 Welcome to the Endless Knot. Today, I'm unboxing a dictionary of proto-Indo-European roots. So let's open this up. As you can see, there are actually two books in here. I also ordered this very short introduction to dictionaries by Linda Luggestone. So I just stuck that in with my order. I may mention that in future videos or some of the ideas from this. I'll give good history about dictionaries and lexicography. But this is the main thing. Get the box out of the way. So here it is, the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots by Calvert Watkins, third edition. So it's a nice lightweight trade size softcover book, which means it's just a lot easier to use than the appendix at the back of the American Heritage Dictionary. As you can maybe see from the table of contents here, there's a preface, there's some introductory essays about the Indo-European language and what we know about the Indo-Europeans themselves, and some information about how to use the dictionary, then the dictionary itself, all the Indo-European roots listed in alphabetical order by root, but then so that you can find things the other way around at the back is an index alphabetized by English derivative and the root that it comes from, you can then go and find that root in the main part of the dictionary. And then at the end, a few other useful tables. So Indo-European sound correspondences between the phonology of Indo-European, reconstructed phonology. So what Indo-European sound corresponds to what sound in the earliest recorded forms of the different branches of Indo-European languages, and also a nice little chart of the Indo-European family of languages. It's a nice kind of circular arrangement for that. There are also illustrations, as you can see in the preface here, black and white images, artifacts that demonstrate something about the Indo-European culture, going to the dictionary itself. So talks a little bit about some of the principles of reconstructing Indo-Europe, proto-Indo-European, the different sound changes and so forth. So as for the dictionary itself, this dictionary includes not only the Indo-European roots included in the appendix to the American Heritage Dictionary, there are additional forms in here that are not in that other resource. So even if you have the American Heritage Dictionary, this is still a very useful and important book to consult. So it's important to note that the Indo-European roots included in this dictionary are only the ones that make it into English. So there are some proto-Indo-European roots that have been constructed on the basis of evidence from other languages, other Indo-European languages, they won't be included in this in this dictionary. This dictionary is specifically geared towards studying the earliest sources of English vocabulary. And of course these are the roots of English vocabulary that comes from Indo-European, not from other sources. So there is a significant amount of vocabulary in English that may come from sources outside of proto-Indo-European, those would not be included in this dictionary. You would have to look at other etymological tools for that. So the way that it's arranged, any given entry will start off giving you the basic sense of the proto-Indo-European word. So for instance, let's look at an example here, arg, arg is the root, it gives you the basic sense of that word in Indo-European to shine white, the shining or white metal, silver, this is where we get a number of English derivatives. After that basic sense then we're given the older form, so it gives us reconstructed forms of that proto-Indo-European root. And then after that it gives us in sort of numbered categories the different forms that that root takes on due to various sound changes or suffixes that might be added to the root, so numbered one, two, three, four. And along with each of those derived forms, each section gives the English, the modern English derivative that comes from that. And then at the end of each entry there's a cross-reference in square brackets at the end, so it gives a reference to Bacconi who wrote what is still the most authoritative proto-Indo-European dictionary, which is much more geared towards the specialist, not the sort of thing that the casual reader would necessarily be looking at, but it's very handy therefore to have a cross-reference to that larger work, so that if you want to look further into any given root you can follow that up. Interspersed in the dictionary are language and culture notes separated out, as you can see in this example here by these horizontal bars, which gives a bit more sort of discussion of what we might be able to tell about the language or the culture of the Indo-Europeans on the basis of any given root. So just a little bit more discursive information in these sections, and there seems to be quite a few of them. So the format of this dictionary is very appropriate to even the non-specialist. You don't need to have a lot of linguistic expertise either in historical linguistics of Indo-European or linguistics in general to really be able to use this book. The few basic concepts that you might want to know are fully explained in the prefectory material in very clear and straightforward terms, and for the most part you can simply browse through the book, through the different roots, and just read what's there and see how things are related. I think this is perfectly accessible to anyone who is interested in language history. So you get a lot of etymological bang for your buck with this book. I would highly recommend this to anyone who does have an interest in etymology and how words are related. Even if you do, as I say, even if you do own the Full American Heritage Dictionary, this is worth picking up as an additional resource, if for no other reason than all the additional roots that are included here that aren't there. Certainly if you're just looking for a small etymological book, this is a good one to play around with. As I say, it's quite fun to find unexpected relationships between modern English words that maybe don't look like they're related. Surprise, surprise, if you go back far enough they come from the same root in Indo-European. So highly recommended and I'm glad I've picked up a copy of this separate volume. I'm sure I'm going to find lots of interesting new facts from this. I'll be back soon with more etymological explorations and cultural connections, so please subscribe to this channel. You can also sign up for email notifications of new videos in the description below. If you have comments or questions, I'm at alliterative on Twitter or leave them in the comment section. You can also read more of my thoughts on my blog at alliterative.net.