this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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Cross posted from: Latin@lemm.ee

lingua latina pater linguarum dimidum est 😎

I hope it's okay for me to crosspost here.

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 11 points 1 day ago

Those are placeholders. "We don't know what this sound is supposed to be, so we plop h+number there and call it a day." You'll see some reconstructions using *ə₁ *ə₂ *ə₃ instead, same deal.

That said, the Anatolian languages (Hittite, Luwian etc. - the whole branch is extinct) preserved a few of those laryngeals; compare for example Latin ⟨ouis⟩ and Hittite ⟨𒇻𒅖⟩ ḫāwis, from PIE *h₂ówis (sheep). Since Anatolian split way before the other languages, this makes me wonder if they weren't vocalised already in Late Proto-Indo-European.