed the planet, who continued to divide into other tribes. The process of this division is still going on.

So, if we summarize everything, it turns out that the languages of the world are in varying degrees of kinship. Slavic languages go back to a certain Proto-Slavic language, which, in turn, together with Proto-Germanic, Prakeltic and other ancient proto-languages, goes back to some Proto-Indo-European language. The latter (together with other proto-languages) can also go back to some more ancient “proto-proto-language”, which is called Nostratic. Did I understand the meaning correctly?

Yes, that is right. I will add to what has been said that there is also a hypothesis about the existence of the Borean language, on which the same S.A. Starostin worked. According to this hypothesis, all known earthly languages (or most of them) can go back to the single most ancient proto-language, which was spoken by our ancestors during the period of settling in Eurasia or even in Africa. Actually, such a picture emerges if we adhere to the theory of monogenesis.

For a long time, work has been going on comparing the Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian languages (the latter include Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian, Dene-Yenisei, ancient Hurrian-Urartian languages, Basque language and Burushaski, which are considered by many to be isolates, as well as some other ancient languages). Other hypothetical macrofamilies of languages are being actively explored: Austrian (Austro-Asian, Austronesian, Tai-Kadai languages, as well as Miao-Yao languages) and Amerid (American Indian languages). This is the very last level of comparison, the "deepest water".

Well! Also, the "great-great-language" appeared.

As you see. Only while the proto-languages of the Proto-Indo-European level are being seriously discussed. Many linguists dispute the existence of Nostratic and especially Borean languages. But it seems to me that this is wrong. If such proto-languages really existed and if linguists manage to get close to them, then this will seriously move us forward in the study of primitive society.

I already understand that. If scientists know what was in the ancient language, then this will allow us to understand what surrounded the ancient people, what they did. And we will finally be able to find out how the ancient people grunt after their pigs.

It is also not entirely clear to me which similarities are taken as a basis when comparing the grammars of languages. I doubt terribly that the grammar of the Russian language can be compared with the grammars of some other languages. Even English grammar seems too different to us.

The grammar of languages is also subject to comparison, but mostly not based on it. If you remember, we said that there is a linguistic typology that classifies languages according to the types of expression grammatical meanings and types of morphological structure. In general, this science also compares languages, but looks for those similarities that are not due to kinship.

Let me give you a simple example. Many languages have an article part of speech. We usually talk about the prepositive article (definite or indefinite): English a(n) , the, German ein, eine, ein, der, die, das, die, French un, une, des, le, la, les and so on. However, there are languages in which articles strangely leave the word, becoming a part of it. Such articles are called post-positive. They are, for example, in the Bulgarian language. So, the Bulgarian word muzh"Husband" with the article is muzht, word hail"City" with the article is grad... Here the article -'t corresponds to a particle -then In russian language ( husband, the city). Compare also the Bulgarian articles in the nouns of the middle and female: jelazo"iron" - gelatinous, lyato"summer" - lyatoto, wife"Wife" - married, mountain"Forest" - gorata... You can find the same thing in Swedish: hus"House" - huset, bok"book" - boken, björn"bear" - björnen... Such a strange similarity in the structures of Bulgarian and Swedish is completely coincidental.

It happens that the similarity is due to long-term contacts of languages. The Bulgarian language belongs to the so-called Balkan linguistic union, which also includes Macedonian, Greek, Albanian and Romanian. For a number of characteristics, this union also includes the Serbo-Croatian, Gypsy languages and some dialects of Turkish. It turns out that the emergence of the postpositive article is a common innovation in some of these languages. It is also found in Albanian ( shtëpi"House" - shtëpia, tryezы"table" - tryeza, kërci"Shin" - kërcyri) and Romanian ( lup"Wolf" - lupul, copil"child" - copilul, fereastră"window" - fereastra). Here it is no longer possible to speak of an accidental similarity, but the presence of a postpositive article does not speak of the kinship of languages either. It's just that the languages got closer, something in them coincided. These and some other similarities of the languages included in the Balkan linguistic union have attracted linguists throughout the 20th century.

Of course, grammatical similarities that come from antiquity exist, they are found in the same forms of words in different languages. But grammar changes quite quickly, sometimes even beyond recognition. Remember that at the very beginning I spoke about English and Bulgarian. Grammar can change unpredictably, old grammatical categories disappear, new ones appear.

Does the word order somehow help linguists to determine the relationship of languages? For example, if in one language a verb always stands in one place, and in another - in another place, does this mean something?

The syntax, word order, in some cases allows one to put forward some assumptions about kinship, but then one should talk about a comparison not by one syntactic feature (for example, the place of a particular member of a sentence), but by a whole set of features. Everything is the same as with grammar.

The position of the verb in the sentence is of interest to all the same typologists, that is, linguists who study similarities that are not related to linguistic kinship. The verb in a sentence, of course, can be in different places, and other members of the sentence can be located in different ways relative to the verb. Nevertheless, the number of combinations is limited, and therefore the same order can be easily found in languages common in different hemispheres of the blue planet.

Data typology word order suggests that almost half of all languages have an order of the SOV type (that is, "subject, subject - object, object - verb, predicate"). These include completely different languages: Hindi, Armenian, Turkish, Tatar, Uzbek, Mongolian, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Basque and many others. In all of these languages, the verb comes after the object.

For example, the phrase “I don't speak Japanese” in Japanese looks like this: “私は日本語は話せません (わたしはにほんごははなせません, watashi wa Nihongo wa hanasemasen)”. Here the word 話す (はなす, hanasu) is just the verb “speak” (the form 話せません (なせません, hanasemasen) is negative for the present-future tense). The word 私 (わたし, watashi) is the pronoun "I", the word は (wa) is a special particle, and the word 日本語 (にほんご, Nihongo) translates to "Japanese." To say in Hindi “I don’t speak Hindi”, we construct a similar construction: “मैं हिन्दी नहीं बोलता हूँ (maĩ hindī nahī̃ boltā hū̃)”. Somehow we have already met with the verb हूँ (hū̃) at the very beginning. It is an auxiliary verb, the form of the verb होना (honā) “to be”, which is used together with the masculine participle बोलता (boltā) “speaking”, the form of the verb बोलना (bolnā) “to speak”. Thus, the whole the last part of the sentence बोलता हूँ (boltā hū̃) is a predicate, and everything in front of it is the subject and object (the negation नहीं (nahī̃) refers to the verb, but we will not weave it to the predicate).

There are languages like SVO ("subject - verb - object"), which include many European languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Czech, Finnish, etc.), as well as Russian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hausa, Swahili and some other languages. There are also a lot of such languages.

You don't have to go far for examples. For the Russian language, the basic order will be in which the verb comes after the subject: "I do not speak Russian." We can say in another way: “I don’t speak Russian”, “I don’t speak Russian”. it possible options statements, but they, as a rule, have a special style. In English, there is only one way to say: “I don’t speak English”. In German we would say “ich spreche kein Deutsch”, in French: “je ne parle pas français”, in Spanish: “yo no hablo español”, in Polish: “nie mówię po polsku”, Finnish: "en puhu suomea". In these statements, the verb is everywhere after the subject (real or implied) and before the object.

There are four other word orders that are less common. I will not explain them, I do not see the need for this. And without that it is clear that such a characteristic as the place of a verb in a sentence cannot serve as an indicator of kinship. We compared Hindi and Japanese, which belong to completely different language families, but have common feature- the position of the verb at the end. At the same time, for example, the Celtic languages have a completely different order (VSO, "verb - subject - object"), which is not typical for European languages at all, but is found in Arabic and Filipino.

It turns out that grammar and syntax hardly compare at all? I don't quite understand something. After all, you said that the grammar of the Proto-Indo-European language is being actively reconstructed. How so?

Grammar is also compared, but, as I said, not very well and not very willingly. Based on the material of closely related Slavic languages, one can understand what the conjugation or declension was in Proto-Slavic. The Germanic grammar is being restored on the basis of the Germanic languages. Then all this is compared with each other in order to understand what the grammar of the Proto-Indo-European language was. If grammar was not at all subject to comparison, then Schleicher probably would not have dared to write something in the Proto-Indo-European language. Comparison of grammar is difficult for the reasons already mentioned, but possible.

It is still more complicated with syntax than with grammar, but a lot of theoretical works are published on it, we know something about it. For example, it is known that Proto-Indo-European had a basic word order of the SOV type, although in general the order was relatively free, as in Russian, since Proto-Indo-European was an inflectional language.

Can you give an example of some particular comparison of grammar to make it clear exactly where to look for similarities?

I have already given some forms of the verb "to be", which have a rather ancient origin. Here's another example. From the Proto-Indo-European root * bʰer-"Carry" occurs a Russian verb take(in Old Church Slavonic - take it), ancient greek φέρω (phérō) "to wear", Latin ferō"wear". Now compare the forms of these words in the table.

	St. Slav.	Russian	Latin	Dr.-Greek.
* bʰéroh₂	berѫ	take	ferō	φέρω (phérō)
* bʰéresi	take	take		φέρεις (phéreis)
* bʰéreti	take	beret		φέρει (phérei)
* bʰéromos	take	take		φέρομεν (phéromen)
* bʰérete	take	take		φέρετε (phérete)
* bʰéronti	take	take		φέρουσῐ (ν ) (phérousi (n))

Here are only the so-called thematic forms of the singular and plural of the Proto-Indo-European verb (it was also conjugated in the dual). They have just been reconstructed on the material of modern and ancient classical languages, known to science quite well. You can find the similarity of the inflections, which are grammatical indicators.

Still, the most preferred object of study and comparison is phonetics. Different phonetic correspondences can be established between different languages. Previously, I almost did not pay your attention to them, but now I want you to find them here yourself.

Have you ever heard how Ukrainians speak?

Then there is no need to explain why you answered this question so quickly.

Do you believe in miracles?

May there always be sun, may there always be sky, may there always be mother, may there always be me!

Greek is not easy.

Are you hungry for the Truth?

But the Truth is terrible.

Not many are allowed to love horror.

Most likely, you yearn for the Ideal.

The ideal is beautiful. It's so easy to love him.

The Russian Empire of spirituality was not created by bloody conquests, not by robbery and robbery, not by the total destruction of captured peoples, not by terror, as the Americans, British, Germans and other "civilized peoples" did. Our ancestors created the country with truth, justice and a strong desire for common progress.

The Great Russian People have their own Great History... We are the oldest people in the world, from which almost all the peoples of Europe and a significant part of the peoples of Asia originated. The richest and most wonderful Russian language is the main witness of our ancient origin, who remembered everything that happened to our ancestors in distant centuries.

Our history has been distorted many times; events were replaced by others that did not exist. This was done when they seized power under Prince Vladimir Monomakh, Peter I, during the usurpation of power in 1917, and, finally, after the coup d'etat of 1991-1993. But the language cannot be faked or its data changed. By language we can find out where our ancestors lived, who they were, who their neighbors were; we can determine the life, religion and philosophy of our ancestors, the degree of their spiritual culture. A.A. Kur says that these searches should be carried out in the language of the common people, which is natural and not literary. In his opinion, the literary language is artificial, which was created by civilization in its development.

The archaeological finds of antiquity include records from the times of the Hyks (5), made by the XXV centuries BC. (2500 BC). New data have been obtained about the ancient geography of Palestine (6) many centuries before the Jews appeared there. These data clarify the places where our ancestors once lived. Their settlements were found by archaeologists; they inhabited the valley of the Yardanu River (Jordan River) and the shores of Lake Ros-Pana. Now all this space is covered by the Dead Sea. Our people have preserved many legends about this antiquity. The chronicler Nestor says the same, everything said is confirmed by the Velesov book and the archaeological cuneiforms of Sargon I (7)

The image of a swastika on the floor of the ancient synagogue of Ain Jedi in Israel

Many Vedic words have survived in Russian: widow, brother-in-law, son-in-law, father-in-law, brother, daughter, grandfather, son, be, beat, cook, edge, shelter, drink, house, door, light, fool, etc. Vedic language or language The Rig Veda (8) left a deeper mark in our language than in other Aryan languages. The presence of many Vedic words in the language indicates its antiquity. The Vedic language, unlike Sanskrit, is more ancient. Sanskrit is the medieval language of India, which originated from the Vedic language and the languages of other peoples who lived in the Middle Ages. Sanskrit is a refined or, in modern terms, "literary" language. The Vedic language is the language of the common people and is called praktit. The word "praktit" is from the word "praktit", that is, nature, nature. Sanskrit from "san" - together, "crete" - well done. The words demon, tiun, mouth (mouth) are from our language, but these words are also found among demotic (demotic writing is a speedy form of Egyptian writing with ligatures, which arose in the 8th – 7th centuries BC) and hieroglyphic records of the Egyptians. These words are found both among us and among the disappeared Egyptians because in ancient times the ancient Egyptians branched off from our ancestors. This is just a small part of the many words inherited by ancient peoples from our ancestors.

According to the legends of the Svarogov cycle (9), which were collected by P.M. Stroyev, N. Tkani, A.S. Famitsin, D.O. Shepling, Yu.P. Mirolyubov, and the data of the Veles book, the Prorusians in ancient times came from the extreme north, from Arctida (Hyperborea) in the VII millennium BC. They brought with them the Vedas in their archaic form. In the modern language, the words of the ancient Vedas have been preserved almost without changing the form, meaning and pronunciation. These words are still used in everyday life, especially in the language of the common people.

In 1767. a Sanskrit manuscript was found in India. This discovery suggested that the Slavic language is related to Latin, Greek, Persian and Sanskrit. P.H. Levek, I. Levanda, H. Adelung and others suggested the origin of the Latins, Greeks, Germans and Slavs from a single, ancient people and the emergence of their languages from a single proto-language.

A.V. Dzhone in 1786. revealed the kinship of Sanskrit not only with Latin and Greek, but also with Gothic, Celtic, ancient Persian languages.

Scientists have proven a close connection between the Russian language and Sanskrit. For example, the word "blather" is a common word "to speak". But in Sanskrit "VYAK" means to speak. Sanskrit is the language of the priests Ancient India, which is at least 3-5 thousand years old. This is not taught at school, and experts know that Sanskrit and Russian are linguistically more similar and close than some related Slavic languages: "when to wake you up?" "kada you budh?"; "father-in-law and uncle were at home" - "dama bhu svakr and dada".

The main guardian of the Indian epic - the Vedas (knowledge: to know - to know), as well as the Iranian-Aryan Avesta (First message, A-beginning), tell about the northern ancestral home, where the teachers came from. And the very name of the Sanskrit language is S-AN-HIDDEN, that is, "(c) is hidden by this" is explained only in Russian.

Professor of Oriental languages in Berlin G. Petrashevsky translated five books of Zend-Avesta and proved that the so-called Zend language is the original language for Sanskrit and Slavic.

Zend-Avesta (Zen - life and the verb "to give", "to give") means "life-maker" or "life-giver", i.e. the creator of the universe. This essay describes the conversation of Zoroaster (Zerdesta) with God about the laws that serve people. The first five books are called Vendadad - Vendian covenants.

Aristotle believed that Zoroaster lived 6,000 years before Plato, according to other sources, 5,000 years before the destruction of Troy, and according to the studies of the German Rode, 2000 BC. Zoroaster was born in the city of Guana or Gedani in Bactria (Slavic Gdansk). Father's name was Staroshast (Porushaspa), and mother's Dogda (Dukdaub).

Zoroaster

The birth and life of Zoroaster is wonderful. He was born of an ordinary father from the Spitama clan and was the third child. According to legend, his Divine soul was transferred to him by God at the moment of conception, which is consonant with the Annunciation. The forces of evil opposed his birth, and childbirth was extremely difficult for three days, which in itself is unnatural for a woman who gave birth twice. His genealogy in the Avesta is described from the creation of the first man, and he was born in the same place where he was created - on the left bank of the Datia River in Aryana Vezhda. (According to one version, it is believed that this place is located in the Cis-Urals at the confluence of the Kama and Chusovaya rivers. According to another version, it is near the banks of the Rangkhi (Race) river, now called the Volga.) In the Avesta, this place is described as the birthplace of the Aryan tribe. The name Zoroaster in Greek means "Shining Star", but the Avestan name Zarathushtra conveys the meaning more precisely - "Golden Sirius".

Tradition says that the born child did not scream, but laughed. But as soon as his umbilical cord was cut off, a miracle happened - the newborn spoke in verse, pronouncing the sacred quatrain! From his youth he was known as a sage. When he met God, his body was given an amazing property: when the hands were laid on the knife wound, it tightened without leaving a trace on the skin. All his life he was attacked by the forces of evil, but he always miraculously saved himself, until he was killed with a sword blow in the back at the age of 77 years and 40 days. He had been warned of this terrible death many years before when he met God, but he could not “pass this cup”.

Zoroaster tells about sixteen Parish settlements, according to modern migrations, one of which was to the Baltic Sea. The fifth screening was in the city of Nissu (present-day Nice in the Kingdom of Naples). Nissa is the first historical evidence that the Slavs lived in Italy, namely in Etruria, which is confirmed by the abundance of Slavic monuments scattered throughout Italy and deciphered by F. Volansky.

It becomes clear how the Slavic language got to Italy and survived there until the time of E. Klassen (1854) in all its purity, without mixing with Italian in a whole district near Venice, numbering 12,000 people. This suggests that the Italian Wends are compatriots of the Baltic Wends.

Eltruski, 1 channel

The German linguist F. Bonk convincingly showed that the Slavic language belongs to the Indo-European (Indo-Germanic) language family, which also includes Greek, Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Illyrian, Lithuanian, Indo-Iranian and other already extinct languages - all of them developed from a single common Indo-European language (V.V. Sedov).

According to the Czech Slavist L. Niederle (1865–1944), the Proto-Indo-European language disintegrated into separate languages at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Along with other Indo-European languages during the second millennium BC. there was a Balto-Slavic language, as a result of the division of which in the first millennium BC. the Proto-Slavic language was formed.

Only thanks to Sanskrit it was possible to connect all modern and classical European languages with the ancient Indo-Iranian languages into one whole, to understand their development and prove their origin. European nations from one ancestral family, find out the process and the approximate time of the formation of nations (branches of languages and dialects).

The more a language differs from Sanskrit, the earlier it separated from the original family. Greeks, Latins, Celts are more distant from the Proto-Aryan source. The language of the later separated peoples: (Goths, Germans, Lithuanians and Slavs) is closer to Sanskrit.

According to A. Schleicher (German linguist 1821-1868), Slavic, Lithuanian and German languages are closer to each other than to other languages of the Indo-European group. The relationship between the Slavic and Lithuanian languages is so great that it was taken by linguists as one linguistic branch. The Slavic language and Sanskrit are so close that one can think that the Old Indian and Slavic-Lithuanian languages are a continuation of the same dialect, only separated by space and time.

Little has entered the Slavic language foreign words... These changes appear only when the people come into contact with a higher culture, or when the lifestyle of another people is forcibly imposed on them (we can observe this today, when the media implants the idea of an American paradise into the brain). This means that the Slavs were more cultured than other peoples. The Slavic language was improved on its own root basis. For example, the word "blood" in Sanskrit is "kravia", which means "raw meat". From cravium, the Latin cruro and karo were formed, and in the Slavic language, blood and womb.

The Iranians knew our ancestors under the name "Turos" (mobile, nomadic), and Herodotus wrote down their name "Scythian" from the words and it sounded in Greek "scouts" or in the Russian pronunciation "chipped-scouts".

The ancient Indian words barn, punya and riga have survived only with us. Punia - I blow bread.

An invaluable contribution to the proof of the origin of all European languages from the Russian language was made by a wonderful scholarly patriot, defender of the fatherland, admiral, secretary of state, minister of education and president Russian Academy Sciences A.S. Shishkov. His invaluable works remained on the shelves. Russophobes do not publish them because they expose the myth of "barbaric" Russia.

A.S. Shishkov in thousands of words proved how all foreign languages come from Slavic Russian, but there is not a single reverse example. There can be no mutual enrichment of languages, let alone mutual benefit. Taking over our spoiled ancient words from foreigners, we are constantly becoming impoverished in intelligence and morality.

“I know a lot of our words, which, after distorting them in foreign languages, we introduce broken ones back into our language, taking them not for ours. Or we prefer foreign-lingual branches extracted from a common root with us. Or by accepting and putting into use their words, we make our roots fruitless ”.

“Each foreign-language word introduced into use not only takes away from the mind the freedom and ability to spread and strengthen its language, but leads it to powerlessness and impoverishment. Yielding more and more to this imaginary necessity, flaunting other people's words, we will finally re-wake up our own, mix the rest with foreign ones and, having lost our own words, our roots and meanings, we will make from the Slavic-Russian language, from this one that lifts its head from ancient times into an old-armed giant, such a lean and weak Greco-Latin-German-French child, in whom there will be neither mind nor strength. Skill, of course, can do a lot over us, but should it conquer his reason? They will say: are we the only ones using other people's words; other peoples' dictionaries are filled with them.

The newest languages cannot serve as models for us. They must, by necessity, borrow their words from other languages; but our ancient language! has no need. He can extract branches from each of his own roots as much as he needs. "

“In order not to borrow words from foreign languages, you need to know your language and be able, with reason and knowledge, to extract words derived from it; for the ignorant extraction of one's own derivatives from the root meaning of words will spoil our language even worse than the use of foreign words. "

At school, they have always taught and are taught that a root is an unchanging part of a word, and, moreover, by letters, writing, and not by the deep meaning of the original concept. That is, they teach purely formally, in a truncated form. Shishkov, however, connects each root with the primal meaning from the primordial word. And according to the meaning of single-root branched words, it always finds the root, even in one remaining letter, and even when it is not there, it disappears, it returns it to the language, like a father to children. What could be more important than finding the first God-given meanings and linking them to the roots that sprout verbal branches.

Not only after forty or fifty centuries, but often after one or two centuries, the language of the ancestors becomes incomprehensible to posterity. Thus, the primitive language disappears by itself, but exists in all languages, to a greater or lesser extent. He exists in them not in his own words, but in the roots from which each language originated.

Adverbs that are far removed from each other are already considered other languages. This is due to the fact that some words are forgotten, others change, others are re-invented and come into use. But the forgotten word sometimes does not cease to exist in the words that have come from it. Thus, as it were newest language he has not moved far from his primitive image, but its traces remain noticeable in it and have not disappeared. If you try, you can get to them.

A.S.Shishkov says this about the origin of all languages from Old Slavic: “I enter only the root word. When the study of the words of different languages shows their great and universal relation to the Slavic language, then both history and the language, one mutually reinforced by the other, lead to undeniable conclusions.

I am not blindly addicted to my native language, not by dreamy guesses, but by a true and accurate study of many languages and dialects, in my opinion I believe a fair basis.

We see clearly and undoubtedly that all languages are composed in the same way. Branches are extracted by attaching different endings and prepositions to the roots. The concept contained in the root never changes, but only diversifies. To find the root, it is necessary to separate the preposition and the ending in the word, in whatever language it may be. Then, on the basis of the remaining root, to reason about the original concept, which is preserved in all branches produced from it, both in one and in many languages. "

“We say Slavs, we mean glory. We say glory, we mean the word. The name of the Slavs was famous for several centuries before the existence of Rome, and before the Greeks became known among people. The Slavonic language had its most ancient dialects, of which some had writing from the very first times of this divine invention. Every Slavic dialect is understandable to all Slavic peoples, and all Slavs, with little attention, understand their forefathers' language. The Russian dialect, general, comes closest to it. Serbian dialect, the second among Slavic dialects in its purity.

Word and glory are related concepts. The second came from the first, since glory is born and grows through the word, why instead of the glorious and sometimes the notorious is said. For this reason, it should be assumed that the name Slavs was made from slavs, that is, verbal, people gifted with the word.

The Slavs, who called themselves Slavs or Slovyaks (Slovyats equivalent to the Gentiles), that is, speaking, understood by this name all the same language with them, the same inhabitants.

It is known that during the time of Charlemagne, many Slavs in Germany little by little distorted their language so much that they completely forgot how to learn it. Hence the German language originated. German dictionaries represent on all pages the fragments of distorted Slavic words.

The Slavenian language contains all the original sounds that are only in all European languages, while foreign alphabets, with unsuccessful efforts, express this universal root language in their writing. Hence it occurs that even starting from the Greeks and Romans in the descriptions of all the kingdoms that told something about the Slavs, instead of Slavic names, for the most part, we find only strange, incomprehensible and truly barbaric names. Our alphabet gives us the key to understanding them, from the most ancient times.

The Slavic language is called an indisputable monument of great knowledge. In his words, one can see the connection of thoughts that passed from one concept to another, adjacent to it. No language presents to us in the production of words such an unbroken chain of considerations as we find in it. "

At the end of his research, AS Shishkov concludes: “There are traces of the Slavic language in all dialects. German was once Slavic.

“Those of the Slavs who, leaving their own, write the language in their native foreign alphabet, have made a triple imprudence: first, they spoil their words with it; secondly, leaving their own, they exchanged good for worse; and thirdly, they assert the absurd opinion of foreigners about themselves, showing them their language in the most ugly form. For the very names of Slavic letters cannot, without extreme distortion, be written in foreign letters: to say beeches, earth, live, worm, you must write buki (boyki), zemglia or cemglia (zemglid), csciviete (zsciviete), tsherw (tsherw) ; or to say, for example, protection, you need to make fifteen of nine letters: zaszcziszczenie (as the Poles write), so crumpled together that no stranger is able to read them.

“Those Slavs who have denied to confess their faith in their own language are on the very crooked path leading them to the fact that one day they will cease to be Slavs. Having ears to hear, let him hear. "

The Slavic alphabet has as many different signs or letters as there are initial sounds in the lengthy words of its sea. These letters do not lose, they never change their established pronunciation, in any conjugations or movements.

From this it naturally occurs that the Slavic writing is always true without change, and when someone once learned the alphabetical signs, he has already at the same time learned and unmistakably to read any scripture in this language.

Other languages are confused, ambiguous, and in comparison with Slavic, lack sufficient writing perfection. The letters of the Roman alphabet in all European languages remain without any independent accent force. This mess of spelling confuses everything ...

Our ABC (in other dialects, initial letter) in writing or with its own letters, readable in order, makes some complete meaning, containing instruction to the one who begins to pronounce them, reminding and repeating to the young student about the importance of his own and the benefits of learning the language. She says: az, beeches, lead, verb, good, live, earth, others like, people, think, our, he, peace, rtsy, word, firmly, that is: I am something great, know, the verb is good , live on earth and think, this is our peace, the word is firm.

Even the first base taught by us to young men, letters, began to be called not in our way, so foreigners, as if in mockery, write: B, lettre d alphabet Russe, appelee anciennement beeches, et main-tenant be. (B, the letter of the Russian alphabet, formerly called beeches, and now be). Such is the success Russia has finally achieved in literature: she made beech from beech! Soon the word alphabet will be alien to us, incomprehensible, because the names az and beeches will eventually be destroyed and their abesia will be more intelligible to us. Likewise, a great transformation will take place in our warehouses: it will no longer be possible for us to add words as before, walked, uncle, human, I will, shield, because in other people's abeses there are no our letters era, dick, I, worm, y, shcha. Maybe, in the end, we will get used to using their letters: bsh, zodin, diadia, mscheloviek, boudou, steal. I recently read a book in which a writer who calls himself Russian advises us, for the benefit of the language, to drop our letters and accept others. It is as if someone advised the owner of a stone house to dig it down and build a wooden one from pegs and potato pancakes. Woe to our tongue, if such thoughts are disintegrated! And then what will happen to my word-making experience? Maybe some will call me a dreamer, some coarse in the old days, the third addicted to Slavism. But what do I care about them? My desire to be as long as I can useful language native and fatherland; and there the free will, the saved paradise, will judge me. "

The original Slavic words hut, cage, sling (roof, rafters), eavesdropping, tyos, shit, window, jamb, threshold came to us from ancient times.

P.P. Oreshkin in the work "Babylonian Phenomenon 1984" pointed out that all oldest civilizations the white people of Egypt, Crete, Etruscans, Great Rome, Greece and others were our Slavic civilizations. With the help of a single key - the ancient Slavic language, he deciphered the documents of ancient civilizations many thousands of years ago. He believed that research in this direction by "Egyptologists", "Etruscan scholars" and other so-called "specialists" who had neither a scientific nor a theoretical basis, had one goal: to divert us away from real facts. The history of the dispersal of the white race across the planet was deliberately hidden from humanity. According to P.P. Oreshkin, the most ancient documents are written by means of various alphabetic systems, but in the same language and here is the key to their decoding. The signs are different, the language is one.

New peoples and their languages are not formed by themselves. As they grow, they branch off from the main nucleus and move to new lands, gradually changing their way of life.

Y.D. Petukhov (By the paths of the Gods. True story of the Russian people M. “Mysl” 1980) relatively recently made the discovery that the ethnically-cultural-linguistic core of the praethnos of the Indo-Europeans consisted of the direct ancestors of the Slavic-Russes: there were those who are usually called Slavs (although this is a late and far from the only ethnonym of the people developing in time; examples of other self-names are Aryans, Rasenes, Wends, Rus ...). The ancestral homelands of Indo-European-Rus, both primary and secondary, were in their habitats - in the Middle East, Asia Minor, the Balkans, the Mediterranean and throughout Europe. " (Fig. 1)

Yu.D. Petukhov gives an ethno-chronological table:

40-30 thousand BC - Protorus (Cro-Magnon Rus);

30-15 thousand BC - Prarusians (Russes Boreals - the root word is ber - "bear", they worshiped the bear-Veles);

From 15 thousand BC - Rus (Indo-European Rus).

The ancestors of the Slavs have always been distinguished by their high culture, so Herodotus in chapter 46 of the 4 book "History" says that of all the countries where Darius campaigned, in addition to the Scythian peoples, the most ignorant tribes live on the Equinian Pontus, and we do not meet a single famous person, except for the Scythian Anacharsis. Those Scythians and their ancestors left their writing on stones and clay tablets. They tried to decipher them in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and it was all in vain.

For the first time the Old Slavic language as a key for decoding the oldest inscriptions in 1847. used by the Polish scientist Fadey Volansky. His data are given by Yegor Klassen in the book "New materials for the ancient history of the Slavs of the Doryurik time" (1854).

The decryption key was in the Slavic primitive language. F. Volansky translated the gravestone inscription from Theodor Mommsen (1817–1909) "The dialect of lower Italy". Aeneas' tombstone was found near Kereccio on October 6, 1846. T. Mommsen wrote that it would be daring to make even an attempt to decipher this inscription.

Aeneas was the king of Troy. His wanderings after the fall of Troy were described by the Roman poet Virgil (79–19 BC) in the poem "Aeneid". Troy, founded in the 13th century. BC, was located at the entrance to the Dardanelles Strait on the present Turkish coast of the Anatolian Peninsula. She controlled trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and had large profits, and her partners - losses. Therefore, the inhabitants of the Black Sea steppes, under the leadership of Achilles, united with the inhabitants of the Peloponnese (Achaeans) and the Mediterranean islands against the common enemy of Troy.

On the side of Troy were the tribes living on the Anatolian Peninsula - the descendants of the tenth settlement of the Parsis. About the participation of the Slavs in

The Trojan War is evidenced by the Veta (Veda) of the Rhodope Bulgarians, recorded and published by the Serbian ethnographer S.I.Verkovich in the 19th century. It agrees with the early studies of A.D. Chertkov and others. Etruscans) with the Wends-Slavs of the Baltic and Danube regions of ancient times. Troy and Russia were inhabited not only by one people, but also by one tribe. Troy was well fortified, its siege lasted 10 years. The victors allowed the defeated to sail away in twenty ships. The city was razed to the ground around 1260 BC. This was considered a legend until G. Schliemann (German archaeologist 1822-1890), guided by Homer's poem "Iliad", excavated in 1870. did not locate Troy. In Troy, clay plates with inscriptions were found. According to the characteristic combinations, it was established that this is an ancient Slavic language.

Aeneas with his soldiers on 20 ships arrived at the mouth of the Tiber River. Here they landed and were received by the local king Latina. They created a joint state, and Latin gave him his daughter Lavinia as his wife. After the death of King Latina, Aeneas named the people Latins in memory of him and became their king.

The gravestone inscription for Aeneas, as F. Volansky proved, is a Slavic rhymed inscription made almost 3000 years ago in a common indigenous Slavic language, from which the Slavic languages emerged: Polish, Czech, Illyrian and Wendian. Therefore, the ancient text contains the words of all these languages. So the word "good" remained in only one Russian language; in Polish and Czech, "elective" is used instead.

Among the gods saved from the fire in Troy and brought by Aeneas to Latium was the god Esmun or Esmenius (he was also called Ash, Yasmen, Yashmun, Shmun).

Wim is a derivative of the Indian Shiva (10), and Dim is the deified son of the ancient Trojan hero Darden. Both deities are subordinate to Esmen. Lado is the god of war of the ancient Slavs. The modern translation will sound like this:

Paradise of all God, above Vima and Dima, Yezmen you are Russia!

Take custody of my house and children, the best Yezmen

Hecate's kingdom doleche: I leave to the bottom of the earth

Exactly, she, she is! How I am Aeneas king-by birth!

Sitting with Lada in Elisha, you scoop up years and forget

O! Dear, good!

This inscription dates back to the Trojan time, it is similar to the oldest Phoenician-Greek inscription on the Cyrene stone, attributed to the same era, read and published by Hamaker and Gesenius. In the letter, instead of vowels, a period was put. The letter "v" is also mentioned instead of o, y, s. There are monograms that were often used by the Slavs. They were preserved on coins and in manuscripts until the time of Peter I, as well as on ancient Russian crosses, in which each word merges into a separate monogram. In the inscription on the tombstone of Aeneas, the letters are Slavic, without any admixture of Phoenician forms. The alphabet is Slavic, not Greek, Hebrew or Latin.

To be continued.