It's the perfect aspect of this verb, *woid- (pl. *wid-) that has the meaning 'know' (as in Gk. oida or OE wa:t < woid-h2a). Compare the Slavic roots *vid- 'see' (< *weid-) and *ve^d- 'know' (< *woid-).
In Phrygian, which was written in a version of the Greek alphabet, PIE *w was retained as /w/. A special character was employed for it.
In the earliest forms of Greek, /w/ still existed and there was a letter for it ("digamma", looking like our letter "F", which historically derives from it) It was lost in the Attic and Ionian dialects at an early date (8th-7th c. BC), then in most varieties of Doric, but it survived in some places (e.g. in Cyprus, Beotia and Crete) until the 2nd c. BC. In some dialects, before the Hellenistic koine engulfed them, it had become "hardened" into /v/ (orthographically = "beta").
PIE *w- has other reflexes as well, e.g. Irish f-, Welsh gw-, and Armenian g-, whereas /v-/, which is a very common reflex, has developed further into /b-/ e.g. in some Indic and Iranian languages, and in Spanish (perhaps also in Thracian). *w has been a fairly unstable consonant, and English is quite exceptional in preserving something close to its original quality to this very day.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
From: <alexmoeller@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 9:38 PM
Subject: [tied] PIE *ueid, *uid
> PIE *ueid, uid
>
> This PIE root meant -so far I know- " to see, catch sight of; perceive
> ". In some languages it developed a sense of " to know" like in German
> languages.
>
> I know followings cognates in the actual IE languages:
>
> German: wissen
>
> Gothic: witan
>
> Latin : videre
>
> Greek : idein, eidenai, idea
>
> Russian: videt ( I guess all slavic languages have the root "vid-" for "
> to see")
>
> Prygian: wit= to know, witeto = he looked ( isnt it "e-witeto"?)
>
> I have a question here. Is the Prygian pronunciation supposed to have
> been with "v" like in Germanic and Latin or with "u" like in English
> "wait"?
>
> From all languages it seems just Greek language changed the "ue-, ui-"
> in an "ei, i" so I will like to inform myself if there are other
> cognates in other IE languages where the PIE "ue-" became something
> else, but not "v" like in Slavic , Latin and Germanic.