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FartingBob t1_ja45m2u wrote

Reply to comment by thedefinitionofidiot in TIL Tolkien assisted on the Oxford Dictionary's first edition, focused on 'W' words waggle to warlock. He "learned more in those two years than in any other"; and certain etymologies continued to puzzle him for years, with many pages of notes written later on 'walrus' for a lecture at Leeds by PianoCharged

nice! Proto-indo-european is fascinating how a random language that was one of thousands in Eurasia ended up basically being the root of 95% of language spoken across Europe.

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thedefinitionofidiot t1_ja4kl8o wrote

Especially considering the fact that humans were already living on the continent during the period when PIE would have been spoken. Basque alone stands as the only pre-PIE language still widely spoken in Europe.

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metamongoose t1_ja4z86p wrote

Uralic languages too - Finnish, Hungarian etc.

But Basque is the only language that has no surviving relatives.

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