Oscar tay on PIE & Armenian

But dw got the worst of it. As mentioned above, the word for “two” in PIE was *dwo, which is where we get the words “two” and “duo” from. If Armenian had behaved like a normal language, it could have kept the dw sound, or maybe turned it into a tw sound, or even a tv sound if it really wanted to (cf. Swedish två, also from *dwo). Alas, no, it could not content itself with the pitiful ranks of its phonological contemporaries; it turned the dw sound into erk.

Erk. [ Why? Because it began with endura not dwo!]

It turned the dw sound into the erk sound. Dwo became erku. Dweh₂ro-, “long”, became erkar. Where English has the perfectly good verb “dwell”, Armenian decided it should have argellum. This is an actual sound change that happened.

[Both dwell and argellum derive from njambuangdualua/xyuambuatlachya/kupharigolu].

With many of its w’s now gone, Armenian had a sudden change of heart: as much as it had loathed these sounds, it enjoyed their company. In a gesture of forgiveness, whenever tr or kr, tl, or pn sounds appeared in the middle of a word, it turned them into wr, wl, and wn sounds respectively.

To give you an even better idea of just how extraordinary Armenian’s journey away from its siblings is, here’s the numbers from one to ten in Proto-Indo-European alongside their Armenian descendants. Every Armenian word here does really come from that PIE root, and with the exception of the word for “one” they’re all related to their English counterparts.

One - PIE *sem, Armenian mek: PIE had two words for “one”: *oynos and *sem. Proto-Armenian pulled *sem out into grand *smiyeh₂-, then chopped off half the sounds again to make mi for number one. It proceeded to stick the multipurpose suffix -ak on for a good ol’ miak, and then compress the vowels to make the modern word for “one”, mek.
Two - PIE *dwo, Armenian erku: As covered above, the dw sound inexplicably turned into an erk sound. This has left a lot of Armenian linguists very confused and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Three - PIE *treyes, Armenian erek: Armenian threw away that first t and exclaimed, “Normal linguistic development be damned!”.
Four - PIE *kwetwores, Armenian chhors: First it threw away the second of those wretched w’s, then shifted the kw to a puffy chh sound and stomped some of the vowels out.
Five - PIE *penkwe, Armenian hing: To develop Armenian words, take your starting word, shift any present p or s sounds to h sounds, and stir angrily for four millennia.
Six - PIE *swek’s, Armenian vetsh: The s had long run away in fear by this point, leaving a plain *wek’s whose w had unwisely still remained and was zapped into a v sound. The k’s was close enough to a tsh sound that it willingly ran over into that direction, entering vetsh into its final form.
Seven - PIE *septm, Armenian yoth: The s had of course long since left. An enterprising vowel took its place, leaving eaptm. Armenian was by now reconsidering its views on w’s, so it turned that eaptm to eawtm, and then further on to eowthn. The entrepreneurial e saw its chance and became a consonant just as the second syllable fled along with a still-shaken w, leaving behind modern yoth.
Eight - PIE *optow, Armenian uth: Armenian turned its p to an h and then got rid of it because it sounded funny. It turned the o to a u, scaring the final vowel. Worried for its fate, the ow fled; only an uth remained.
Nine - PIE *h₁newn, Armenian inə: The *h₁ fell off as per usual, and the initial n jumped over to be with its twin, hence Old Armenian inn. Alas, that one n turned into a vowel under the lack of stress to become a schwa, the little “ə”: the barely-present vowel in system or about.
Ten - PIE *dek’m, Armenian tasə: A few of Armenian’s more normal sound changes are the changes from d to t and from k’ to s, which are the ones that happened here to yield Old Armenian tasn. Eventually, though, the n collapsed into a schwa again; today’s Armenians count from mek to tasə.
To answer your question, while you could name several languages with only one weird sound change to their name, Armenian wins the all-around freestyle sound-changing gold medal.

Thanks for asking!

On Sunday, May 29, 2022 at 11:28:07 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:
> Oscar tay on PIE & Armenian
>
> But dw got the worst of it. As mentioned above, the word for “two” in PIE was *dwo, which is where we get the words “two” and “duo” from. If Armenian had behaved like a normal language, it could have kept the dw sound, or maybe turned it into a tw sound, or even a tv sound if it really wanted to (cf. Swedish två, also from *dwo). Alas, no, it could not content itself with the pitiful ranks of its phonological contemporaries; it turned the dw sound into erk.
>
> Erk. [ Why? Because it began with endura not dwo!]
>
> It turned the dw sound into the erk sound. Dwo became erku. Dweh₂ro-, “long”, became erkar. Where English has the perfectly good verb “dwell”, Armenian decided it should have argellum.. This is an actual sound change that happened.
>
> [Both dwell and argellum derive from njambuangdualua/xyuambuatlachya/kupharigolu].
>
> With many of its w’s now gone, Armenian had a sudden change of heart: as much as it had loathed these sounds, it enjoyed their company. In a gesture of forgiveness, whenever tr or kr, tl, or pn sounds appeared in the middle of a word, it turned them into wr, wl, and wn sounds respectively.
>
> To give you an even better idea of just how extraordinary Armenian’s journey away from its siblings is, here’s the numbers from one to ten in Proto-Indo-European alongside their Armenian descendants. Every Armenian word here does really come from that PIE root, and with the exception of the word for “one” they’re all related to their English counterparts.
>
> One - PIE *sem, Armenian mek: PIE had two words for “one”: *oynos and *sem. Proto-Armenian pulled *sem out into grand *smiyeh₂-, then chopped off half the sounds again to make mi for number one. It proceeded to stick the multipurpose suffix -ak on for a good ol’ miak, and then compress the vowels to make the modern word for “one”, mek.
> Two - PIE *dwo, Armenian erku: As covered above, the dw sound inexplicably turned into an erk sound. This has left a lot of Armenian linguists very confused and been widely regarded as a bad move.
> Three - PIE *treyes, Armenian erek: Armenian threw away that first t and exclaimed, “Normal linguistic development be damned!”.
> Four - PIE *kwetwores, Armenian chhors: First it threw away the second of those wretched w’s, then shifted the kw to a puffy chh sound and stomped some of the vowels out.
> Five - PIE *penkwe, Armenian hing: To develop Armenian words, take your starting word, shift any present p or s sounds to h sounds, and stir angrily for four millennia.
> Six - PIE *swek’s, Armenian vetsh: The s had long run away in fear by this point, leaving a plain *wek’s whose w had unwisely still remained and was zapped into a v sound. The k’s was close enough to a tsh sound that it willingly ran over into that direction, entering vetsh into its final form.
> Seven - PIE *septm, Armenian yoth: The s had of course long since left. An enterprising vowel took its place, leaving eaptm. Armenian was by now reconsidering its views on w’s, so it turned that eaptm to eawtm, and then further on to eowthn. The entrepreneurial e saw its chance and became a consonant just as the second syllable fled along with a still-shaken w, leaving behind modern yoth.
> Eight - PIE *optow, Armenian uth: Armenian turned its p to an h and then got rid of it because it sounded funny. It turned the o to a u, scaring the final vowel. Worried for its fate, the ow fled; only an uth remained.
> Nine - PIE *h₁newn, Armenian inə: The *h₁ fell off as per usual, and the initial n jumped over to be with its twin, hence Old Armenian inn. Alas, that one n turned into a vowel under the lack of stress to become a schwa, the little “ə”: the barely-present vowel in system or about.
> Ten - PIE *dek’m, Armenian tasə: A few of Armenian’s more normal sound changes are the changes from d to t and from k’ to s, which are the ones that happened here to yield Old Armenian tasn. Eventually, though, the n collapsed into a schwa again; today’s Armenians count from mek to tasə.
> To answer your question, while you could name several languages with only one weird sound change to their name, Armenian wins the all-around freestyle sound-changing gold medal.
>
> Thanks for asking!

Oscar is great, but he errs on erku/2 and argellum/dwell, duo-two-dwell from into, in two; but erku-argellum from endura-(induerre)-kufarigolu-co'racle-covar.iglu-kuf.argolu(m).

On Monday, May 30, 2022 at 12:04:28 AM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:
> On Sunday, May 29, 2022 at 11:28:07 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:
> > Oscar tay on PIE & Armenian
> >
> > But dw got the worst of it. As mentioned above, the word for “two” in PIE was *dwo, which is where we get the words “two” and “duo” from. If Armenian had behaved like a normal language, it could have kept the dw sound, or maybe turned it into a tw sound, or even a tv sound if it really wanted to (cf. Swedish två, also from *dwo). Alas, no, it could not content itself with the pitiful ranks of its phonological contemporaries; it turned the dw sound into erk.
> >
> > Erk. [ Why? Because it began with endura not dwo!]
> >
> > It turned the dw sound into the erk sound. Dwo became erku. Dweh₂ro-, “long”, became erkar. Where English has the perfectly good verb “dwell”, Armenian decided it should have argellum. This is an actual sound change that happened.
> >
> > [Both dwell and argellum derive from njambuangdualua/xyuambuatlachya/kupharigolu].
> >
> > With many of its w’s now gone, Armenian had a sudden change of heart: as much as it had loathed these sounds, it enjoyed their company. In a gesture of forgiveness, whenever tr or kr, tl, or pn sounds appeared in the middle of a word, it turned them into wr, wl, and wn sounds respectively.
> >
> > To give you an even better idea of just how extraordinary Armenian’s journey away from its siblings is, here’s the numbers from one to ten in Proto-Indo-European alongside their Armenian descendants. Every Armenian word here does really come from that PIE root, and with the exception of the word for “one” they’re all related to their English counterparts.
> >
> > One - PIE *sem, Armenian mek: PIE had two words for “one”: *oynos and *sem. Proto-Armenian pulled *sem out into grand *smiyeh₂-, then chopped off half the sounds again to make mi for number one. It proceeded to stick the multipurpose suffix -ak on for a good ol’ miak, and then compress the vowels to make the modern word for “one”, mek.
> > Two - PIE *dwo, Armenian erku: As covered above, the dw sound inexplicably turned into an erk sound. This has left a lot of Armenian linguists very confused and been widely regarded as a bad move.
> > Three - PIE *treyes, Armenian erek: Armenian threw away that first t and exclaimed, “Normal linguistic development be damned!”.
> > Four - PIE *kwetwores, Armenian chhors: First it threw away the second of those wretched w’s, then shifted the kw to a puffy chh sound and stomped some of the vowels out.
> > Five - PIE *penkwe, Armenian hing: To develop Armenian words, take your starting word, shift any present p or s sounds to h sounds, and stir angrily for four millennia.
> > Six - PIE *swek’s, Armenian vetsh: The s had long run away in fear by this point, leaving a plain *wek’s whose w had unwisely still remained and was zapped into a v sound. The k’s was close enough to a tsh sound that it willingly ran over into that direction, entering vetsh into its final form.
> > Seven - PIE *septm, Armenian yoth: The s had of course long since left. An enterprising vowel took its place, leaving eaptm. Armenian was by now reconsidering its views on w’s, so it turned that eaptm to eawtm, and then further on to eowthn. The entrepreneurial e saw its chance and became a consonant just as the second syllable fled along with a still-shaken w, leaving behind modern yoth.
> > Eight - PIE *optow, Armenian uth: Armenian turned its p to an h and then got rid of it because it sounded funny. It turned the o to a u, scaring the final vowel. Worried for its fate, the ow fled; only an uth remained.
> > Nine - PIE *h₁newn, Armenian inə: The *h₁ fell off as per usual, and the initial n jumped over to be with its twin, hence Old Armenian inn. Alas, that one n turned into a vowel under the lack of stress to become a schwa, the little “ə”: the barely-present vowel in system or about.
> > Ten - PIE *dek’m, Armenian tasə: A few of Armenian’s more normal sound changes are the changes from d to t and from k’ to s, which are the ones that happened here to yield Old Armenian tasn. Eventually, though, the n collapsed into a schwa again; today’s Armenians count from mek to tasə.
> > To answer your question, while you could name several languages with only one weird sound change to their name, Armenian wins the all-around freestyle sound-changing gold medal.
> >
> > Thanks for asking!
> Oscar is great, but he errs on erku/2 and argellum/dwell, duo-two-dwell from into, in two; but erku-argellum from endura-(induerre)-kufarigolu-co'racle-covar.iglu-kuf.argolu(m).

kepala @Hindi: head
kephalē Grk, Cephalic: head
kuphari.g.olu
Raisht @Hbr: head; rosh, (be)reshit