When the original or modified Indo-European language, perhaps in several distinct dialects, was introduced into Europe, it was carried to peoples of several or many stocks and languages. These had to learn and acquire it as we acquire a foreign language, but only as a spoken, unwritten language. Probably no one of them acquired it exactly in its original form. It was almost impossible for them to pronounce all its consonants or combinations, its "shibboleths." They retained much of the stress and accent and more of the cadence of their own tongue. Similarly at a far later date Latin developed into the various Romance Languages of modern Europe. Under the new conditions content and meanings changed as well as forms of language. Words little used in the new home, especially names of objects, might easily be lost, while others would be replaced by favorite apt words from the aboriginal language. A name might be applied to a new object and thus change its meaning. To cite a familiar modern instance, the robin redbreast of America is quite a different bird from that of England. For a long time it was supposed that the occurrence of the root of the word "beech" in the European languages proved beyond doubt that the language must have originated in a region where the beech-tree was common. But the Greek word derived from the same root means oak; a similar, perhaps not the same, root word in Kurdish means elm. Our knowledge of the original meaning of the word is very uncertain. Through all the languages there runs a single word for weaving or plaiting, but whether the original word referred to the weaving of cloth or to the plaiting of mats or baskets we do not know. The work of discovering and restoring the original language is difficult and far from finished. But the comparative philologists or "linguistic paleontologists" have established certain facts, or at least theories, on which we may rely with a fair degree of confidence. We find names for all the most important domestic animals, including the horse. There are words for the wagon, its wheels, and various other parts. Words for tillage and land cultivation agree in the Western branch, but are far less noticeable in the Aryan languages. Here the vocabulary is rather that of the herdsman. This seems to allow us to conclude that, when Eastern and Western branches separated, and probably long before that time, the Eastern people were herdsmen paying slight attention to agriculture: the Western predominantly tillers of the ground.