Does anyone know any ancient languages? I worked on Ancient Egyptian for a minute, but I don't know any now... How about A. Greek or A. Hebrew? Sure, they may be dead, but so's Shakespeare...

Actually, Hebrew isn't dead at all. It's being spoken by several million Israelis at this very moment!

Ancient Hebrew my friend...

Closest I came was a small amount of Latin but I haven't really done much with that, just don't have the time. It isn't all that ancient though so...

Ancient Hebrew and modern Hebrew are the same thing. The language hasn't changed very much for millennia. So nyah.

The good old Greek and Latin. That's the problem these days, no rigour.

I think one of peoples' main problems with Latin is that nobody knows how it sounds. Anyway, does anyone at least know where to find a good tutorial, or am I gonna have to get one of my linguist friends over here to teach us all?

Latin sounds like English but with c as k and v as w.

Not to sound snide or anything, but how do we know? No one's spoken it as a native tongue in over a thousand years.

From songs that are sung in Latin.

Actually Latin is still spoken in The Vatican by The Pope etc.

I'd guess that it was spoken with a regional accent - so originally in Italy it would've been spoken with a slightly Italian accent, and then in France with a vaguely French accent. That way, the Romance languages would have emerged. But that's just a random theory with no backing at all.

Actually there are scholars who devote a lot of time to figuring out regional pronunciations of Latin. What confuses people more is that there's Church Latin and Classical Latin, both of which have similar spellings (with exceptions in the alphabet, such as Church Latin having "J" wheras Classical Latin does not -- leading to the Iesu vs. Jesu), but are pronounced differently. For example, Agnus Dei, in Church Latin, is approximately pronounced Ah-nyoos Day-ee, whereas with the classical pronunciation, the word is Agg-nus Day-ee. In addition, "V" is pronounced as an English "v" instead of the Classical Latin "w" pronunciation. "ae" is pronounced quite differently in Classical Latin, where it makes an "eye' sound, whereas in Church Latin it makes an "aye" sound... and so on. Then there's the regional versions... although I am most familiar with Italian Church Latin, it difers from German Church Latin, etc. This complicates things for choirs, which are singing pieces like Bruckner's Masses, which should technically be pronounced in a German dialect of Church Latin, but most choirs these days are much more familiar with the Italian version...

That's a language I'd love to learn

Ooh, Raptor Red knows a great deal of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. My Hebrew is limited to the dreidel

Speaking of ancient languages, I've always wanted to learn Gaelic. (I don't think it's ancient, but it is old).

hungarian (magyar)

Hungarian is a living language spoken by tens of millions of Hungarians to this very day.

My name - Seán - is Gaelic, as is my girlfriend's - Siobhán. Gaelic pronunciation is quite different from English:

s, when preceding a vowel (that is, starting a syllable) is pronounced sh.
bh is pronounced v.
á - the accent is called a fada - is pronounced aw.

There's plenty more rules, of course, those I just the ones I know and am certain of It's really a very pretty language, I like it.

How about Ancient Aramayic (sp?) Tee Hee!
Sorry bit of a joke if you ask me seeing as there's no such thing as modern Aramayic yet it's always alway refered to as ancient.

I was watching something the other day and apparently birtish Classical Latin is about the purest cause when it was brought here we had to learn it by form cause it was differnt to our traditional language where as else where it was used there was similarities to the language so got corrupted.

That's because we were a bunch of backwards people who didn't have central heating when the Roman's came.

And how about you learn Manchu? (That's Mongolian)

My name's Gaelic too (Brenna). I think it means 'raven-haired' but then again I looked it up online and not all sites that give name meanings are accurate.

*copies and pastes rules* Yay! It's only a little bit but it's a start.

I know a fair bit o' Latin... Err... yeah.

Shalom
Maneshma?

ummm... I don't actually know how to spell the hebrew in the english characters... heh.. anyway.. I've just started learning Latin at school... it's quite easy to understand writen down because it's so similar to english in places...

!שלם


(That took ages to find!)

lol... although if you want to be REALLY picky...שלום (the ו is an 'o')


שמ' אמה
(My name is Ema )

Hm.. i dont think anyone listed Sanskrit here.. Theres also lots of root languages that arent really dead languages, because they were never really alive... just a thought~

I speak a fake dead language, in that I learned Tolkein's Quenyan a few summers ago. It's got a very complex grammar, and pronouns are added onto words, that is, "you" becomes "-ccë"

It is very geekly of me, but it's a beautiful language.

I guess that's like some aliens from outer space who've only ever heard Cajun French trying to figure out what the difference between Quebec and France French is without having ever heard either of them and having written text as the only source. I mean even is a Cajun a Quebecois and a Francais were saying the same thing verbatim, they'll sound different nonetheless. And then you take ancient French into account and it just ends up sounding completelly different..... Anyone ever read Timeline? This reminds me of that part in the airplane where they're taking the ancient English lessons and the whole language just sounds completelly different even thought most of the words are the same.......

"Giwf me meine hawt".....

I guess the only way to know for sure is to go back in time and hear for yourself. Then again time machines aren't so easy to come by........

Oh and in response to Elphaba's post, do made-up languages count? Tolkien was a phyllollogist after all, he and his brother used to amuse themselves by inventing languages, a lot of them from Slavic and Germanic sources, which might explain why they were so appealing to English speakers.

But how about Klingon? Or romulan? Or some other sci-fi languages? How do you get a job making up fake sci-fi languages anyway?

Oh and while we're at it, how do you swear or make dirty talk during sex in one of those alien languages? Except for in Babylon 5, I've never seen anyone watching an interspecies porn movie in any popular sci-fi show and no one was talking in that one........

Tolkein was too pure to make curse words in elvish--the worst I can say is "You are black-hearted", which kind of sucks. This does, however, allow for the more creative and lengthy versions of curses that some people spend time coming up with. One is "It is my dream that your mother is murdered," but people generally don't stick around for such a long insult.

I just wanted to comment here that the way you wrote the phonetics of that...it looks more german than english. And English is actually a large part german. As far as sentence structure and stuff goes, they are similar, though different.

I also wanted to comment on earlier posts (one of the first few) that Romanian, the language spoken in romania is actually very similar to old latin. It is about the closest language to the "Original" latin.

Since saanskrit is still spoken today...can it be considered ancient?

Where did you learn it? I've wanted to for ages but I can't find anything anywhere on the matter.

*sigh* You know, they just don't make DIY elvish-sites like they used to. I learned on Ardalambion (literal translation: tree-language), which can be found here. Since Ardalambion, though, there's been a huge increase in the amount of Tolkein geeks and more and more contradictory sites keep springing up. It's difficult to determine which is the correct form for certain words, but I'd trust this one, because it seems to agree most with what I know of Quenya from the books.

It's very difficult to learn, esp. as far as grammar and structure go, but Quenya (as well as the other elvish languages) is hugely worthwhile. If you need any help with it, feel free to PM me.

*deep-voiced announcer*

And so, another undertook the yoke that is ancient Quenya, unaware of the perils of conjugation s/he would face with it, lured in by curiousity and love of Tolk-

*hits announcer* Shut up!

Have fun!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/alba/foghlam/beag_air_bheag/


HOW COOL, EH?!

Well, im in first year latin and IT SUCKS BUTT! STAY AWAY! RUUUUUN! I also take hebrew (9 years, baybeh) which is very cool. although if you try to practice it in Israel all the Israel's laugh at you. But the guys wear really tight jeans. yay!


and, very coolness, hebrew hasnt changed since forever (minus a few modernizations, such as machshev, computer, from the word chashav, to think) so the ancient hebrew you speak of is the one Mrs. Miller beats me with every double period at Akiba Hebrew Academy.

How about a teeny bit of Sanskrit?

Well, since languages have formed from Latin, you can kind of guess what Latin sounds like, especially from the areas around where Latin is known to have been used.

For example, if I am correct, don't the Germans pronounce 'v' as 'w'?
Latin presumably uses trilled 'r's like many European languages do.
And you can always try and hear whether it sounds half decent.

I had four or five lessonswith a tutor to learn German once. Interesting man, he certainly was. But then I got to lazy to carry on the lessons. He told me a lot of things first lesson about European languages and how they all linked together. Unfortunately, I only seem to be able to remember the facts when something triggers the memory.

First year of learning Latin. Utterly fantastic. My friends are rather annoyed with it as they say it's a dead language and you don't really need to learn it as you can get into Law and Medicine without learning Latin in secondary school.

Latin is pretty much the only dead language I vaguely know how to speak.
Very vaguely.

When the teacher reads us latin, he kind of, rollsof the 'r's but doesn't trill them. Try saying 'r' whilst taking your tongue back, it sounds something like that. I think...

I can't really speak latin, we're just taught how to translate. It's really useful though because you can see where words have originated from. This also makes it somewhat easier to learn than any other languges...

Other way around. 'w' is pronounced similarly to 'v'. As it is with Dutch also.

I've thought about learning cornish for some time now but I'm to busy/lazy.
I have lernt a few words and its a nice sounding language (particularly with my cornish accent)

I'll take your word for it.
I never knew the difference. ):
Never been able to do either.

It's great to know some Latin because it makes it a lot easier to use more advanced English in later life. If you hear a long word you don't know, having some knowledge of Latin can help you figure it out. I only did it for around a year or two, but a couple of years ago I translated a page of an old document while standing in a museum. I was rather proud of myself... Until I noticed a translation of the page a couple of feet away! I got it right though...

Errmm. I believe that German actually wasn't derived from Latin. If memory serves, the Germanic languages are a different kettle of fish from Latinate languages.

Err, yup and yup. Germanic languages aren't decended from Latin per se. Latin was an Italic language.

Modern English however, is a mish-mash of many many different languages, so you'll see elements of many languages in it. Most notably Latin, but that's more to do with the occupation of ancient Briton by the Romans and the subsequent imposition of their language on the natives. Repeat again for the French in 1066 (interesting enough, the source of the F-word becoming rude, but that's another story).

Anyway....
*drags self back on-topic*
I did 4 years of Latin. Got an A-grade. Waste of bloody time. I wish I'd done French or German instead. Especially as I ended up living in Germany for a while a few years back.

Sadly enough, Mata, I did basically the same thing the other day-- spent like thirty seconds of my life reading the kanji on a japanese woodblock print at a restaurant, then realized there was a translation on the other side... Tear.

Ancient languages are really interesting i have just studied all of this stuff. The oldest written descendant of all the european languages is sansrit which actually comes from somewhere in africa or along that . I didn't pay too much attention to that bit but the interesting bit is the lanaguage before that know as 'proto-indo European'. We don't even know how this was spelt or how it works at all we can only guess. But there is a cute little story that some strange linguist decided to write in proto-indo european about a horse and a cow. The strangest thing about all of this is that the language, though it has changed alot, went throughout Europe, parts of russia and didn't stop until it got to the far east, except for one tribe in the mountains of Italy which still speaks a neolithic language to this day. So if you wanna learn a language that is pretty nifty give that one a try!

This is interesting--
Apparently, Modern Hebrew is a combination of two different kinds of Ancient (and Not-So-Ancient) Hebrew. The language is actually based on the written form (only language to do so) of Biblical Hebrew. THe syntax is from what is called 'Mishna' Hebrew that was never actually spoken, just written. Apparently, the Modern Hebrew accent is the Spanish Hebrew one, rather than the Eastern Hebrew.

Way more than you wanted to know, eh?

I know one Hebrew word. Yaweh-meaning God.
You probably already knew that though, just incase you didn't know.

lucky gothictheysay gets to study Latin this year in school. I'm so jealous I, always wanted to learn latin. People must know how it's pronounced if they can teach it in schools and speak it. Scientists need to know it. All scientific names are in latin O_o

I think most scientists go with British Latin pronunciation, while almost all choirs go with Italianate Latin. (That being said, I'm starting a "madrigal" (read: medieval) music group, and I've made the exectuive decision to use British Latin for period appropriateness.

I always thought latin was a mixture of languages because of the songs I have sung with my chior that were in latain seemed to have a mixture of diffrent languages.

I'm learing latin at the moment and I think it's facinating. As we read through it you see a heell of a lot of simarlarities in English to latin. It's fantastic. We also learn a lot about romans and rome. I'm hooked.
Anyone wants to learn it go to Latin and learn from there. That's the books we're using.
It's dead but it still has such a root in our language today that it's still relavant.