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Question Which European Languages are not Indo-European? on History.SE got this peculiar comment from user mathreadler:

None of them are. Indo-European is completely made-up language family by Britons who wanted India to have excuse to be part of Europe in some sense so they could use the massive population as power of social influence

Is it really so? Or if not, is there an account available online where a linguistic layman may rear about how this notion came about and how it was refuted?

Pavel
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    See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_studies#History for starters. – Mark Beadles May 23 '19 at 14:34
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    See also the Wikipedia article about William Jones to understand where this specific perception (might) originate from. – Michaelyus May 23 '19 at 14:41
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    This is political nonsense. Hindutva operatives are spreading a silly meme that says India was the source of all knowledge and language, because Sanskrit. They're on a par with the American know-nothings who talk about Noah's Ark with dinosaurs. Be careful; ignorance is dangerous. – jlawler May 23 '19 at 16:07
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    That's just nationalists projecting hard. Because they cannot comprehend that anyone would study history just to get close to the objective truth, when they meet a theory they don't like, in their mind it can only be because scholars of those other nation are distorting history to put forth the superiority of the wrong nation. – jick May 23 '19 at 17:36
  • Indo-European is not just a well-attested language family, ist the most well-documented family of all. There isn't a single doubtful case of attribution; every known language is either known to be inside or known to be outside it. (Source: Merritt Ruhlen, * A guide to the world's languages*) – Kilian Foth May 24 '19 at 09:27
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    @KilianFoth, not every known language. Some languages like Pictish are known to have existed but are so scantily documented that there's not much consensus about if it was Indo-European or not. Or have I misunderstood what you're saying? – Omar and Lorraine May 24 '19 at 10:27
  • @jlawler Eh? Even if what you about "Hindutva operatives" is accurate, how does the comment quoted in the question - which is rejecting the idea of a connection between Indian and European languages, and claiming that the connection was a lie made up by the British to unfairly increase the political influence of Indians - in any way serve the objective of portraying India as "the source of all knowledge and language"? Surely it does the opposite? – Mark Amery May 24 '19 at 14:50
  • "Mathreadler" is having you on, – Greg Lee May 24 '19 at 19:26

2 Answers2

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The claim cited in the quote is definitely wrong. The existence of language families is inferred from the data on extant and ancient languages, and there is a rigorous methodology used in this inferential process. So, it does not matter who looks at the data, experts from all over the world should come to an agreement on the existence and membership of a language family.

There are some fringe cases (e.g., very large and deep language families like Nostratic, or single languages with disputed family affiliations) but Indogermanic is a clear and fully accepted grouping.

Even a layman should be able to see the impressive correspondences layed out in this wikipedia article on Indo-European vocabulary. Contrast this with data from a non-Indogermanic language like Turkish, Japanese, or Tamil for an unrelated language.

Sir Cornflakes
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  • Did you intend "Indogermnaic" here rather than "Indo-European"? If so, what's the difference? I couldn't find the term in WP, but did find a reference to it in Wictionary that implies its an obsolete term. – T.E.D. Apr 13 '23 at 15:16
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    @T.E.D. Indogermanic is a little old-fashioned in English, but obsolete is an exaggeration. It's also important to note that its German equivalent (Indogermanisch) is the usual term for Indo-European, and so many German speakers carry this usage over into English. The two are essentially synonymous – Tristan Apr 13 '23 at 15:23
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The Indo-European family is completely made up, yes. But not for the reason cited in that comment. And the fact it's made up doesn't mean it's not real.

Sciences often posit the existence of things we can't actually directly observe, just because these things explain what we can observe. In Ancient Greece, some simple thought experiments showed that atoms must exist, even though you can't see an atom. (Later, we invented microscopes and other proofs, which allow us to observe them directly).

And Proto-Indoeuropean has been posited as an ancient language, not because any of us have ever heard or spoken it, but because it explains some of our observations of the languages of Europe and parts of Asia. (Later, perhaps someone will invent a time-machine of some sort that will allow us to observe Proto-Indoeuropean more directly.)

The Indo-European family is just the group of languages that we suppose have derived from Proto-Indoeuropean.

Omar and Lorraine
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    PIE is reconstructed to be accurate. When you say "made up" it can refer to a product of imagination and not something based on real data and scientific observation. – Midas May 23 '19 at 19:34
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    You could say that PIE is only made up to the extent that we're wrong about it. – curiousdannii May 24 '19 at 00:49
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    @Midas, I am using the phrase "made up" to mean invent, imagine, concoct, and my point was that PIE has essentially been made up to fit the data on what it could have been like. That doesn't seem to be what the quote in the OP meant by "made up" though! – Omar and Lorraine May 24 '19 at 07:37
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    @curiousdannii - it's the old, "All models are wrong, some models are useful" trope. – Andrew Alexander May 24 '19 at 15:19
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    @AndrewAlexander exactly. It's like Newtonian mechanics. It's 100% "wrong" in the strict sense, but it presents a relatively simple model that is "good enough" 99% of the time. – Robert Columbia May 24 '19 at 15:48
  • https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm – azurefrog May 25 '19 at 01:29
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    I always thought that the language family was first observed and the proto-language was "developed" after it? – Paŭlo Ebermann May 27 '19 at 18:07
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    PIE is ‘made up’ in that it is reconstructed, yes; the Indo-European language family, however, is not made up, but observed. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 02 '20 at 19:22