7 ms·

How to Revive a Dead Language

65 points by tintinnabula 6y ago

remarkEon 6y ago
Kind of a thin article, but interesting. If anyone here is working on learning “dead” languages, what’re some tips and resources? I’ve been learning German and French, but there’s plenty of resources for those two since there’s a lot of media (plus news channels that are helpful). Would like to add Latin and Greek at some point, but unlike German and French there aren’t daily news podcasts to turn on to learn the pronunciation and vocabulary. Like the article implies, it does take some dedication.
- JNRowe 6y ago
  While Nuntii Latini¹ shut down a couple of years ago, their back catalogue is still available². It won't put the new in news, but it is less stale than Latin ;) ¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuntii_Latini https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuntii_Latini ² https://areena.yle.fi/audio/1-1931339 https://areena.yle.fi/audio/1-1931339
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    Favorited, thanks for the link. I did find some good youtube channels tonight while researching this more. Listening to the pronunciation ... boy I have some work to do. I've gotten lazy with casual German pronunciation, but Latin is going to require way more practice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG20eJE4WDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG20eJE4WDo
    - unhammer 6y ago
      Especially if you want to perfect Latin-as-spoken-by-Finnish-newscaster =D
      - Koshkin 6y ago
        The pronunciation is pretty good, actually. It is very close to the sound of Classical Latin (as far as we can tell), and not being a native speaker of a modern Indo-European language probably helps, too.
  - mjklin 6y ago
    For TikTok users, Pat Mandziy plays a Latin-speaking Roman soldier pretty well: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe8UYgKH/ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe8UYgKH/
- veddox 6y ago
  I know some Koine Greek and am just starting on Hebrew, both of which I wanted to learn to help me understand the Bible better (as a Christian). For Greek, I bought myself a textbook to get started and did a lot of vocabulary on Memrise. To keep up my interest, I started reading "real texts" as quickly as possible, using a bilingual edition of the New Testament. It's worked fairly well, I can read and understand ~80% of the NT, though my grasp of the grammar is still thin. I'm using the same approach for Hebrew now, hope it works again. Latin is also on my learning list because of its importance in studying history, but I haven't seriously gotten to it yet.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    Yeah learning Latin is motivated partially by my attending TLM (at least, before covid). Picking up some old Biblical translations is a good idea, thanks for the tip.
    - padraic7a 6y ago
      Tridentine Latin Mass?
      - remarkEon 6y ago
        They still exist, yes.
    - danielam 6y ago
      The Clementine Vulgate is a great example here. You can buy a copy with the Douay-Rheims translation alongside the Latin from Baronius Press, or read it online[0]. [0] http://catholicbible.online/side_by_side/NT/Jn http://catholicbible.online/side_by_side/NT/Jn
bszupnick 6y ago
Thanks for sharing! With the creation and proliferation of Modern Hebrew, there was a cost, though. Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic (the language Maimonides wrote a lot of literature in), and Ladino were victims of the centralization of Hebrew as the common language for Jews. Yiddish is a German dialect, Judeo-Arabic an Arabic dialect, and Ladino is a Spanish dialect and are all dying/dead languages with attempted revival movements in their own right, but nothing with too much steam and this article lays out a potential reason why; aside from traditional, historic, or cultural reasons, there's no real societal reason for these languages in today's world.
- null_deref 6y ago
  I partially disagree with you, yes Ladino and Judeo-Arabic are dying, but that's not true for Yiddish. Many Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel and outside of it, are using it for their day to day activities, and reserve Hebrew for religious purposes only.
  - hackissimo123 6y ago
    To add to this, "endangered" languages aren't necessarily those with few speakers, and languages with few speakers aren't necessarily endangered. What matters is how many children are being raised to speak the language; some languages are rare but are in no danger of dying out (at least not within the next generation) while others are more common but the speakers are disproportionately old and few children are learning it. I don't know much about Yiddish but I believe it's in the former category. Yiddish was by far the most common language among Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust; there are still fewer than 10% as many Yiddish speakers in the world today as there were in 1930. But according to Wikipedia "the number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities."
    - amitport 6y ago
      Yiddish really isn't going anywhere and there are still plenty of children raised to speak it. So it is (perhaps surprisingly) in the latter category (only among (ultra?)orthodox Jews, but they're not endangered).
veddox 6y ago
I've just started learning biblical Hebrew, and I must say I find it a fascinating language - especially its alphabet (or aleph-bet, rather). I'm particulary intrigued by the development visible in the writing: how it started off with only consonants as one of the very early writing systems, and then had multiple phases of "retrofitting" vowels with various systems (first the mater lectionis, then the vowel symbols). And then, finally, modern Hebrew writing, which has dropped all of those vowels again (don't quite understand that bit yet :D ).
- pron 6y ago
  Modern Hebrew does have the same vowel diacritics used since the early middle ages, but they're used only in children's books as training wheels, in poetry (e.g. see Haaretz's poetry section: https://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/poetry https://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/poetry), and occasionally to resolve ambiguities in literary prose. They're rarely used in, say, news reports, even to clarify foreign names, which results in common mispronunciations (worse, they even omit the diacritic that distinguishes B/V and P/F, which makes foreign names truly ambiguous -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagesh). BTW, because modern Hebrew was revived from biblical Hebrew, biblical Hebrew is completely understandable to the modern Hebrew speaker, and sounds only a little archaic; something like how 18th century English sounds to a modern English speaker. Shakespeare's 16th century English is more foreign to the modern English speaker than biblical Hebrew is to the modern Hebrew speaker. English has continuously changed, while ancient Hebrew was transported to the late 19th century. Funnily, because the revivers of Hebrew preferred biblical Hebrew over, say, medieval Hebrew, medieval texts might sound more archaic to modern Hebrew speakers than more ancient ones.
- samus 6y ago
  The vowel symbols were never truly required for reading, as is the case for most semitic languages. They became common when Hebrew declined as a spoken language to teach people how to properly read the Torah. Since the revitalization of Hebrew as a spoken language this aid is required only for language learners. Also, the language has started to evolve again (that's what invariably happens with native speakers). Slowly of course, but if I may guess, any vowel symbols on existing texts will be of purely historical interest by the end of the century.
crtc 6y ago
Can this be transferred to programming languages like ALGOL?
- jonsen 6y ago
  “Jewish men and boys studied Hebrew texts as part of their religious education and worship, so they had a foothold in the language.” ALGOL as the first language in CS education.
- benibela 6y ago
  Or Delphi and XPath
- higerordermap 6y ago
  Golang.
dejv 6y ago
Few years ago I was traveling High Atlas mountains in Morocco and happen to spend week or so hanging out in Berber village and became friendly with interesting bunch of local people that meet every evening to talk in their local dialect. Interestingly most of original language is now gone and consist of many Arabic words. I was very surprised that most common words (say Tuesday if my memory serve me right) were lost first, but many more complex words not. Also traditional script is now gone and was replaced with modern made up script.
- lb1lf 6y ago
  -I somehow think it makes sense that the common words disappeared first - after all, those are the ones which pop up in conversation with the Arabic-speaking population every time, and as such are more likely to be substituted.
- bojan 6y ago
  That makes sense. The common words are the one you hear most, so the influence of the dominant language is the strongest with those. But the words that are more complex you hear more often, and, being complex, the acquisition has more friction.
xupybd 6y ago
People are doing an amazing job with Te Reo in NZ. It was almost wipped out by colonialism but it is making a comeback.
bloak 6y ago
Cornish is an interesting case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language_revival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language_revival
intricatedetail 6y ago
Languages are essentially known to humans as a mean of communication. Why does it matter which language as long it is effective?
- Koshkin 6y ago
  To say that a language is merely a means of communication is like saying that paint is only needed for painting fences and walls.
- yur3i__ 6y ago
  Because the only effective language for communicating with the past is the language that the people of the past used, if those languages die then their stories and knowledge dies with them
- veddox 6y ago
  Languages are inseperable from the culture they evolve in. Humour, historical references, values, even entire philosophical concepts can be impossible to adequately translate, because they are often so closely tied to the way a culture’s language developed and is used. Because of that, you‘ll never truly know a culture until you know its language. (See also: https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1359574074326982664 https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1359574074326982664)
- ptato 6y ago
  Language is culture, and language is identity
- xyzelement 6y ago
  Additional to the comments you got - different languages are able to express different things. There's the classic example of Innuits having hundreds of synonyms for snow: I bet you can have a much more nuanced conversation about snow in that language than any other. Have you ever heard the phrase "lost in translation" and thought about what it actually means?
  - ab111111111 6y ago
xyzelement 6y ago
I was thinking a few weeks ago - if you told jews living in diaspora in europe as recently as early 1900s, that there will be a modern state with the same national language as the bible, they would think you are predicting a miracle. It's amazing.
- macintux 6y ago
  I assume you mean 1890s?
  - xyzelement 6y ago
    I meant 1900s. Thanks, fixed
andrewem 6y ago
On revival efforts of the Hawaiian language: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/06/22/452551172/the-hawaiian-language-nearly-died-a-radio-show-sparked-its-revival https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/06/22/452551172... (There is both a textual and an audio version on that page.)

65 points by tintinnabula 6y ago

Kind of a thin article, but interesting. If anyone here is working on learning “dead” languages, what’re some tips and resources? I’ve been learning German and French, but there’s plenty of resources for those two since there’s a lot of media (plus news channels that are helpful). Would like to add Latin and Greek at some point, but unlike German and French there aren’t daily news podcasts to turn on to learn the pronunciation and vocabulary. Like the article implies, it does take some dedication.

JNRowe 6y ago
While Nuntii Latini¹ shut down a couple of years ago, their back catalogue is still available². It won't put the new in news, but it is less stale than Latin ;) ¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuntii_Latini https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuntii_Latini ² https://areena.yle.fi/audio/1-1931339 https://areena.yle.fi/audio/1-1931339
- remarkEon 6y ago
  Favorited, thanks for the link. I did find some good youtube channels tonight while researching this more. Listening to the pronunciation ... boy I have some work to do. I've gotten lazy with casual German pronunciation, but Latin is going to require way more practice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG20eJE4WDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG20eJE4WDo
  - unhammer 6y ago
    Especially if you want to perfect Latin-as-spoken-by-Finnish-newscaster =D
    - Koshkin 6y ago
      The pronunciation is pretty good, actually. It is very close to the sound of Classical Latin (as far as we can tell), and not being a native speaker of a modern Indo-European language probably helps, too.
- mjklin 6y ago
  For TikTok users, Pat Mandziy plays a Latin-speaking Roman soldier pretty well: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe8UYgKH/ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe8UYgKH/
veddox 6y ago
I know some Koine Greek and am just starting on Hebrew, both of which I wanted to learn to help me understand the Bible better (as a Christian). For Greek, I bought myself a textbook to get started and did a lot of vocabulary on Memrise. To keep up my interest, I started reading "real texts" as quickly as possible, using a bilingual edition of the New Testament. It's worked fairly well, I can read and understand ~80% of the NT, though my grasp of the grammar is still thin. I'm using the same approach for Hebrew now, hope it works again. Latin is also on my learning list because of its importance in studying history, but I haven't seriously gotten to it yet.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  Yeah learning Latin is motivated partially by my attending TLM (at least, before covid). Picking up some old Biblical translations is a good idea, thanks for the tip.
  - padraic7a 6y ago
    Tridentine Latin Mass?
    - remarkEon 6y ago
      They still exist, yes.
  - danielam 6y ago
    The Clementine Vulgate is a great example here. You can buy a copy with the Douay-Rheims translation alongside the Latin from Baronius Press, or read it online[0]. [0] http://catholicbible.online/side_by_side/NT/Jn http://catholicbible.online/side_by_side/NT/Jn

bszupnick 6y ago

Thanks for sharing! With the creation and proliferation of Modern Hebrew, there was a cost, though. Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic (the language Maimonides wrote a lot of literature in), and Ladino were victims of the centralization of Hebrew as the common language for Jews. Yiddish is a German dialect, Judeo-Arabic an Arabic dialect, and Ladino is a Spanish dialect and are all dying/dead languages with attempted revival movements in their own right, but nothing with too much steam and this article lays out a potential reason why; aside from traditional, historic, or cultural reasons, there's no real societal reason for these languages in today's world.

null_deref 6y ago
I partially disagree with you, yes Ladino and Judeo-Arabic are dying, but that's not true for Yiddish. Many Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel and outside of it, are using it for their day to day activities, and reserve Hebrew for religious purposes only.
- hackissimo123 6y ago
  To add to this, "endangered" languages aren't necessarily those with few speakers, and languages with few speakers aren't necessarily endangered. What matters is how many children are being raised to speak the language; some languages are rare but are in no danger of dying out (at least not within the next generation) while others are more common but the speakers are disproportionately old and few children are learning it. I don't know much about Yiddish but I believe it's in the former category. Yiddish was by far the most common language among Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust; there are still fewer than 10% as many Yiddish speakers in the world today as there were in 1930. But according to Wikipedia "the number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities."
  - amitport 6y ago
    Yiddish really isn't going anywhere and there are still plenty of children raised to speak it. So it is (perhaps surprisingly) in the latter category (only among (ultra?)orthodox Jews, but they're not endangered).

veddox 6y ago

I've just started learning biblical Hebrew, and I must say I find it a fascinating language - especially its alphabet (or aleph-bet, rather). I'm particulary intrigued by the development visible in the writing: how it started off with only consonants as one of the very early writing systems, and then had multiple phases of "retrofitting" vowels with various systems (first the mater lectionis, then the vowel symbols). And then, finally, modern Hebrew writing, which has dropped all of those vowels again (don't quite understand that bit yet :D ).

pron 6y ago
Modern Hebrew does have the same vowel diacritics used since the early middle ages, but they're used only in children's books as training wheels, in poetry (e.g. see Haaretz's poetry section: https://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/poetry https://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/poetry), and occasionally to resolve ambiguities in literary prose. They're rarely used in, say, news reports, even to clarify foreign names, which results in common mispronunciations (worse, they even omit the diacritic that distinguishes B/V and P/F, which makes foreign names truly ambiguous -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagesh). BTW, because modern Hebrew was revived from biblical Hebrew, biblical Hebrew is completely understandable to the modern Hebrew speaker, and sounds only a little archaic; something like how 18th century English sounds to a modern English speaker. Shakespeare's 16th century English is more foreign to the modern English speaker than biblical Hebrew is to the modern Hebrew speaker. English has continuously changed, while ancient Hebrew was transported to the late 19th century. Funnily, because the revivers of Hebrew preferred biblical Hebrew over, say, medieval Hebrew, medieval texts might sound more archaic to modern Hebrew speakers than more ancient ones.
samus 6y ago
The vowel symbols were never truly required for reading, as is the case for most semitic languages. They became common when Hebrew declined as a spoken language to teach people how to properly read the Torah. Since the revitalization of Hebrew as a spoken language this aid is required only for language learners. Also, the language has started to evolve again (that's what invariably happens with native speakers). Slowly of course, but if I may guess, any vowel symbols on existing texts will be of purely historical interest by the end of the century.

crtc 6y ago

Can this be transferred to programming languages like ALGOL?

jonsen 6y ago
“Jewish men and boys studied Hebrew texts as part of their religious education and worship, so they had a foothold in the language.” ALGOL as the first language in CS education.
benibela 6y ago
Or Delphi and XPath
higerordermap 6y ago
Golang.

dejv 6y ago

Few years ago I was traveling High Atlas mountains in Morocco and happen to spend week or so hanging out in Berber village and became friendly with interesting bunch of local people that meet every evening to talk in their local dialect. Interestingly most of original language is now gone and consist of many Arabic words. I was very surprised that most common words (say Tuesday if my memory serve me right) were lost first, but many more complex words not. Also traditional script is now gone and was replaced with modern made up script.

lb1lf 6y ago
-I somehow think it makes sense that the common words disappeared first - after all, those are the ones which pop up in conversation with the Arabic-speaking population every time, and as such are more likely to be substituted.
bojan 6y ago
That makes sense. The common words are the one you hear most, so the influence of the dominant language is the strongest with those. But the words that are more complex you hear more often, and, being complex, the acquisition has more friction.

xupybd 6y ago

People are doing an amazing job with Te Reo in NZ. It was almost wipped out by colonialism but it is making a comeback.

bloak 6y ago

Cornish is an interesting case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language_revival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language_revival

intricatedetail 6y ago

Languages are essentially known to humans as a mean of communication. Why does it matter which language as long it is effective?

Koshkin 6y ago
To say that a language is merely a means of communication is like saying that paint is only needed for painting fences and walls.
yur3i__ 6y ago
Because the only effective language for communicating with the past is the language that the people of the past used, if those languages die then their stories and knowledge dies with them
veddox 6y ago
Languages are inseperable from the culture they evolve in. Humour, historical references, values, even entire philosophical concepts can be impossible to adequately translate, because they are often so closely tied to the way a culture’s language developed and is used. Because of that, you‘ll never truly know a culture until you know its language. (See also: https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1359574074326982664 https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1359574074326982664)
ptato 6y ago
Language is culture, and language is identity
xyzelement 6y ago
Additional to the comments you got - different languages are able to express different things. There's the classic example of Innuits having hundreds of synonyms for snow: I bet you can have a much more nuanced conversation about snow in that language than any other. Have you ever heard the phrase "lost in translation" and thought about what it actually means?
- ab111111111 6y ago

xyzelement 6y ago

I was thinking a few weeks ago - if you told jews living in diaspora in europe as recently as early 1900s, that there will be a modern state with the same national language as the bible, they would think you are predicting a miracle. It's amazing.

macintux 6y ago
I assume you mean 1890s?
- xyzelement 6y ago
  I meant 1900s. Thanks, fixed

andrewem 6y ago

On revival efforts of the Hawaiian language: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/06/22/452551172/the-hawaiian-language-nearly-died-a-radio-show-sparked-its-revival https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/06/22/452551172... (There is both a textual and an audio version on that page.)