ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Proto-Indo-European verbs

Okay kiddo, let's get started! Proto-Indo-European is a really old language that was spoken by people a long, long time ago. We know about it because it was the ancestor of many modern languages, like English, Spanish, French, Hindi, and many more.

A verb is a word that tells us what someone or something is doing or what is happening. For example, in the sentence "I am playing with my toy," the word "playing" is the verb. Proto-Indo-European has a lot of different verbs, just like modern languages.

The thing about Proto-Indo-European verbs is that they have different forms depending on who is doing the action (the subject) and when the action is happening (the tense). For example, in English we add "-ed" to the end of a verb to show that it happened in the past, like in the sentence "I played with my toy yesterday" instead of "I play with my toy yesterday."

Proto-Indo-European verbs had their own way of changing for tense and subject, and linguists have been able to figure out what those changes were based on the descendant languages. This helps them understand how the language worked and what it was like to use it.

Overall, Proto-Indo-European verbs are just like the verbs we use in English and other languages today, but they have special ways of changing to show who is doing the action and when it's happening.