I did some research on the root of the English word 'love' and the French word 'amour' to attempt to find the roots of them. The farthest I can find back is two Proto-Indo-European words, "Lewb" meaning both to love and to cut off, and "Am" relating to the nurturing love between a mother and a baby (this may be wrong though- this is just what I've found). So is there any reason there were two words in this language for love? Is there a difference or is it simply two words that formed?
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1But, is Proto-Indo-European English?– psosunaCommented Jan 30, 2020 at 23:59
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4No one sat down and designed these languages. You could ask equally why English only has one word, or greek has multiple (agape, eros philia, ludus, etc etc) or why Arabic has many words for different kinds of horse but no single word for the entire group 'horse'.– MitchCommented Jan 31, 2020 at 0:28
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1I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Proto-Indo-European is not English.– CJ DennisCommented Jan 31, 2020 at 3:50
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2Why the close vote? See the tags. This Q is about etymology. No one said PIE is English.– KrisCommented Jan 31, 2020 at 11:16
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2@TannerSwett: Etymonline isn't a high quality resource: It is compiled by an anonymous historian and it does not give sources. Even en.wiktionary.org ist better than that– Sir CornflakesCommented Jan 31, 2020 at 17:36
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2 Answers
It should be noted, anything about Proto-Indo-European is purely hypothetical, based on comparing all its different descendants. That is, there are no Proto-Indo-European people we can go up to and interview about "what is the difference between this word and that word, exactly?", and there are no written inscriptions talking about a particular word and how it's used.
What we do have are texts in descendant languages that we can compare, that let us know that Latin amō and Ancient Greek philéō and Hittite āssiya- and English "love" all mean roughly the same thing. But those all look very different, and don't point toward a single ancestor to all of them.
So, what does this tell us about Proto-Indo-European? Honestly, not much. Words get replaced over time for all sorts of reasons, and meanings shift, and new meanings arise and old ones die out. There's a pretty clear Proto-Indo-European root for "horse", but English "horse", Spanish caballo, and so on are completely unrelated to it due to changes over time: "horse", for example, goes back to a PIE root reconstructed as meaning "vehicle". Greek philéō probably comes from an earlier word meaning "friendly", while Hittite āssiya- probably comes from an earlier word meaning "good", and Latin amō probably comes from an earlier word meaning "mother", and so on.
Even in terms of living languages, the existence of multiple words for a concept isn't unusual. Why does English have separate words "love", "affection", "crush", "romance", "liking", and so on? It doesn't necessarily tell us anything deep and meaningful about English or English-speakers; these are just distinctions that have arisen more or less by chance, and been useful enough to stick around.
answered Jan 31, 2020 at 17:48
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@Anixx I know it's from *ḱ-rs-, but don't all the non-Germanic descendants mean "vehicle" (e.g. Lat. currus)? Seems easier to assume a shift to "vehicle" in PIE than to assume it developed the same way in all the others.– Draconis ♦Commented Feb 3, 2020 at 18:31
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1@Draconis courier, current, epikouros have nothing to do with vehicles.– AnixxCommented Feb 3, 2020 at 19:11
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@Anixx Those all come from *ḱ-rs-, but surely not from *ḱṛsos? "Current" is from a straight verbal descendant, for example.– Draconis ♦Commented Feb 3, 2020 at 19:34
...two Proto-Indo-European words, -"Lewb": lewb-ov (Bulgarian);
- "Am" : yam (eat Bulgarian).
And if it turns out that Proto-Indo-European is derived from some old hypothetical proto-language. The oldest Indo-European language - Hittite dates back to the second half of the second millennium BC. But in the caves of Spain and France there are rock paintings that even Picasso envied. Such old ingenious drawings testify to a high level of civilization and, most likely, language. And what was this language, worthy of incredible rock paintings. And that was 20-30,000 hours ago.
