Proto-Indo-European language

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages.

Quotes

 * [W]e know there was a Proto- Indo-European language; we do not know to what extent our reconstructions approximate it.
 * E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate (Oxford University Press, 2001), Ch. 4


 * No reputable linguist pretends that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions represent a reality, and the unpronounceability of the asterisked formulae is not a legitimate argument against reconstruction.
 * Ernst Pulgram, quoted by Jean-Paul Demoule, The Indo-Europeans: Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West (2023)


 * A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.
 * August Schleicher, «Eine fabel in indogermanischer ursprache», Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der arischen, celtischen und slawischen Sprachen, ed. A. von Kuhn and A. Schleicher, Vol. 5. (Berlin, 1868), pp. 206–8; translated by R. S. P. Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An introduction, 2nd ed. (2011), p. 287
 * is composed in a reconstructed form of the, which is thought to have been spoken by nomadic pastoralists of the who  and migrated across Europe and Asia in waggons and chariots (c. 4500–2500 BC)