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Babylonian anyone?

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14 messages over 2 pages: 1 2 
BiaHuda
Triglot
Groupie
Vietnam
Joined 5364 days ago
97 posts - 127 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese
Studies: Cantonese

 
 Message 9 of 14
04 October 2010 at 10:11am | IP Logged 
OneEye wrote:
There is speculation among some scholars that Sumerian may have influenced Chinese writing, but that idea is far from having been proven. So no, Sumerian is not the "granddaddy of all written languages." And that's just sticking with the Eurasian landmass and modern writing systems. I'd be surprised to find, for example, anyone that would assert that Mayan descended from cuneiform.


Probobly not, but Vulcan pehaps?

Edited by BiaHuda on 04 October 2010 at 10:12am
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Nudimmud
Groupie
United States
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Studies: Greek, Korean

 
 Message 10 of 14
05 October 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged 
OneEye wrote:
There is speculation among some scholars that Sumerian may have influenced Chinese writing, but that idea is far from having been proven. So no, Sumerian is not the "granddaddy of all written languages." And that's just sticking with the Eurasian landmass and modern writing systems. I'd be surprised to find, for example, anyone that would assert that Mayan descended from cuneiform.


If I can be allowed to use the phrase twice in one thread -- not to be too pedantic, but I was using the term 'granddaddy' not to indicate a genetic relationship between the written scripts, but rather that it is the oldest attested written language, which is still the majority opinion, i.e. proto Summerian cuneiform aprx 3500BC vs proto Edgyptian hyroglyphics aprx 3300bc vs proto Chinese aprx. 1300BC.

On reflection, It's actually a bit of a challenge to come up with a term that indicates something happens first while allowing later independent discoveries. Even a such bland temporal terms as predecessor and successor imply a causal, or in some way genetic, relationship between two things.

Edited by Nudimmud on 05 October 2010 at 11:07am
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Old Chemist
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5174 days ago
227 posts - 285 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German

 
 Message 11 of 14
05 October 2010 at 1:13pm | IP Logged 
Can anything be established for sure about the pronunciation of dead languages. I understand all the comparisons to extant languages and looking for indications in poetry (where it exists) but some languages, I think will be "dead" forever, take Etruscan for example. Every few years or so someone comes out with a tome saying that it is related to this-or-that language and has a plausible explanation for the origins and how it was spoken. I'd imagine Akkadian lies somewhere between Latin and Etruscan for how well it is known. Rome seemed to work quite hard at stamping out any memory of Etruria, apart from a few things and people such as Maecenas.
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
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Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 12 of 14
05 October 2010 at 2:52pm | IP Logged 
Nudimmud wrote:
OneEye wrote:
There is speculation among some scholars that Sumerian may have influenced Chinese writing, but that idea is far from having been proven. So no, Sumerian is not the "granddaddy of all written languages." And that's just sticking with the Eurasian landmass and modern writing systems. I'd be surprised to find, for example, anyone that would assert that Mayan descended from cuneiform.


If I can be allowed to use the phrase twice in one thread -- not to be too pedantic, but I was using the term 'granddaddy' not to indicate a genetic relationship between the written scripts, but rather that it is the oldest attested written language, which is still the majority opinion, i.e. proto Summerian cuneiform aprx 3500BC vs proto Edgyptian hyroglyphics aprx 3300bc vs proto Chinese aprx. 1300BC.

On reflection, It's actually a bit of a challenge to come up with a term that indicates something happens first while allowing later independent discoveries. Even a such bland temporal terms as predecessor and successor imply a causal, or in some way genetic, relationship between two things.


'Earliest', perhaps?

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Nudimmud
Groupie
United States
Joined 5193 days ago
87 posts - 161 votes 
Studies: Greek, Korean

 
 Message 13 of 14
06 October 2010 at 2:08am | IP Logged 
Old Chemist wrote:
Can anything be established for sure about the pronunciation of dead languages. I understand all the comparisons to extant languages and looking for indications in poetry (where it exists) but some languages, I think will be "dead" forever, take Etruscan for example. Every few years or so someone comes out with a tome saying that it is related to this-or-that language and has a plausible explanation for the origins and how it was spoken. I'd imagine Akkadian lies somewhere between Latin and Etruscan for how well it is known. Rome seemed to work quite hard at stamping out any memory of Etruria, apart from a few things and people such as Maecenas.


I think that it's fair to say that for the most part you can never say anything 'for sure' about the pronunciation of a language that is only know through written record. But there are some techniques that can be used to determine a surprising amount about the phonology languages that are no longer spoken, in some cases, such and Indo-European, about languages that aren't even attested. Below are a couple of techniques that historical linguists use:

1) Study loan words in and out of the language into languages that have better understood pronunciations. Korean as example provides a wealth of information about how ancient Chinese was pronounced.

2) 'Triangulate' between offspring of the language. For example if you have (from wiki pedia)

noa(Sardinian) - nuovo(Ital ian) - novu(Sicilian)

then you can guess that the Latin was:

[ n ] - all three agree
[ o ] - 2 of three agree
[ v ] - 2 of three agree
[ u ] - all three differ but since Sicilian has been on the winning side so far, use it as a tie breaker.

where the actual Latin was novus,

3) Linguistically some combinations of vowels and consonants always exist while others are very rare. For example virtually all languages have stops and nearly all languages have the vowels a, i and o, some may have variations on these aspirated stops vs. unasperated, voiced vs. unvoiced or long vowels vs. short, but virtually all languages have them. Also, some combinations of consonants and vowels are very rare or impossible.

The above are just some of the more prominent examples,there are many other techniques of course, and by using them one can start putting together an approximation of how a language sounded.

Edited by Nudimmud on 06 October 2010 at 2:16am
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TheBB
Pentaglot
Newbie
Switzerland
sam.math.ethz.ch/~efRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: Danish, Norwegian*, English, German, Swedish
Studies: Russian, Swiss-German

 
 Message 14 of 14
07 October 2010 at 11:44am | IP Logged 
This is really cool... it's like a voice from the ancient world. Eery. The feel of the language fits so well.


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