Book Tour: Essential Reads for Language Enthusiasts - From Bantu to Sub-Indo-European

❓Ready for a long monotonous video where I talk about a few books connected to languages? Ready to hear someone butcher non-English surnames of authors? Possible typos and repetitive vocabulary?
✔️ Well, you my friend, have come to the right place!
Seriously, this video is a little bit more relaxed as I go through some of the more interesting books in my book collection. I tried to select a variety of texts, some will be useful for someone just getting into linguistics or Indo-European studies, other texts will be a bit more advanced. Plus, I’ll throw in some books which are personally important for me - like the Viking Language series by Byock. Finally, I'll let you know about what books I'm looking forward to being released in 2024, including Kroonen's Sub-Indo-European-Europe.
I did this video because a number of people have asked me, thanks to everyone who suggested the idea, in particular @davissandefur5980
🏛️🔱 Regarding Complete Ancient Greek - If I seem contradictory about it, generally, it's a good study book, particularly if you can get it for a good price. However, it is quite demanding on the learner (some people like that). It has the same format and style found in other books in the series.
📒 Book List
Van de Velde, M., Bostoen, K., Nurse, D., & Philippson, G. (2019). The Bantu Languages, second edition. Routledge Language Family Series. London: Routledge.
Beekes, R. S. P. (2011). Comparative Indo-European linguistics: An introduction (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Anthony, D. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mallory, J. P. (2013). Origins of the Irish. Thames & Hudson.
Betts, G. (1993). Complete Ancient Greek. Teach Yourself.
Atherton, M. (2003). Complete Old English. Teach Yourself.
Worthington, M. (2010). Complete Babylonian. Teach Yourself.
Byock, J.L. (2017). Viking Language 1. Jules William Press
Blevins, J. (2018). Advances in Proto-Basque reconstruction with evidence for the Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis. London & New York: Routledge.
Colarusso, J. (1988). The Northwest Caucasian languages: A phonological survey (1st ed.). Routledge.
Payne, A. (3rd ed.). Hieroglyphic Luwian: An introduction with original texts. (Subsidia et Instrumenta Linguarum Orientis, 2). Harrassowitz.
Zarghamian, M. (1382, 2003 A.D.). Persian Language Training Course.
Kasztelowicz, S., Madeja, J. (1946). Mówimy Po Polsku. PZWS. Warszawa
Nikolić, Z. (2021). The Atlas Of Unusual Languages. Collins
Collier, M., Manley, B. (2022). How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs. The British Museum.
Campbell, L. (Ed.). (2018). Language isolates (1st ed.). Routledge.
Woodard, R. D. (Ed.). (2004). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the world’s ancient languages. Cambridge University Press.
And there was a screengrab of from the following: Fortson, B. W., IV. (2011). Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. John Wiley & Sons.

[@jrg2671]

Superb channel for language enthusiasts. The only issue I have is that it's steadily increasing my backlog of language books due to the recommendations. Keep up the good work!

[@LearnHittite]

Thanks for the kind words! And I have the same issue with an ever increasing book backlog!

[@davissandefur5980]

Thanks for doing this, loved the video! Always nice to see books on subjects I love, many I'd've never heard of before without videos like this.

[@LearnHittite]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@JuanAlbertoAlonso]

Thanks a lot for your super useful video, it’s really a joy to go through these books with your comments. Looking forward to more videos!

[@LearnHittite]

Glad you liked it! I enjoyef making this video, it was a bit of a change from what I usually do.

[@patrik421]

The language isolates book sounds very interesting. Looking forward to a video on Burushaski and its possible relation to IE...

[@LearnHittite]

It's definitely a worthwhile read. I'll be starting on the Burushaski video in the next few days!

[@patrik421]

@@LearnHittite Good to hear.

[@Bjorn_Algiz]

Wonderful insight and collection! ❤

[@LearnHittite]

Thank you very much for your kind words!

[@majbrithoeyrup]

what an inspirational video. I will buy the "unusual language" book.

[@LearnHittite]

It's a great choice! And thanks for your kind words

[@vlagavulvin3847]

Hi and thanx for making my evening.

[@LearnHittite]

Not a problem! and thanks for watching.

[@benedyktjaworski9877]

Wow, that “Unusual languages” book seems to even mention wymysioëryś (Wilamowice / Wymysöu visible at 51:56)! That does seem pretty thorough for a pop-sci overview kinda book. Nice! For IE stuff, I started with Beekes too, just like you, but I think today I’d rather recommend people grab Lyle Campbell for general comparative methodology and Fortson for PIE reconstruction and overview of the branches. Regarding glottalic theory - I think it’s one of those places where there’s a split between Leiden school / Leiden-adjacent scholars and American Indo-Europeanists (like Fortson, Jasanoff, Watkins…) and some non-Leiden European ones (like Stifter or McCone?). I’ve a feeling that outside of Leiden people doing Balto-Slavic accentology (+ Olander in Kopenhagen), everybody rejects glottalic. And Jasanoff has his own model of BSl. accentology which has its own problem and is pretty complex, but is much better aligned with the more traditional reconstruction of PIE and doesn’t need glottalization or late survival of laryngeals. BTW, have you read Jasanoff’s book about Hittite and PIE verbs? What do you think about his model of the reconstructed verbal morphology - with two distinct, Anatolian-style, *h₂e- vs *mi-conjugations? (which to me feels much more “messy” but also natural than traditional Latin + Graeco-Aryan reconstructions - it has clear diachronic depth; like, it’s much more believable that this reconstructed language actually existed at some point as a spoken system of communication and isn’t just an idealized perfectly regular pattern forced onto that stage of the language by our desire to derive everything from a single neat thing at an arbitrary point “zero” of its history).

[@riccardopucci3165]

Beekes' book was so difficult to follow for me, mainly because he uses a lot of non-IPA symbols that I had no idea how to read

[@Pepijn_a.k.a._Akikaze]

Thank you for this highly interesting book review video. I enjoyed it as much as your other work. As a token of my gratitude some explanation of Dutch pronunciation. Beekes is pronounced somewhat like Baycus and the oo in Kroonen somewhat like English oa. If you pronounce the g in Guus like a Polish ch, you will sound like a southern Dutch speaker, but that is alright. Northern speakers pronounce it more harshly. The uu in Guus is like French u or Scandinavian y or German u with umlaut. I am looking forward to Kroonens book. I hope it will explain some Wanderworte, such as hemp, which corresponds with Greek cannabis and was subjected to Grimm's law.

[@LearnHittite]

Thanks for the tips - I did consult a Dutch speaker for 'Beekes' and she said it was passable 😅 maybe she was just being nice. Hopefully, I'll get Kroonen's name right by the time his book is released. I'd love to do a video on it.

[@LeafNye]

Great video! Do you know of any books in the style of the horse the wheel and language that are about other language families (like old Chinese)? Or other linguistic topics?

[@LearnHittite]

Books that go as in depth as HWL then I don't know any. I'd be interested myself to see similar works for other language families.

[@victorcalleros6347]

Very interesting, have you ever studied any East Asian language

[@LearnHittite]

No, but I wanted to study Hmong this year but still havent found the time. Do you study them?

[@celtofcanaanesurix2245]

How is connecting proto basque and indo-european through her own reconstructed proto basque problematic? For one proto basque is sketchy to even reconstruct considering all we have is the basque treatment of latin loanwords and dialectal differences to go on, and for another thing, she sets up a fairly good set of sound changes for the roots she gives as examples. I agree that they probably diverged at least a thousand or more years before Anatolian split off if the theory is correct however, and also I might just be biased here but I can see how a root meaning "stretch" might come to mean blood considering blood stretches or runs through your body, and when someone is violently killed their blood stretches across the floor away from them.

[@LearnHittite]

I've done a seperate video on Blevins' work. Her reconstruction of Basque phonology is radical to say the least. Almost all the reviews of Blevins' work that are published see her reconstruction as flawed - see Hualde, 2021 for example. There was a presentation from the University of the Basque Country refuting the hypothesis - let me quote them: "We show that Blevins’s proposal cannot be accepted due to structural flaws in Basque data (we leave the Proto-Indo-European part for relevant experts). The hypothesis suffers from the same problems which earlier attempts of linking Basque to other languages did. The following is a sample of the difficulties: a) Loan words are mistaken for native lexicon. For example, Blevins derives apeu, apego ‘decoy’ from *ha-phego, but it comes from Romance (French appeau, Gascon apèu). b) Blevins uses localized forms and relatively modern variants. For example, she states that oixan ‘forest’ < *oiso- ‘ferocious, wild’ + -an locative; oixan is actually a secondary variant of oihan. c) Blevins employs formations transparent within Basque (often modern and documented only once) as if they were old: e.g. hegatsu ‘winged’ < *phega-so (claiming it to be related to pegasus). Hegatsu is transparent (< hego ‘wing’ and the suffix -tsu ‘-y [abundantial]’), and its first and only attestation is in Larramendi’s dictionary in 1745. Moreover, the old form (found in toponyms) of the suffix -tsu is -zu. d) Modern neologisms are used as material for reconstruction: e.g. hirikoe ‘triglyph’ < *thiri-khoi; actually from *hir(u)-ikoe (‘three-line’), attested first and only in Larramendi (1745) (Urgell 2000). e) Problems with morphology, such as arbitrary or erroneous segmentations. Blevins segments verbs such as eduki ‘have’ as *e-duki, without distinguishing the morpheme -ki (cf. edeki ‘remove’, ebaki ‘cut’). Another example is atson ‘odour, aroma’ reconstructed as *ha-son, which clearly comes from *(h)ats-on ‘good smell’. In conclusion, because of these and other methodological problems the sound correspondences proposed by Blevins are often wrong, and thus cannot prove the genetic link." Against the Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis, or why Basque continues to be a language isolate Borja Ariztimuño-Lopez, Eneko Zuloaga & Dorota Krajewska (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU). Blevins also disregards the data concerning the earliest possibile reconstruction of Indo-European. Many Indo-Europeanists see Indo-Uralic and a Caucasian substrate as the most likely next step in the history of Indo-European, see Kloekhorst, A., & Pronk, T. (Eds.). The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

[@aleksandarbrzic8351]

May I ask why do you look so concerned on the video title page? You make great stuff, why that face? Oh, I think I might know: you are being tortured by the endless conjectures and refutations that plague (or are second nature of?) Linguistics. Or was it the indigestion on the day? 😇

[@LearnHittite]

Definitely a combination of both!