Albert.Nik
Banned
An example would be that in Hebrew,words like Ginger(Color) and Music exist as in English as I saw in Corey Gil Shuster's videos on YouTube.
Which language, other than Hebrew, could be revived from a position with zero native speakers?
- Thread starter Intransigent Southerner
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New words are coined all the time in many languages, so why should that be a problem in a revived language? Either you use an existing old word with a new meaning, or you import a foreign word.
Yeah, ok Linnaeus.
Almost no serious biologist defines taxonomy on the basis of festures per se. Rather, its defined on the basis of descent - phylogenetics. Birds are descended from dinosaurs, ergo they are dinosaurs.
How many people do you see calling birds dinosaur ?
When you ask people what's a dinosaur, they'll show you a triceraptops, a T-Rex, a diplodocus, not a chicken.
The dinosaur, as used in common language, is not a bird.
Yeah, people's understanding of science is generally decades out of date. It doesn't make it right.
Now generally I'm on your side when it comes to the Linnaean vs. Cladistic argument - Linnaean taxonomy gets the job done just fine for every day use, thank you very much. But we're having a more precise debate on the nature of descent. You made an emphatic quasi-scientic statement of fact outright denying cladistics that is technically wrong. You ought to have acknowledged that.
It's as if we were having a discussion about World War 2 and you declared that the Nazis had a pretty good chance of taking over the world on the basis that that's what the general populace believes. While they do and it's fine that they do since it gets across the essence of the wae, its not actually true and has no place in a fact based discussion.
We're doing a discussion about linguistics.
Maybe talking about "reptiles" would have been a better example.
Emperor-of-New-Zealand
Kicked
I feel the need to point out, having skimmed the thread, that the equivalence of "dinosaur" and "bird" has been rapidly entering the common lexicon. This is largely in part due to memes, especially with the current popularity of birds as pets, and as we ought to all know by now, regardless on one's feelings on them, memes are probably the most quickly-spreading trendsetters that currently exist.
Albert.Nik
Banned
By that logic,Humans are also said to be descendant from Dimetrodon,a huge Reptile which was beginning to evolve into Mammal.
So are we all Dimetrodons?
So are we all Dimetrodons?
And actually not even direct ancestors of mammals.
But this is going badly as off-topic. I am not even sure where from this discussion has begun.
JJohnson
Banned
Perhaps Sanskrit, Latin, Irish, Middle English, Yiddish, Old English, Middle High German, Old High German; there are enough texts that people can adapt them to modern life to be useful day-to-day. If folks repeated the process that revived Hebrew, it could happen. Create word lists and loan translations or use loan words with the language's orthography, practice groups, start making little kids' books to teach kids to speak the language, write songs, translate subtitles of TV and movies that you find online. Just some ideas on how you could do this.
Albert.Nik
Banned
Hebrew revival was very unique. The Creation of Israel was one of the biggest events that happened in the Human History till now. Events and processes like that which could happen in the Future should be shifted to the FH instead of being concentrated in the Before 1900s section where they are not relevant.
Coming to those that could have been done. Urartian language revival process could be done with a Greater Armenian Nationalist event had it happened. Yiddish is still spoken among some people. Latin and Sanskrit are not dead but used for religious purposes and special purposes. Latin could be revived as a spoken language as it was already a spoken language then. It could be revived in Italy first. Coming to Classical Sanskrit,it might have not even been a widespread spoken language even among the original Indo-Aryan tribes and the Indo-Iranians. Prakrit was the language used in early Indo-Aryan empires in the by the common man and it has hence found its way into Buddhism(which was then purposed to overthrow the then elite Sanskrit speaking priestly class). Later,Greek,Eastern Iranian languages,Tocharian were spoken by North frontier origin Empires in India and Prakrit was used by empires ruling exclusively the plains and Dravidian by south Indian regions. As the ones in the North frontier became largely extinct with Hunnic and Turkic invasions and the regions subsequently became disconnected with India,those languages were not languages of todays India which otherwise they would be. Various sources confirm that C.Sanskrit was a literary,priestly and special purpose language that it continues to be today. Vedic Sanskrit was different than Classical Sanskrit. If you need to know that,it is extremely identical to Old Persian and Avestan. Vedic Sanskrit gave rise to Prakrits from which Hindi was compiled and this modern languages has extensive Persian and Arabic words admixture. I would like to know about the Mitanni Indo-Aryan language as writing was invented in India late but was early in the Middle East and it might have been documented to give an idea about the early Indo-Aryan languages.
Coming to those that could have been done. Urartian language revival process could be done with a Greater Armenian Nationalist event had it happened. Yiddish is still spoken among some people. Latin and Sanskrit are not dead but used for religious purposes and special purposes. Latin could be revived as a spoken language as it was already a spoken language then. It could be revived in Italy first. Coming to Classical Sanskrit,it might have not even been a widespread spoken language even among the original Indo-Aryan tribes and the Indo-Iranians. Prakrit was the language used in early Indo-Aryan empires in the by the common man and it has hence found its way into Buddhism(which was then purposed to overthrow the then elite Sanskrit speaking priestly class). Later,Greek,Eastern Iranian languages,Tocharian were spoken by North frontier origin Empires in India and Prakrit was used by empires ruling exclusively the plains and Dravidian by south Indian regions. As the ones in the North frontier became largely extinct with Hunnic and Turkic invasions and the regions subsequently became disconnected with India,those languages were not languages of todays India which otherwise they would be. Various sources confirm that C.Sanskrit was a literary,priestly and special purpose language that it continues to be today. Vedic Sanskrit was different than Classical Sanskrit. If you need to know that,it is extremely identical to Old Persian and Avestan. Vedic Sanskrit gave rise to Prakrits from which Hindi was compiled and this modern languages has extensive Persian and Arabic words admixture. I would like to know about the Mitanni Indo-Aryan language as writing was invented in India late but was early in the Middle East and it might have been documented to give an idea about the early Indo-Aryan languages.
Maybe a form of the ancient language Slavonic in a pan-Slav state? It would probably be hard, but I could see it being done.
BlondieBC
Banned
I see the qualifier "non-avian dinosaurs" all the time, but I tend to watch nerdy science type stuff.
BlondieBC
Banned
My vote for a revived language is Biblical Greek with a bunch of Hebrew loan words. I grew up Church of Christ, and went to a CoC college. My religious teachers generally spoke both Greek and Hebrew. It is not hard to me to imagine a world where one of the many similar evangelical groups in the 1880s decide only to use the Bible in its original language. Concentrate these people in one area like the Amish and have it a tenant that services are done in Koine Greek. Give it some time and a desire to show purity, and I could see Greek being used in daily life. The question then becomes where to get the all the other words needed. One choice is the loan words from English. Another choice would be to borrow from the other language taught, Hebrew. Yet another choice is either modern Greek or another dialect of Greek.
The biggest problem with that is you'd be completely making up large parts of the phonology, vocabulary, etc for many languages of Antiquity. Linguistic reconstruction will only get you so far. I do agree that in the far future (thousands of years from now at minimum), you'd have such a sheer number of beings (for lack of a better term) which could number in the quintillions. Potentially you'd find large communities of people (maybe even millions of them) interested in such a niche concept like resurrecting old languages and ethnic groups which would probably include living in some ancient history virtual reality. But they'd be dwarfed by people who would rather be, say, Klingons and speak Klingon instead. Overall not really relevant.
Irish and Yiddish were never dead languages to begin with. Not to mention, Irish is an official language in Ireland and is taught in Irish schools.
Albert.Nik
Banned
@metalinvader665 I think we can transfer the subsequent discussion to FH where I am planning a timeline on this. But let this be an opening post for this discussion. Many would like to reconstruct History,relive moments,meet historical peoples rebuilt/represented,etc. And when possible in the future,I think it will be done when possible
The problem with all of these is that Hebrew was revived because there was no better candidate for a common language for a Jewish nation, whereas the Tajiks, Iraqis, and Armenians already have their own common languages in the form of Tajik, Arabic, and Armenian. A Tajik or Iraqi government dissatisfied with speaking a dialect of Persian or Arabic might give revival a shot, but a revived Sogdian or Akkadian is very unlikely to become the primary language of the country, and it's likely such an initiative would end up failing and being abandoned by the next leader or faction to take power. I don't see a case for Urartian revival at all, as the Armenian nationalists will all want to speak Armenian.
Maybe. I don't imagine it'll help bring in the Dravidians, though.
Making it ineligible for our purposes, because we want languages that went extinct that could be revived. Yiddish, having never gone extinct, cannot be revived.
The easiest way for Latin to be revived is in the late 19th century, as an international auxiliary language with a pan-European base. Although such a revival might be initially advanced by Italian scholars (as in the case of Latino sine flexione), I don't see any particular reason it should come from there or have its popularity confined to there for long.