Proto-Indo-European — the reconstructed mother tongue

Roughly half of humanity speaks a descendant — English, Spanish, Hindi, Russian, Persian, and hundreds more. Yet PIE was never written: it is RECONSTRUCTED, every form marked with a * to say 'inferred, not attested.' The comparative method triangulates it from the daughters: *ph2ter from father/pater/pitr/pater; *treyes from three/tres/trayas. The asterisk is honesty made typographical — a whole language held as a well-supported HYPOTHESIS, not a sealed fact, and its homeland and date remain contested (INCOMPLETE). It is the closest thing linguistics has to a common ancestor recovered from its scattered children — and some hear in the scattering an echo of Babel. RESONANCE; signpost, never the Gate.