Verner's Law, Part 1 of 3

one thing missing form these videos, "Hi I'm Troy McClure, you might remember me from such films as ?" rofl

(cont'd) Worth mentioning also that Calvert Watkin's "American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots" lists a whole bunch of English words ultimately derived from *(s)keu-, but not "house" (nor does it occur anywhere else in this work). I don't know what misgivings he had about mentioning it.
Latin "casa" doesn't have a clear etymology either, it's probably just a loan from a substrate language.

Hmm. All interesting stuff. I remember being a tad unsure about "house" when I made the film, but for some reason I went forward anyway. I probably should have taken the extra five minutes. As far as the Honorable Mr. Watkins is concerned, if he would be agreeable, I would gladly settle the house/casa matter via Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Just found this series, great stuff! It would be great if it could get more people into comparative linguistics.
One thing that troubles me is the use of "house - casa" to illustrate the connection k~χ(h). While the h- in AHD/OE "hūs" may very well come from a k- (possibly from PIE *(s)keu- with s-mobile ("to cover"), as in sky, scum, ob-scu-re, but also hose, hoard, hut etc.), I don't see how casa is related to it, and I find no mention of this link in any of the works I have consulted.

So, hwi nat ic teall thi ond eow eall of thaet. (I don't know the language I'm imitating now, BTW)

No, of course not, but it IS a great appetizer & overview. If I hadn't known any of this before, I would def. have become captivated by seeing these great, informative AND entertaining videos.

When learning English as a Dane it's
very overwhelming and extremely helpful to discover the numerous and deep similarities & parallel patterns in basic vocabulary and grammar. I was always very puzzled by this and later on began to study it and the deeper roots you describe here (hobby).

( ElvenDane here - my normal account has been temporarily suspended due to a music video that some "owner" complained about, even though I did comply with all the requests they made
:-) ).

Yes, of course those things are important too, but having a great sense of humour and not taking yourself too seriously has never hurt anyone, I think. This is really good for making people curious and introducing them to a topic that most would think a bit dry at a first glance.

Good job ;o)

That was just Jones' somewhat romantic look at things. He could see some structures that seemed to have been lost or partially eraded in Greek & Latin, so he thought of Sanskrit as being the more complete language - in the sense of being closer to the common source language.

A "law" because it explained a lot of patterns, but there were some strange, unexplained exceptions - so more like a
rule of thumb really that you should use with caution.

"eroded", that is Doh!