Talk:Urheimat

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I think that instead of patato", we should use maize, as it's even more divergent in Romance languages.

Catalan: blat de moro French: maïs Italian: granturco Portuguese: milho Romanian: porumb, păpuşoi, cucuruz Spanish: maíz

Bogdan | Talk 17:44, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

'Patato' is kind of a strange example, having it's origin well known, kindof like taking 'automobile' as an example.

I don't know if lion is a good example, it could be confusing for these people who believe that similar words indicate genetic relationship. Btw, I'll include two etymologies of english "Lion"

"Word History: Old French lion is the source of English lion, and the Old French word comes from Latin le, lenis. After that the etymology is less clear. The Latin word is related somehow to Greek len, leontos (earlier *lewn, *lewontos), which appears in the name of the Spartan king Leonidas, “Lion's son,” who perished at Thermopylae. The Greek word is somehow related to Coptic labai, laboi, “lioness.” In turn, Coptic labai is borrowed from a Semitic source related to Hebrew lb’ and Akkadian labbu. There is also a native ancient Egyptian word, rw (where r can stand for either r or l and vowels were not indicated), which is surely related as well. Since lions were native to Africa, Asia, and Europe in ancient times (Aristotle tells us there were lions in Macedon in his day), we have no way of ascertaining who borrowed which word from whom. " (American Heritage Dictionary)
"Lion c.1175(first use in English), from O.Fr. lion, from L. leonem (nom. leo), from Gk. leon (gen. leontos), from a non-I.E. language, perhaps Semitic (cf. Heb. labi "lion," pl. lebaim; Egyptian labai, lawai "lioness"). A general Gmc. borrowing (cf. Ger. Löwe) found in most European languages, often via Germanic (cf. O.C.S. liva, Pol. lew, Czech lev, O.Ir. leon, Welsh lew). Used figuratively from c.1200 in an approving sense, "one who is fiercely brave," and a disapproving one, "tyrannical leader, greedy devourer." Verb lionize "to treat (someone) as a celebrity" was used by Scott, 1809, and preserves lion in the sense of "person of note who is much sought-after" (1715), originally in ref. to the lions formerly kept in the Tower of London (referred to thus from late 16c.), objects of general curiosity that every visitor in town was taken to see. Lion's share "the greatest portion" is attested from 1790." (www.etymonline.com)

[edit] Comparative Method

This page should mention something about the "Comparative method", and how the Proto-Indo-European roots have been decided. Without that, the information here seems rather useless...

[edit] Vaca

"Vaca" is also not such a good example, since that seems to be a purely Romance root, and not Proto-Indo-European. There are better roots to choose for cow, such as *gwou (cow, bull, ox, not necessarily female), *uksen (bull, ox) and *(s)teuro/*tauro (bull,ox).

The reconstruction part is an example of inductive reasoning, it is obvious that the writer was looking for a way to justify the answer. Why not use herb (herbe, hierba, erba)? It's similar but also spread into languages not classified as romance such as English. In fact, most of the modern English vocabulary comes from Latin and Old French... Does that make English a romance language? No. See also above "lion" for an example, it's a mess.193.132.242.1 11:53, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reinventing the wheel

This article does a halfhearted job of proposing and solving an irrelevant question regarding the original location where Latin was spoken, which is not even at issue. Why make up a homeland problem when there's already one available, namely, the Indo-European homeland problem? BrianGCrawfordMA 23:43, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

To illustrate the process and its pitfalls, of course. Since we already know where the homeland of Latin was, we can check the results and see how well they fit the reality. We can't do that with the Indo-European homeland question. Not without a TARDIS, anyway. --D. Manrique, 12.107.67.3 19:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)