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Which language for time-travel? | ||
Tags: Dead Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5447 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 34 of 44 31 December 2009 at 3:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I wonder about the certainty that technical progress will render language learning unnecessary in the future. In the last century, we fought the war to end all wars... twice. Humanity doesn't always march ever forward.
I wonder if, in the 1st century AD, anyone wondered at the point of learning anything besides Latin. If Western Civilization has a crack-up at all approaching that of the Roman Empire, who knows what the future will bring. In an economic geography class I once took, they told us that when times are bad, the farmers in the Sahel have to beg for food from the Kalahari bushmen, since the hunter-gatherers are the only ones who have a "system" for when the system fails. By those lights, it could be that 2000 years in the future, the only languages spoken will be those of disparate groups that were isolated enough from the global village that they could keep trudging along when the empires of old decayed. I'm not really that pessimistic on humanity, but neither were our forbears when things were going relatively well. Something to consider. In that case, you might want to think about what languages like Serakali or whatever the Yezidis speak will evolve into. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| skhval Newbie United States Joined 5600 days ago 12 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 35 of 44 30 March 2010 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In some cases,it is not a bad idea to learn modern languages and their dead (ancient) forms at the same time. Here are some examples: Modern Hebrew and Biblical, Modern Standard Arabic and(Classical), Icelandic and Old Norse. They are similar enough to learn both. I guess it is also good for modern chinese, japanese tibetan and their classical forms.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5422 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 36 of 44 31 March 2010 at 8:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Anyways, I'd learn Old English, Old French, Old Norse, and I guess some Latin. And whatever type of German they spoke back then. If I went to the future, Chinese I guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| JS-1 Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5983 days ago 144 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), German, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic (Written) | Message 37 of 44 31 March 2010 at 8:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'd love to go back to Mesopotamia to see if anyone could understand my reconstructed
Sumerian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5904 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 38 of 44 31 March 2010 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'd love to go back so far as to the first tribes in Africa and learn their language, be
interesting to see if the clicks in the Khoisan were added later or if the original languages suffered click-loss when people migrated to other parts of the world... but I'd settle concretely for ancient Sumerian... and latin of course future... well, it be some degenerated combo of English and Chinese ref. Firefly ^_^ Shiny! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 39 of 44 31 March 2010 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You do realize that's a reconstructed, hypothetical language, right? (Maybe I just didn't get the joke?) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Saif Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5612 days ago 122 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French | Message 40 of 44 01 April 2010 at 4:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Past: Aramaic! A variation is still spoken in Syria by small Christian and Muslim
communities. Future: The Semitic languages will rule the world! :D 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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