I am fascinated with the subject of ancient languages. And I have just one question about Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Can scholars speak it perfectly now? Or at least near-perfectly? I mean, how well can they “reconstruct” a past language, I guess is my question?
Or, simply put another way, if an expert in PIE went back in time, to the original Indo-European people (wherever they may be), how well would they comprehend each other? Would it be immediate? Or would it take a little time, first?
The closest to an answer that I could find in a quick search was this one:
An Indo-European scholar who went back in time and was placed among Proto-Indo-Europeans would sound like someone who had been studying Proto-Indo-European for a few weeks at most. It’s like what would happen if a scholar of the Ancient Egyptians went back in time and tried to live in their society (even if they knew Ancient Egyptian perfectly). They would appear to be a stranger who snuck into Egypt a few weeks before and was trying to fit in. We’ve learned a lot from our reconstructions of both the language and society of cultures that were more than a couple thousand years ago, but the amount of knowledge we have is still small compared to all the knowledge that any ordinary person in that society has.
