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Is there a chance that knowledge of entire languages are lost to catastrophe/time? What use are tablets in English, French, German, etc. if no one can deciphe

Is there a chance that knowledge of entire languages are lost to catastrophe/time? What use are tablets in English, French, German, etc. if no one can decipher them?

paganel 10y ago
There's certainly a chance that that will happen, yes. We don't need a catastrophe for that, just different socio-economic conditions that don't favor reading, writing and doing intellectual things, generally speaking. On top of that languages like English, French and German are pretty "new", so to speak, I mean they're not older than 1000 years, at the most. I'm pretty sure most native English speakers need a "modernized" version of Chaucer's works (meaning a translation) in order to understand what he wanted to say, and the same goes for the French and Rabelais's "Gargantua and Pantagruel". 2,000 years ago no-one on this continent (Europe) was speaking neither French, nor English, nor German, so it's plausible that in another 2,000 years these languages will have changed to the point of becoming new ones.
- dom0 10y ago
  OTOH we have little problem understand latin or greek texts.
  - throwaway1892 10y ago
    OTOH The number of people capable of understanding latin or greek is rather small. Language can go extinct in a way that nobody can learn them anymore
    - dom0 10y ago
      There is nothing keeping more people from learning it, though; as soon as a few people have learned it, the knowledge about a language can be proliferated to others. It's just that we generally don't care a lot (beyond employing a few thousand(?) people world-wide per language) for ancient texts.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
Of course; we can't read Linear A right now. Entire languages being lost is the norm, not the exception. Many languages have been lost and since recovered. In general, you want to have some knowledge of the language; for example, knowledge of Coptic (its modern descendant) was helpful in deciphering ancient Egyptian. Akkadian, a common language for old cuneiform texts, is a semitic language, like Hebrew and Arabic. Akkadian was lost, but Hebrew was preserved pretty well, and that helped in understanding Akkadian. Sumerian is related to no known modern language. We can read it anyway, because mesopotamian scribal training documents, of which we have lots, specifically deal with training the student in Sumerian. Similarly, if German was lost, German records might still be salvageable if someone found an old German textbook for Japanese students and could figure out the Japanese.

Is there a chance that knowledge of entire languages are lost to catastrophe/time? What use are tablets in English, French, German, etc. if no one can decipher them?

paganel 10y ago

There's certainly a chance that that will happen, yes. We don't need a catastrophe for that, just different socio-economic conditions that don't favor reading, writing and doing intellectual things, generally speaking. On top of that languages like English, French and German are pretty "new", so to speak, I mean they're not older than 1000 years, at the most. I'm pretty sure most native English speakers need a "modernized" version of Chaucer's works (meaning a translation) in order to understand what he wanted to say, and the same goes for the French and Rabelais's "Gargantua and Pantagruel". 2,000 years ago no-one on this continent (Europe) was speaking neither French, nor English, nor German, so it's plausible that in another 2,000 years these languages will have changed to the point of becoming new ones.

dom0 10y ago
OTOH we have little problem understand latin or greek texts.
- throwaway1892 10y ago
  OTOH The number of people capable of understanding latin or greek is rather small. Language can go extinct in a way that nobody can learn them anymore
  - dom0 10y ago
    There is nothing keeping more people from learning it, though; as soon as a few people have learned it, the knowledge about a language can be proliferated to others. It's just that we generally don't care a lot (beyond employing a few thousand(?) people world-wide per language) for ancient texts.

thaumasiotes 10y ago

Of course; we can't read Linear A right now. Entire languages being lost is the norm, not the exception. Many languages have been lost and since recovered. In general, you want to have some knowledge of the language; for example, knowledge of Coptic (its modern descendant) was helpful in deciphering ancient Egyptian. Akkadian, a common language for old cuneiform texts, is a semitic language, like Hebrew and Arabic. Akkadian was lost, but Hebrew was preserved pretty well, and that helped in understanding Akkadian. Sumerian is related to no known modern language. We can read it anyway, because mesopotamian scribal training documents, of which we have lots, specifically deal with training the student in Sumerian. Similarly, if German was lost, German records might still be salvageable if someone found an old German textbook for Japanese students and could figure out the Japanese.