Indo-European Roots - Sources - LexiLine Journal 286

>Hi, Andis - Following the Wipipedia link, I ran into this one on
>Root Words for Indo-European languages.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indo-European_roots

>Do any of these look Latvian to you?

>Thanks,
>Ina Mitchell

Dear Ina,

Your Wikipedia link points to alleged Indo-European roots in Pokorny, who is regarded by mainstream linguists to be an important source, although Pokorny's 1959 Indogermanisches Wörterbuch is outdated.

A list of sources on (proto)Indo-European is found at the Indo-European Lexicon at the University of Texas Linguistics Research Center
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/ielex/index.html
where it is written:

"Our project goal is to produce a large, heavily indexed collection of Indo-European (IE) "reflex" words having their inferred etymological origins in the reconstructed ancestral language Proto-Indo-European (PIE)."

The best easily available source for current mainstream views of Indo-European roots is the section "Indo-European Roots" in the appendices of various American Heritage dictionaries.

An up-to-date list of Indo-European roots is found online in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, which is reproduced at http://www.bartleby.com/61/

Important to read there for starters is the article "Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans" by Calvert Watkins at http://www.bartleby.com/61/8.html as well Indo-European Sound Correspondences http://www.bartleby.com/61/indoeuro.html and of course
The Indo-European Roots Index at http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html

Many of these alleged Indo-European Roots are correct, many are incorrect, and I will be getting into a detailed discussion of them in coming e-mails.

Enjoy,

Andis