Some People Think I'm Nuts for Not Believing in PIE

No, I don't mean "a pie in the sky" ... that's just a jocular, ironic, atheist perspective jab at Heaven, which I do believe in.

I mean PIE as in Proto-Indo-European.

Here is a quote from a book on German language and litterature history* (most of which I believe in, like p. 53 where I am to the end, basically), about PIE. It may be noted, the book was edited and printed in 1969 on a Volkseigener Verlag (people's owned publishing house), meaning it comes from the now defunct East Germany. The abbreviation "v. u. Z." reads "vor unserer Zeitrechnung" or "before our timereckoning" / "before our era" ... normally in German it was "v. Chr." back in 1969, meaning "vor Christus" or "before Christ" ... in my translation, I'll say BCE, as true to the spirit, this modern way of avoiding Christianity is really inspired by this Communist kind of thing. But now to the quote, from page 33:

Es wird heute weitgehend übereinstimmend angenommen, daß sich die ide. Spracheinheit um 3000 v. u. Z. bereits in Auflösung befand; im 2. Jahrtausend v. u. Z. besitzen wir im Indischen, Hethitischen und Griechischen bereits voll ausgeformte Sprachen von selbstständiger Individualität. Das setzt aber eine sehr lange Entwicklung der betreffenden Einzelsprachen voraus.

This translates as:

It is today with a broad consensus assumed, that the IE language unity already around 3000 BCE was in a state of dissolution; in the 2nd Millennium BCE we already have, in the shape of Indian, Hittite and Greek, fully formed languages of their independent individuality. But this presupposes a very long Development of the single languages in question.

These guys who already in 1969 were using the "before common Era" instead of "before Christ", well, they were not total dunces and they were also not cut off from linguists outside the East block. Mind you, some inside the East block were very talented men. Very prejudiced, some would very well say "but of course they spoke Nostratic in 13 000 before present, when else? you believe in the Bible, are you dumb or sth?" but they would still be able to coherently argue their theories in a high level of professionality.

Nevertheless, they made a blooper right here, when speaking of "already fully formed languages" ... a language actually in use is never just half formed. That reconstructed PIE is not a fully formed language doesn't mean those who (possibly) spoke the ancestral PIE didn't have a fully formed language, it means that someone who tried to reconstruct a "fully formed" PIE would have to go beyond the available evidence and make choices more artistic than scientific. So, either they were forgetting this, which is ridivulous, or they were, even more ridiculously, from the rudimentary and incomplete shape of PIE as reconstructed concluding that the ancestral language was also an incoplete one, and that one could cite this as "evidence" for a gradual emergence of human language. Obviously no such thing.

But given this, I have two problems with the theory as stated in the paragraph even apart from the blooper.

• If PIE ever existed, it would probably have to be immediately after Babel ... so, which one of the ancestors on the table of nations? As I speak an Indo-European language and actually only leared Indo-European ones as foreign languages, I'd descend from that man. I wouldn't like to be ethnically Magogian if that were the one. And as Indo-Europeans actualy are present on all four corners of the continents, Magog is a better match than Madai.
  
  
  • On a lower key problem in this context, more than one of the ancestors on the table of nations would figure: Javan for Greeks, Madai for Medes, who brought their language to the Elamites with whom they mixed, Gomer for Celts, possibly Romans and Germanics as well, as well as for Hittites. This is a priori an argument for Sprachbund, or perhaps for "instant language family" ... God giving different ones of these instantaneously the appearance of descending from a common language that never actually existed. Like Primitive Elvish to Quenya and Sindarin ... except in the Tolkien timeline, there actually is a place and time for Primitive Elvish to develop into Quenya, Telerin, Sindarin, Doriathrin .... however that language development only existed in Tolkien's head. If Tolkien could pull it off, so could God. But I still prefer Sprachbund over this, if a real, spoken, protolanguage is excluded.
  
  
  
• In 3000 BC, Noah and sons were still building the Ark. The Flood came 2957 BC. Babel broke up at the birth of Peleg, 401 years later, in 2556 BC. Using an Ussher chronology rather than the LXX based one of the Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day only worsens the problem. Babel breaks up in 2204 BC in that perspective.
  
  

  This text has been found in three versions, the earliest of which is considered the oldest known of all Hittite language texts, dated from between the end of the 17th century BCE and the middle of the 16th century BCE.
  
  Hittite language # The proclamation of Anitta
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_language#The_proclamation_of_Anitta

  
  
  Yeah, these days the Commie thing about "BCE" is very comm-on, even used on wikipedia. But 2204 BC - 1550 BC = 654 years. And this even gives no time for PIE to exist before it breaks up. I obviously don't agree with Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich that PIE was the pre-Babel language either. I would say her visions were natural, even if pious, and the idea of "a beautiful language, reminding of Sanskrit" would have been a piece of conversation she had heard from doctors or priests before she experienced a vision with this feature. She's still holy because of her stigmata and because of illness being occasion for penance. St. Augustine says the pre-Babel language was Hebrew, I'd agree if you add "of some sort" (closer to Proto-Sinaitic than to Biblical Hebrew, 1000 years + more archaic than the Exodus, at which time even Proto-Sinaitic is still a probability).
  
  
  • This problem is obviously even more acute if we note that commonalities like the ones within the IE language "family" would also make Nostratic one, because they exist for instance between IE and Uralic.

So, between English and Russian, etymologically identic words are 25 % of the vocabulary of either side. I'm not going into which language has a higher vocabulary of a complete dictionary, I mean common vocabulary like "the 1500 most common words" (or word families). I don't count English using the word "Samovar" or Russians speaking of "Паддингтон". It takes more time to diverge 75 % than to converge 25 %.

This means, posing a Sprachbund (or a series of Sprachbünder) is more economic in time than the 3000 BC - 1550 BC = 1450 years posed by the quote as passing between dissolving PIE and Proclamation of Anitta. Or, for Mycenaean Greek rather than Hittite, 1600 years from dissolving PIE to the clay tablet of Iklaina. This is consistent with Javan and Gomer each already having their own distinct language in 2556 BC.

2556 - 1471** = 1085 years
2556 - 1349** = 1207 years

In fact, apart from an unusually rapid convergence of not just syntax, but even morphological elements, on my view, the time available for convergence nearly equals the time the PIE believers claim for divergence.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Our Lady in the Snows
5.VIII.2025

Romae, in Exquiliis, Dedicatio Basilicae sanctae Mariae ad Nives.

* Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, 1969, Volk und Wissen, Volkseigener Verlag, Berlin. Authored by "ein Autorenkollektiv unter Leitung von Wilhelm Schmidt" (with 8 other authors listed).

** 1550 and 1400 translate to 1471 and 1349 in my tables. Newer Tables, Joseph in Egypt to Fall of Troy