Introduction to Comparative Indo-European Linguistics

What to expect?

Learning about Comparative Indo-European linguistics is not only fascinating, it can also be quite challenging.

The first reason for this is that there are a lot of Indo-European languages to discover, each with their own context. From Week 3 onwards, we will therefore focus on two ancient Indo-European languages per week.

The second reason why Comparative Indo-European linguistics is a challenging subject is the fact that the reconstruction of pre-historic languages – one of the things you will learn during of the course – is a technical skill that requires explanation and training. The course contains videos about linguistic reconstruction that you can rewatch as often as you like. There are weekly exercises to practise your reconstruction skills. The exercises are meant to help you learn. You can do them as often as you feel is necessary.

Prior knowledge

You don’t need to know the languages that we discuss or have prior knowledge about linguistics to follow this course. In Week 2, we will give you a crash course in linguistics. Spend as much time on this as you think you need to be able to understand the following lessons about Indo-European reconstruction. You can always return to this part of the course if you feel the need.

Much of this course is about ancient languages spoken in many different areas. Throughout the course we have provided maps, timelines and tree diagrams to help you navigate it. You don’t need to have any prior knowledge about the history or geography of a specific region to follow the course, but it may be helpful to look up those things that are unfamiliar to you on the internet.