I’ve been reading about PIE and i’m confused. As I understand, it is assumed to be the language spoken by Europeans 6,000 years ago. No written record of the language has ever been found so the language has been reconstructed through seemingly arbitrary means. So, In all likeliness actual PIE sounded very different. What makes this language (as it exists today) useful? This is essentially a conlang that is too complicated to learn. What am I missing? Sorry if I’m coming off as negative. I find PIE both confusing and fascinating.

  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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    10 hours ago

    Well said.

    It’s more of a “there must have been a commonality at some point that’s the root of all these languages that have so many shared sounds”