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[Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics)] [Author: Fortson IV, Benjamin W.] [July, 2009]
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July 7, 2025
A detailed and objective overview of the entire scholarship over the Indo-European (IE) language family and the proto-IE culture. It starts with a detailed account of the PIE culture and what we know, and then the common linguistics aspects, and then goes through each language branch one by one, ordered by the date of earliest literary traditions.
I work at a language-related company and a colleague-friend of mine recommended it to me. I like this book because it gives me a very scientific understanding of the IE language and it's exactly what I need: no stories, no drama, no verbose language, but knowledge in the bare naked form. Spicy opinion: textbooks are underrated. What I love more is learning about the fascinating stories of all the civilizations (Etruscan, Vedic, Avestan, Tocharian, etc.) and look at their corpus. I am constantly amazed at how, with the help of logic and interpolation, we can understand seemly indecipherable letters and gauge into the very private worlds of lives long gone.
What I dislike about this book is that it's too technical and can be hard if you, like me, do not have formal linguistic training. I definitely skipped a lot of details in Phonology and in Grammar. Would still recommend the other parts though.
I work at a language-related company and a colleague-friend of mine recommended it to me. I like this book because it gives me a very scientific understanding of the IE language and it's exactly what I need: no stories, no drama, no verbose language, but knowledge in the bare naked form. Spicy opinion: textbooks are underrated. What I love more is learning about the fascinating stories of all the civilizations (Etruscan, Vedic, Avestan, Tocharian, etc.) and look at their corpus. I am constantly amazed at how, with the help of logic and interpolation, we can understand seemly indecipherable letters and gauge into the very private worlds of lives long gone.
What I dislike about this book is that it's too technical and can be hard if you, like me, do not have formal linguistic training. I definitely skipped a lot of details in Phonology and in Grammar. Would still recommend the other parts though.
Displaying 1 of 1 review