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The verb "read" in some languages. Verbs have heaps of different forms of course, I have used the most common dictionary form. For English that's the infinitive, for Greek the 1. person singular, some are verbal nouns, etc. This is where I get out of my depth. Wiktionary says the purple ones go back to PIE *leg- and the brown ones to PIE *les-. Were these two related? Surely they must have been? But I'm not sure. Any real linguists who can help put? 9 comments
I'm also uncertain about the relation between the Berber words and the other Semitic languages. Some places it says the Berber words are borrowed from Punic, which was a Semitic languages. In which case, they should have the same colour as Arabic and Hebrew. Regardless, all these are ultimately Afroasiatic languages.  @oysteib We might only have both reconstructions *because* each makes more sense when derived from different known languages. #NotALinguist tho, so it's speculation. @petealexharris @oysteib @benjamingeer @oysteib @headword As far as we know, they're indeed not related. *g and *s never alternated in PIE. That said, it's interesting that both roots meant "to collect" and that both verbs came to mean "to read". @yvanspijk @benjamingeer @headword Wow, that's some coincidence! But of course, linguistics is full of them. @oysteib |
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The green forms, from Uralic languages, have also been suggested to have been borrowed from the *leg-branch of PIE, but this is apparently uncertain.
One very interesting thing is that Old Norse, which for a few centuries had two parallell writing systems, Latin letters and Runes, seems to have used different words for reading the two. "Lesa" for letters, and "ráða" for Runes. "Ráða" is related to English "read".