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1. Word Family - Hawaii

   Introduction

   Dr. Melenaite Taumoefolau makes a compelling and intriguing argument: that Nuclear Polynesian *sawaiki: "traditional/mythological homeland"—whence Hawaii—may be a cognate of *sau ʔariki borrowed from the Tongic branch into Nuclear Polynesian. (Note that *sawaiki can only be reconstructed to NP, it is not present in Tongic or …

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2. Word Family - Wheel

   Introduction

   This is quite a large family with a number of borrowings into other language families. Because, it turns out, the Indo-European speakers' relationship with wheels is pretty important in a lot of people's history, like the Sumerians' relationship with reeds.

   There is also a root *wel(h₁)-: "to turn …

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3. Word Family - Venom

   November theme: Spiders 🕷️

   Teaser

   win, wish, Venus, Darwin, vanadium, venom, wonder, winsome

   Full Text

   • Proto-Indo-European *wenh₁- to love, to want

     • Proto-Indo-European *wn̥h₁néwti? variant ne imperfective

       • Germanic *winnaną *gawinnaną to strive, to work, to gain, to win

         • East Germanic

           • Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌽𐌽𐌰𐌽 / 𐌲𐌰𐍅𐌹𐌽𐌽𐌰𐌽 winnan gawinnan to suffer
         • North Germanic

           • Old Norse …

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4. Word Family - Bid

   December theme: Religion 📿

   Introduction

   *bʰewdʰ- vs. *gʷʰedʰ-: two families that end up being super confusing in Germanic languages, since *bʰ and *gʷʰ merge at the beginning of a word. In English, they end up being homophones with complementary/opposite meanings: "offer" vs. "ask for".

   I had to do these two …

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5. Word Family - Diurnal

   December theme: Religion 📿

   Introduction

   We start religion words with *dyḗwos ph₂tḗr, Old Father Shining-Sky himself.

   Interestingly English "day" is not from this root, despite similarity to many IE words for "day", e.g. Latin diēs, etc. Germanic *d corresponds to Latin f (PIE *dʰ); Latin d corresponds to Germanic *t …

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