PIE Day – a book review of Proto by Laura Spinney

I have always been fascinated by words, perhaps not as much as I am fascinated by music, but as a youngster I persuaded teachers to let me study Spanish in addition to the usual French at school and then to add in German as an extracurricular activity. Wot a geek!

I wish I’d had the opportunity to learn Latin and Greek and to get a better handle earlier on of the origins of our language…but…the true origins of the most-spoken languages around the world come from a slice of PIE – the true mother tongue – Proto-Indo European.