n̥ is just the "not" prefix. The "ero" is the real root. The prefix applies to the root first, and then the other pieces have their meanings, usually. (Its a reconstructed language. There are both exceptions and things we don't know.)

"n̥-s-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-plural "mine" >.

So, plural-(invert mine). Or roughly close to "we".

"n̥-h-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-inclusive-plural "mine" >.

So, plural-(group (invert mine)). Or roughly close to "us".

But both are pretty close to the same meaning. High German maintained a lot of PIE, and is very close in a lot of ways. Though... Welsh is closer.

I feel like nasal sounds being associated with negation must be even older than PIE.

I've never heard of it being based on that root before. Do you have a source?

The two big ones for discussing Germanic languages and their inheritance would probably be:

"From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic", Ringe.

And the simpler "Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln und Pronominalstämme", Dunkel.

Both use "n̥-s-ero-", though in the more traditional /ˈun.se.rɑz/ form.

Oh I've actually been meaning to get around to reading that first one. I'll have to crack that open.

Curiously, Old English unc is actually not related to German uns, at least, not after the Germanic language family had already formed. Old English at some point underwent a sound change[1] where the -n- sound disappeared before fricatives (sounds like s, f, v, z, sh, etc...). So "us" comes from an older common form "uns", which German inherited basically unchanged. This sound change also explains other correspondences between English and German where the n is missing, like mouth-Mund, tooth-Zahn, other-ander, goose-Gans or five-fünf.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvaeonic_nasal_spirant_law

As a born German, now more native English speaker (left at 8), I agree. But, unless I'm very wrong, uns/unser in modern German is not restricted to 2 people either - it can mean 2 or more, as in "unsere Gemeinde" (our church, referring to something shared by hundreds of people)?

That was my first thought too! So many things in old-english are very very close to modern German, so it's sometimes surprising to see these false-friends.

Contrary to what GP said, they're not false friends. They're a (lost) part of English's Germanic roots, shared with modern German.

Edit: Check out the Proto-Germanic personal pronouns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Proto-Germanic_person...

Based on the page you linked, they pretty clearly are false friends: Old English unc is unrelated to modern German uns, it is related instead to Old Germanic unk (while modern German uns is just Old Germanic uns).

I think this is straining the meaning of false friends. They are derived from closely related forms and differ only slightly in meaning: "to us two" versus "to us all". I guess if you see that as a significant difference, but a more typical example would be English parents vuersus Italian parenti meaning kin.

I would argue that parents / parenti are also closely related meanings and closely related forms (and Italian parenti ultimately derives from the exact same root as English parents, the Latin parens meaning either parents or more generally ancestors). In contrast, uns and unc derive from separate PIE roots, while the semantic distinction was important in both PIE and Old Germanic.

Oh, you mean “Falsche Freunde”?

I have no idea how to say that idiomatically in German, but it struck me that those are both “true” friends.

Same with Ic - Ich