Linguaphiles

The Oxford Etymologic Dictionary (OED) considers Ego / I as if it were a self-standing word developed within the Germanic and 'Indo-European' languages with a mere meaning of 'I / me / self, myself':[Spoiler (click to open)]

I (pron.)
12c., a shortening of Old English ic, the first person singular nominative pronoun, from Proto-Germanic *ek (source also of Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek, Norwegian eg, Danish jeg, Old High German ih, German ich, Gothic ik), from PIE *eg- "I," nominative form of the first person singular pronoun (source also of Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego (source of French Je), Greek ego, Russian ja, Lithuanian aš).
Reduced to i by mid-12c. in northern England, later everywhere; the form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c. 1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. It began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/I

ego (n.) by 1707, in metaphysics, "the self; that which feels, acts, or thinks," from Latin ego "I" (cognate with Old English ic; see I); its use is implied in egoity.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/ego

местоим., укр. я, др.-русск. язъ, я (и то и другое – в Мстислав. грам. 1130 г.; см. Обнорский – Бархударов I, 33), ц.-сл. азъ ἐγώ, реже ѩзъ (см. Дильс, Aksl. Gr. 77), болг. аз, яз (Младенов 702), сербохорв. jа̑, словен. jàz, jâ, чеш. já, др.-чеш. jáz (совр. чеш. форма – с начала ХIV в.), слвц. jа, др.-пол. jaz, пол., в.-луж., н.-луж. jа, полаб. joz, jо.
Праслав. *аzъ отличается своим вокализмом от родственных форм, ср. др.-лит. еš, лит. àš, лтш. еs, др.-прус. еs, аs, др.-инд. ahám, авест. azǝm, др.-перс. аdаm, арм. еs, венет. еχо, гр. ἐγώ, лат. еgо, гот. ik "я". Наряду с и.-е. *еǵ- (гр., лат., герм.), существовало и.-е. диал. *eǵh- (др.-инд., венет.). Недоказанной является гипотеза о существовании *ō̆go наряду с *еgō на основе слав. аzъ и хетт. uk, ug "я" (Мейе – Эрну 342 и сл.; см. Вальде – Гофм. I, 395 и сл.). Не объяснена еще достоверно утрата конечного -z в слав.; весьма невероятно, чтобы она совершилась по аналогии местоим. tу (напр., Ягич, AfslPh 23, 543; Голуб – Копечный 147), а также чтобы долгота начального гласного была обусловлена долготой гласного в tу (Бругман у Бернекера, см. ниже). Более удачна попытка объяснения аzъ из сочетания а ězъ (Бернекер I, 35; Бругман, Grdr. 2, 2, 382), но см. против этого Кнутссон, ZfslPh 12, 96 и сл. По мнению Зубатого (LF 36, 345 и сл.), в этом а- представлена усилит. част. *ā, ср. др.-инд. ād, авест. āt̃, ср. также др.-инд. межд. ḗt "смотри, глядь!" из ā и id; Педерсен (KZ 38, 317) видит здесь влияние окончания 1 л. ед. ч. -ō; сомнения по этому поводу см. у Бернекера (I, 35). Для объяснения -z привлекают законы сандхи (Сольмсен, KZ 29, 79); ср. Бернекер, там же; И. Шмидт, KZ 36, 408 и сл.; Вакернагель – Дебруннер 3, 454 и сл.
http://www.classes.ru/all-russian/russian-dictionary-Vasmer-term-17126.htm

ich (Ger.), Εγώ [ego] (Gr.), ego (Lat.), io (Ital.), yo (Sp.), I (Eng.), jag (Sw.), я [ja] (Slavic)...

However, should one look beyond the hypothetic *constructions, established by the German philologists in the 19th Century, one would see an obvious Nostratic relation of the above words with the meaning of ' I ' to the following words with the meaning of ' 1 (one)':

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LUNCH - midday meal. Scholars explain its etymology as follows: 'Recorded since 1580; presumably short for luncheon, but earliest found also as lunshin, lunching, equivalent to lunch +‎ -ing, with the suffix -ing later modified to simulate a French origin. Lunch is possibly a variant of lump (as hunch is for hump, etc.), or represents an alteration of nuncheon, from Middle English nonechenche (“light mid-day meal”) (see nuncheon) and altered by northern English dialect lunch (“hunk of bread or cheese”) (1590), which perhaps is from lump or from Spanish lonja (“a slice”, literally “loin”). https://www.etymonline.com/word/lunch



However, LUNCH, being the mid-day meal, much more likely comes from:

launags (Latv.) - afternoon snack;
lȭnag (Livonian) - south-east; lȭnagist (Livonian) - mid-day meal;
lõuna (Est.) - south and mid-day meal;
lounas (Fin.) - south-west and mid-day meal;
lõunad, lõunaz (Votic) - south and mid-day meal;
lounad, loune(d) (Izhorian) - south and mid-day meal;
lounat (Karelian) - evening and main meal;
lun (Komi) - day and daylight;
lun-aǯ́e (Udmurt) - during the day.
http://www.eki.ee/dict/ety/index.cgi?Q=l%C3%B5una&F=M&C06=et

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An analysis of the words associated with the English word bad and the Persian word بد , as well as the using of facts from the Russian language, reveal additional links between these two words. As a result of the analysis, we can conclude that the words BAD and بد (BAD) are NOT 'FALSE' COGNATES.

Today, in Western European linguistics, the prevailing view is that the similarity of sound and meaning of the words bad and بد is a mere coincidence. In the online etymological dictionary of the English language (https://www.etymonline.com/) we find the following special note on this subject:

'Farsi has bad in more or less the same sense as the English word /bad/, but this is regarded by linguists as a coincidence. The forms of the words diverge as they are traced back in time (Farsi bad comes from Middle Persian vat), and such accidental convergences exist across many languages…'.

The author of this dictionary focuses on the uniqueness and originality of the English word bad. In his opinion, 'It has no apparent relatives in other languages'.

Meanwhile, the situation is, in our opinion, completely different. The word for “bad” is common to both languages, English and Persian. Moreover, this is the one and the same word.

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Is there a dedicated term for deletion of the final stem syllable in nominative forms (e.g. Greek 3rd declension class and Ukrainian 4th declension class nouns, deletion of -er syllable in words for mother/daughter/brother in various Slavic languages etc.)? Does this phenomenon occur in other inflected Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit, and is it a result of independent development rather than some common PIE process?

The Indo-Europeans has a root *neu- which means
1. new (eng. new, lat. novus, gr. neos, skr. nava-, slav. novъ)
2. dead (got. naus, let. navs, slav. navь)

Are these two different roots or the same root changing its meaning (with vocal alterations)?

Google has launched a tool for typing Indian characters which can be used with Gmail, Blogger and their other tools.

Has there really not been a way to type in Tamil, Hindi, et al on the Internet? That's what the Google blog seems to say: “[T]here was one limitation that bothered me: my family members and friends who prefer to communicate in Hindi did not have an easy way to type and send email in their language of choice.” And from another blog entry, “Until now, there hasn't been a good way to send email to friends and family in Hindi, my native language and their language of choice.” OS X makes it pretty easy to type in a number of Indian languages in any application, and I'm assuming Windows has a solution. Somebody's writing all those Wikipedia articles.

Hi guys. Here's a question, just out of interest, which I am sure I can look up except that I have a Russian exam in the morning that I am supposed to be devoting my time and attention to...

I've studied Spanish and Russian, both of which are Indo-European languages related to English. I'm also familiar with German and French. All of these languages feature gender and "agreement" in terms of gender and plurality. English, however, does not.

Has English, in its Old/Middle/Modern forms ever had these features, and if that is not the case, why not? It seems to be fairly common.

Come to think of it, which other IE languages (if any) don't have gender and agreement?

Of interest to Indo-European history students.
I made this short theory in my spare time. This geographic map shows how Indo-European languages might have been spreading from a common centre around 3000 BC. Hopefully, the ideas underlying my approach are relatively new, even though I am uncertain about this, since it is virtually impossible to browse through all of the extensive literature on the subject. Your comments and corrections could be very helpful.

http://www.geocities.com/indo_european_geography/

Note: The use of "www" is required since "no-www"-geocities contains an older version that I cannot access.