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'Existence of PIE is yet to be conclusively established' - I'm
sorry??? The existence of PIE and the fact that Latin, Greek, Sankrit,
Old High German, Gothic and Lithuanian (and of course the less
conservative languages as well) derive from a common ancestor has been
proven beyond reasonable doubt for maybe 150 years. Now that Hittite
has been accepted as Indo-European, I don't think there is even any
controversy over which languages are or are not Indo-European.
Am I not clear, please?? I am talking of PIE- a language which served as the ancestor to all these languages which very OBVIOUSLY seem to have lots of words in common. To know that there is some commonality between all these languages no erudition is required.
I have noticed some commonality in my 5th class, when I was asked to write the meanings of English words in Telugu, my mother tongue. My father is an English teacher and hence, I was always one step ahead of my class in English and I was already having an informal but good touch with Sanskrit thanks to my reading of Puranas (ironically, there was a comment in this group on my articulation :O)Hence, I have given most of the Telugu meanings in a Sanskritized Telugu rather than in simpler colloquial dialect. This led to the observation that English and Telugu (actually, Sanskrit) share commonality in most of the words. Similarly, I was reading an article by Atkinson. I have never seen Hittite words before this article,. where he has referred some Hittite words .It caught my attention that the words referred seem to be cognate with Sanskrit or even Telugu For eg, neeru means water in Telugu, there is no other simpler word for water there Jalam, toyam, salilam all mean water but they are not colloquial and not known to rural classes) What I mean to say is I am not very brilliant yet I could catch the commonality. It means all the languages obviously share commonality.
Erudition is required to notice the extent of such commonality between the languages- to look into their roots and trace the origins and obtain the time depths.
In that way, PIE- what is and where is PIE?- was never established inspire of heavy hard work of 150 years.
kishore patnaik