Intro to Proto Languages
How they can help in language learning
Knowing Latin and Greek can be very helpful in understanding European languages at a deeper level.
Take the word "digital," for example. It comes from the Latin word "digitus" which means "finger". In ancient times, people used their fingers for counting. In Latin, "digitus" represented 1/16 of a unit called "pes" meaning "foot" (keep in mind the pair "foot" and "pes" for later).
If you ask someone today what a "digital examination" might mean, you probably get "an exam online" as an answer. However, in the 18th century, it referred to "examination using fingers" (for medical purposes).
This brief example shows how the Latin can unlock a deeper meaning of a word and its historical context as it evolved over time.
Going down the rabbit hole
What if we don't stop at Latin and go even further in time? Where would we arrive? Would it help us any further?
Let's first take a different route. When English speakers study German, they quickly notice some common patterns in the vocabulary. Some words sound identical in both languages, like "fish" - "Fisch," while others have strong similarities, for instance, "sword" - "Schwert," "word" - "Wort," etc. However, some words may require more thought to understand the connection, such as "tinder" - "Zunder," "ten" - "Zehn," etc.
Verb conjugation also exhibits similarities: many irregular English verbs correspond to German "starke Verben" (strong verbs), for instance: "drink” → “drunken" to "trink” → “getrunken", or "think” → “thought" to "denken:gedacht".
What's fascinating is that these similarities don't trace back to Latin but rather to the Proto-Germanic (PG) language ("Urgermanische Sprache") or the more recent Proto-West-Germanic (PWG) language. The latter existed concurrently with Classical and Late Latin.
So, instead of moving forward in time, we have taken a different path and gained additional insights that can aid language learning. For example, by understanding historical developments in Germanic languages, one can deduce that the German word "Zunder" means "tinder". This knowledge of linguistic patterns allows learners to make connections and enrich their understanding of related words across languages.
What if an English speaker learns Russian, or Latin? They don't share the common Germanic heritage. Here's a thing, we can go even further back in time to Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, and using its linguistic development, one can try to figure out meaning of words or gain some extra insight.
Latin is well-documented, while Proto-Germanic has fewer records, with just a few runes and occasional mentions in Latin sources. As of 2023, there are no direct records of Proto-Indo-European due to its ancient origins. It has been reconstructed by linguists, and it is estimated to be spoken sometime between 4500 BC to 2500 BC.
From English “foot“ to Latin “pes“.
Let's revisit our "digitus" example. The words "foot" and "pes" share the same PIE root. With some (hard) excercise one can figure out the meaning of "pes".
So how on Earth one makes a connection between "foot" and "pes"? Grimm's Law (yes, the Grimm from Grimm's Fairy Tails) comes to the rescue describing some of the consonants shifts.
The Proto-Indo-European root “*pṓds” transformed into the Proto-Italic root "*pets" and concurrently into the Proto-Germanic root *fōts.
The transition of 'p' to 'f' is a consequence of Grimm's law.
Interestingly, the genitive case of "pes" is "pedis," which indicates that the 't' from the Proto-Italic root *pets still exists in the Latin word "pes."
Wikipedia article on Grimm's Law provides some further examples.