6,000 year-old language, reconstructed

[Still Waters]

Linguists have recently reconstructed what a 6,000 year-old-language called Proto-Indo-European might have sounded like. This language was the forerunner of many European and Asian languages, and now you can listen to what it may have sounded like.

http://io9.com/liste...-6-0-1403832049

[Ealdwita]

Very close to Anglo-Saxon!

[freetoroam]

This is pure speculation and is not based on any facts,

Since there is considerable disagreement among scholars about PIE, no one version can be considered definitive.

A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

http://io9.com/listen-to-what-our-ancestors-language-sounded-like-6-0-1403832049

Talking sheep and horses, a language which can not be agreed upon among the experts, but one group think they know what it may have sounded like?

Can they not find anything thing a bit more closer to home to work on, like what is happening to the English language today, innit!

[kannin]

i still find it interesting, same goes as to how we know the color of a dinosaur? guess some of its assumption with fact

[jaylemurph]

Very close to Anglo-Saxon!

If by "close" you mean "separated by millennia."

--Jaylemurph

[Frank Merton]

One should not say this sort of work is invalid until one has a good understanding of how it is done. I find it fascinating and wish the methods were more widely applicable than just to Indo-European languages -- maybe they are and will someday further link the world's languages.

It may seem speculative, but it is based on sound principles.

[The_Spartan]

Who cares about tales of sheep & horses.

The most probable words used most frequently would have been curses.

Wish i knew some PIE curses!

[jaylemurph]

One should not say this sort of work is invalid until one has a good understanding of how it is done. I find it fascinating and wish the methods were more widely applicable than just to Indo-European languages -- maybe they are and will someday further link the world's languages.

It may seem speculative, but it is based on sound principles.

The methods and techniques of Historical Reconstruction are perfectly applicable to non-IE languages. Research has been done with Semitic, Afroasiatic, etc. language families. The problem with so many other languages or language families is the lack of historical documents reflecting dead or rare langauges needed for the reconstruction process, or the languages themselves having never had a written form.

Even IE languages have this problem before a certain point, and the dearth of direct data is why there are so many competing theories and disagreement about reconstruction.

Due to this lack of evidence, (I think) we've found about as much as we're likely to about the most ancient languages.

--Jaylemurph

[Frank Merton]

Yes the methods are universally applicable; it is the lack of data points to work with that I bemoaned.

[jaylemurph]

Oh! I misunderstood. I'm sorry.

--Jaylemurph

[freetoroam]

Do accents from the regions get taken into account?

Just look at England, we use the same language , but you would not think so when listening to how different regions pronounce the `alleged` said words.

Each new generation comes out with its own made up words too, like today ie: innit.

Apart from the difference in pronounciation, each region will have its own words for certain things, so how can do they come up with the accent in the voiced tape?

[Kaa-Tzik]

Very close to Anglo-Saxon!

It does indeed. Very Germanic, gutural and with glotal stops. Interesting that the research into this was begun, a long time ago, by a German. Some words can be seen as a bit Celtic, but that there seems no trace whatever, to my ears, of any Italic or Slavic, the largest European languange group, shows that this is a rather lame attempt, imo

Edited September 28, 2013 by Kaa-Tzik

[Frank Merton]

We are talking about a smallish population somewhere in central Asia from which most of the languages of Europe, Iran (Persia) and much of India came from, as well as some ancient languages like Hittite and Greek. Accents or dialects are too fine a level to expect, at least that is what I would think.

[Frank Merton]

I don't think proto-Indo-European is especially closer to English than to Russian or German or Italian or Greek or Sanscrit or Farsi or any of the other divisions it broke into over time.

[Kaa-Tzik]

We are talking about a smallish population somewhere in central Asia from which most of the languages of Europe, Iran (Persia) and much of India came from, as well as some ancient languages like Hittite and Greek. Accents or dialects are too fine a level to expect, at least that is what I would think.

Well, I agree that we should not hear any dialects from so long ago. It is that this recording is just far too Germanic to be feasable. In fact to me a lot of it sounds like very bad Swedish mixed with Old English. I think this is one of those things that we will never know, never really re-create other than the words that are common to most IE, like mother in it's probable original form as "ma" and father as "pa", and maybe horse. Other words as well of course.

[Frank Merton]

Probably the recording was made by a German? Surely not a Finn, but it should have been to be modern-language neutral.

[Kaa-Tzik]

Probably the recording was made by a German? Surely not a Finn, but it should have been to be modern-language neutral.

Spoken by an American it seems. Comments further down the page concur that the words have been spoken with an Old English accent.

Here is a transliteration of the words

"Avis, jasmin varna na a ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vagham garum vaghantam, tam, bharam

magham, tam, manum aku bharantam. Avis akvabhjams a vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti

manum akvams agantam. Akvasas a vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas:

manus patis varnam avisams karnauti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka varna na

asti. Tat kukruvants avis agram a bhugat."

There are Swedish seeming words "varna" and Latin seeming words "manus" and a strange compound with elements of both "vividvant-svas". To be honest this entire passage can be pronounced in just about any accent. If it were transliterated into cyrillic it could be made to sound Slavic, and I see there is actually one Slavic word "tam" (there).

Edited September 28, 2013 by Kaa-Tzik

[freetoroam]

We are talking about a smallish population somewhere in central Asia from which most of the languages of Europe, Iran (Persia) and much of India came from, as well as some ancient languages like Hittite and Greek. Accents or dialects are too fine a level to expect, at least that is what I would think.

So basically the voice recording is a load of tosh. It is the accents which make up a major % of how the actual word will sound when spoken.

How do you think your language could be imagined to sound like by someone researching it in 6,000 years time? Me, having a typically south London accent, I do not pronounce t`s to many of my words, so that would be interesting how a voice recording would come out considering a few miles up the road they speak with a plum in their mouths.

How small is this population in central Asia then? one village?

[Frank Merton]

The population of course inherited its language from earlier languages, and was no doubt part of a family then. How large? Surely not more than several tens of thousands. The thing that is important is that this particular language over the next few thousand years spread its language (probably through a combination of conquest and others adopting their tongue) through central Asia and Asia Minor, Persia and Afghanistan and much of India, and of course through almost all of Europe. It is astonishing and one is lead to look for reasons this happened.

My view is that they either invented or made early effective use of wheeled vehicles to carry things. There is archaeological support for this possibility.

(I am compelled to add that of course the language continued to evolve in various ways into the languages we see today -- that are so easily seen to be related).

[Frank Merton]

Reading the text, I get a highly inflected language that sounds very much like Sanskrit. It seems to have few Russian or Germanic elements but a lot of Latin. I guess different readings like that are to be expected.

[Ajiesh]

You can combine Greek vowels and Sanskrit consonants to create a rough version of proto-Indo-European. sanskrit which is a language of vedas is the Mother of all european language but currently it looks closer to greek & latin as for a layman . Origin of sanskrit is more than 10,000 to 15,000 years. Written sanskrit can be found almost old as 5000 plus years ago . Language in indian subcontinent never came from Central Asia as the Central asian migration took place very recently and the sanskrit scriptures were dated several 1000 years before this .Sanskrit, is also considered the most suitable language for computer programing (1970s Forbs magazine).

But still the real origins of languages is a mystery , its shrouded in the mists of history .If we cant digest that sanskrit is the mother of european languages , it should be at least considered as a major sister language for other original european roots .

[Abramelin]

You can combine Greek vowels and Sanskrit consonants to create a rough version of proto-Indo-European. sanskrit which is a language of vedas is the Mother of all european language but currently it looks closer to greek & latin as for a layman . Origin of sanskrit is more than 10,000 to 15,000 years. Written sanskrit can be found almost old as 5000 plus years ago . Language in indian subcontinent never came from Central Asia as the Central asian migration took place very recently and the sanskrit scriptures were dated several 1000 years before this .Sanskrit, is also considered the most suitable language for computer programing (1970s Forbs magazine).

But still the real origins of languages is a mystery , its shrouded in the mists of history .If we cant digest that sanskrit is the mother of european languages , it should be at least considered as a major sister language for other original european roots .

* Sanskrit is nothing but one of the many Indo-European languages, and not the 'mother tongue' of Indo-Europeans.

* Proof of written Sanskrit is not older than 1000 BCE (give or take a century).

* Show us some sort of proof that Sanskrit is 10 to 15,000 years old.

* The most 'suitable' language for computer programming is said to be Aymara, a language still spoken in Peru/Bolivia.

[Ajiesh]

Probably the recording was made by a German? Surely not a Finn, but it should have been to be modern-language neutral.

Spoken by an American it seems. Comments further down the page concur that the words have been spoken with an Old English accent.

Here is a transliteration of the words

"Avis, jasmin varna na a ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vagham garum vaghantam, tam, bharam

magham, tam, manum aku bharantam. Avis akvabhjams a vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti

manum akvams agantam. Akvasas a vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas:

manus patis varnam avisams karnauti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka varna na

asti. Tat kukruvants avis agram a bhugat."

There are Swedish seeming words "varna" and Latin seeming words "manus" and a strange compound with elements of both "vividvant-svas". To be honest this entire passage can be pronounced in just about any accent. If it were transliterated into cyrillic it could be made to sound Slavic, and I see there is actually one Slavic word "tam" (there).

Fantastic - This very similar to sanskrit .(below I have put sanskrit meaning to which all I know ,Iam from India )

"Avis = means apparently,seemingly ,it seems

, jasmin

varna =color,paint, lusture,unknown quantity

na= NO

a ast= act

, dadarka

akvams

, tam= languishing , fainting

, vagham

garum = germ

'vaghantam= highest voice

, tam

, bharam= pressure or weight

magham = something to do with Magha constellation

, tam,

manum =thinking creature

aku = mole/rat or thief

bharantam

. Avis

akvabhjams

a

vavakat

: kard = rumble / unpleasant voice

aghnutai

mai= me or to me

vidanti = they say

manum

akvams

agantam=name of a lord (siva according to veda)

. Akvasas

a

vavakant = indeed move (vava= indeed) kant= move

: krudhi = either anger or Play

avai=weave

, kard

aghnutai

vividvant-

svas:=breath

manus=man

patis = Eye or Sea

varnam

avisams = a vision

karnauti = bore

svabhjam =sva (of self)

gharmam =very hot

vastram = cloths

avibhjams = avi = disposed ,bhajam = worship

ka

varna na

asti = Bone

Tat = That (Thath will be the sanskrit pronunciation )

kukruvants

avis

agram = before

a

bhugat = existing in earth

thanks guys

[Abramelin]

You would probably be shocked to read something in Lithuanian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_language

[Frank Merton]

The idea that Sanskrit is the mother of the Indo-European languages is something they teach in schools in India. It is absurd on its face and just represents Hindu ultra-nationalism at its worst (inventing things to glorify themselves).