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Which language for time-travel? | ||
Tags: Dead Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6618 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 17 of 44 18 December 2009 at 2:21am | IP Logged | ||
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For the past, I would go for the Coptic language or whatever was spoken in Ancient Egypt in order to read hieroglyphics fluently.
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| Guido Super Polyglot Senior Member ArgentinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6528 days ago 286 posts - 582 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, Danish Studies: Russian, Indonesian, Romanian, Polish, Icelandic | Message 18 of 44 18 December 2009 at 2:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Past: Old Norse (and I'd like to be a viking)
Future: Futuristic Norse (?)(and I'd like to be a viking with a laser blade) I'm kidding :D Past: Vulgar Latin, Anglo-saxon, Old norse, Old slavonic Future: Morse code 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5591 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 19 of 44 18 December 2009 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I am fascinated by the Epic of Gilgamesh so I would opt for Babylonian. It would be nice to hear and read it in its entirety, not just the existing portions and fragments.
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| Gareth Groupie United States Joined 5458 days ago 51 posts - 67 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cherokee, French | Message 20 of 44 18 December 2009 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
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| genini1 Senior Member United States Joined 5468 days ago 114 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 21 of 44 18 December 2009 at 6:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah proto european so that I could go back in time and become lord of the world. I mean how easy would it be to take out a bunch of hunter-gatherers when you have advanced knowledge of the world.
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| muflax Diglot Newbie Germany muflax.com Joined 5561 days ago 11 posts - 17 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 22 of 44 18 December 2009 at 10:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I guess that depends on whether you know in advance when and where you will go. If you do, than just learn the closest there is today and you're set. That's the boring case. (Personally, I'd love to check out Ancient China and bring them just the few missing pieces they need to kick off a scientific revolution. Doing some major changes like basically wiping out the concept of a "Western world" sounds like a lot of fun to me.)
But assuming you can only be sure to land somewhere in the last 50,000 years (otherwise human language is pretty much useless to you anyway), here's what I'd do, linguistically: First, I'd make sure to be well-versed in all widespread writing systems. That means I'd learn how to read and write fluently in Classical Chinese, Latin, Sanskrit and Arabic. While there are some writing systems, especially in the Middle East, that might also be useful, you'd have a really hard time learning them now and they don't have any conceptually different feature from those 4 languages. This would allow you to pick up pretty much any writing system right away. However, I wouldn't actually focus on written languages too much because chances are, you are going to be among a bunch of hunter-gatherers or peasants that don't know how to read anyway. Also, the idea to learn languages by doing anything but listening to other people is pretty much unheard of almost anywhere you might arrive. Remember that people without any preparation or education still had no hard time learning some pidgin language along trade routes. So instead, I'd make sure to be able to pick up any spoken language as fast as possible. To do this, I'd learn all basic sounds there are, including all modifications like stress, tones or complex rhythms. There aren't many of those, but learning them well can take you weeks to months and you really want to be able to copy people around you the moment you arrive. The good thing is that the former 4 choices cover a lot of this already, except mainly for click sounds and maybe a rolled R. Furthermore, I'd get familiar with basic universal morphology and grammar, so that I could get a good analytic head-start even if the language is totally new to me. This means getting used to all kinds of word orders, stuff like isolating or synthetic languages and so on. If you can make out and produce most sounds and figure out what the most important words in a sentence are, you will be fine. Because learning a different pronunciation is easy, but learning words is hard, I'd prepare at least a talking-myself-out-of-trouble level (2000 words or so) at all major (and especially old) language families. Learning any new dialect or close relative should ideally take only weeks, maybe months, but not years. Latin and Sanskrit cover Indo-European, Classical Arabic covers the Semitic family, Classical Chinese covers most of China. Additionally, I'd add an African, Altaic and American language, so probably Swahili, Turkish and Mayan at least. You can't really prepare anything specific if your landing in New Guinea, so just try to cover a lot of terrain and pick up all basic features. You don't want to spend a few weeks figuring out how ergative languages work while the natives decide who gets to keep you as a slave. You should probably be able to do all this in a few years. As a test run, I'd go somewhere like Mongolia or Central Africa and try to adapt for a few months. Any problems you are running into will prepare you well for your time travel. Additionally, you of course need some important survival skills. The crucial ones are probably dealing with diseases (vaccinations, penicillin and so on), getting food without help and preparing (and stomaching) pretty much anything from plants to meat to fish and learning big history so you know when to get out of somewhere asap. The good thing about all those written languages is that they will prepare you well in pretty much all major religions, too. Going as a prophet, monk or shaman is imo the safest choice in most places throughout history, especially if you are a filthy foreigner. Learn how to magically fix the weather, cure diseases or tell the future, maybe even with the help of some science, and you got a living. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 44 18 December 2009 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is hard to choose between all the big cultures in out past, but in addition to those mentioned (ALL of them!) I would like to see some dinosaurs and other extinct animals. However I don't need any language for that, just a finger conveniently near the blinking red 'return NOW' button. Edited by Iversen on 18 December 2009 at 12:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eoinda Tetraglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5948 days ago 101 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Spanish, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 24 of 44 18 December 2009 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Past: Latin, Classical Chinese
Future: Doesn't matter the apocalypse year 2012 will wipe out everything anyway. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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