I’ve been reading about PIE and i’m confused. As I understand, it is assumed to be the language spoken by Europeans 6,000 years ago. No written record of the language has ever been found so the language has been reconstructed through seemingly arbitrary means. So, In all likeliness actual PIE sounded very different. What makes this language (as it exists today) useful? This is essentially a conlang that is too complicated to learn. What am I missing? Sorry if I’m coming off as negative. I find PIE both confusing and fascinating.
No problem!
I should have gone deeper on the comparative method, but I didn’t want the wall of text to become even bigger. But it’s basically a task of finding patterns and working with them.
Proto-Human / Proto-World is an interesting case. Serious linguists reject it not because they know it’s false, but because there’s no way to know it at all. The method breaks once you go so far in time, even Proto-Afro-Asiatic (12~18kyo) is barely held together.
Glad you liked it!