Tracing English as far back as possible

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As someone who lives in India and speaks Hindi/Malayalam, being educated in English and after taking Sanskrit as a subject in school.. it was stunning to know that words like Father (Pitr), Mother (Maatr), Seven(sapta) and so many others were the same for what I thought were totally separate European languages. Gotta love linguistics and the people who put this together!

Indo-Europeans: we are a big family! Finns and Hungarians: Who are you people?

My grandfather (Vittore Pisani, 1899-1990) was a world-renowned glottologist who taught linguistics at the university of Cagliari first and then at the university of Milan. I grew up knowing these notions in part because all of his children (he had 14) had to learn Latin and ancient Greek and so did a lot of his 30 grandchildren (me included) and basic word histories were passed down. I never realized how not normal this was, as a kid. I thought everyone knew these "basic notions" growing up! You can look him up in the Italian Wikipedia. He was a brilliant mind, but a very distant grandfather. He spoke 12 languages, most of them self-taught.

i come from teh remote mountains of northern Pakistan where we speak an old hindi accent and when i listen to the very old people they say words like; Hithar (here) huthar (there) Gars (grass) Madar (mother) Is (this) Nak (nose) bund (behind) ma (I) chan (moon) suraj (sun) darya (river) tu (you) vo (he/they) nasa (nostril) mun (mouth) ladna (loading) marg (death/morgue) khunee (knee) ga (cow) and i could go on forever. i see so many similarities with the European words.

Law school memory: Professor mentions in class that the word “testimony” comes from Roman men swearing an oath by reference to their testes. So I got to explain that this was a common misconception, that Romans didn’t do that, and that the word actually comes from PIE roots meaning “third person standing” (i.e. a disinterested bystander or witness). The anatomical term for male gonads comes from an unrelated PIE root meaning “dry”, via terms for baked clay containers. (Same root as "thirst", incidentally.) Didn’t do that well in the class, but at least I got to sharpshoot some etymological misconceptions. Good times…

As a Lithuanian I'm so excited that you've included some examples of our language. We have lots of words that are literally the same or very very similar as in Sanskrit, and lots of our words sound similar to reconstructed PIE words.

Growing up with Norwegian, English, Hindi, and Punjabi THIS has been the most obvious thing my whole life. I also learnt Norse, Latin, and Sanskrit as a teenager, and the words are one thing but the grammar takes this to the next level. Sentences in Latin make more sense translated into Hindi for me. And some Sanskrit idioms make more sense in Norwegian.

child in Swedish is "barn", and child in Scots is "bern". Fascinating!

That was insanely interesting and, as always, so clearly explained. Best of all... no background 'music'!

Here's my favourite example showing how these languages are related: - Hindi/Punjabi: Javaan - Farsi: Javoon - Italian: Giovane - Spanish: Joven - French: Jeune - Dutch: Jong - English: Young They're all basically the same word! Pretty neat!

My favourite PIE root is *bhel-, "shine, flash, burn". It's the root of the English word "black", as well as the French word for "white", "blanc", and thus the English "blank". English "white" comes from PIE *kweit-, which also meant "shine". I guess the PIE-speakers liked talking about shiny things a lot.

To explain more about "hundred", the "red" in hundred apparently comes from a word meaning "row", that was related to "read"

When you introduced the word “nostratic” as “countrymen” or “us” I had an AHAH!! moment! In Spanish “nosotros” which has that nos- beginning means “we”!! Which makes a lot of sense because Spanish retains much of its Latin roots. Also! Cheers 🥂 from a fellow linguist nerd!!

Probably my favorite subject in linguistics, the origin and evolution of language. I can't even explain why I find it so fascinating. It's such a joy to, as I have in this video, learn something new. And, yes, the hundred progression was satisfying.

As a Finnish speaker, I enjoyed the discussion of Proto-Uralic. I would have also been keen to hear about Proto-Turkic and why seemingly PIE just missed that whole chunk of land.

RobWords has become one of my favorite channels on YouTube. You make learning about English and language interesting!

Sir, in a platform rapidly filling with artificailly created non-content, your videos are more important than ever. I wish there was a 'real' verification mark that channels like yours could attain.

I have a fascination with languages, all thanks to Mr. JRR Tolkien and his constructed languages.

Small correction, the initial h in Greek 'hekaton' doesn't correspond to the initial k of PIE, but the middle k does. The he- part comes from a root meaning 'one', so the whole thing means 'one hundred', with the 'katon' part being a very close reflex of kmtom.