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What did ancient languages sound like?

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Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#141

Post by escape_goat »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #116
escape_goat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Topolect' (an English word coined in America by an English-speaking linguist who was describing Chinese languages) has the advantage of being precise and preserving the relationship between Mandarin and Cantonese that the writer was specifically referring to, but that aside, might I suggest that courage is best seen and not heard.

'Topolect' is just a translation of 方言, a word that was previously translated as 'dialect'. It's a weak, flimsy word for people who know better, but still don't have the courage to say 'language'.

I'm sorry, I did try to graciously point out that you had taken your patently noble defiance of the Chinese Communist Party and turned it into something that reflected poorly on your humility and empathy for others. Might I suggest writing the CCP a letter about the matter rather than speaking inappropriately about 'courage' and lecturing others?

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#142

Post by gpraghu »

schoen wrote: post #67
fooker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you could listen to samveda chants from different parts of India and see the pronunciations are very audibly different... Your kind of hot take about Sanskrit is somewhat common.

I once went to a wedding involving academic linguists and Hindu prayers. A Hindu priest chanted a prayer in Sanskrit and then an academic linguist followed up by chanting the same prayer with his view of what it would have anciently sounded like. Notwithstanding the priest's own view of his Sanskrit as an ancient language, his pronunciation didn't match up with the academic linguist's view of the historical pronuncia…

I don't understand why an academic linguist is more qualified than a traditionally educated scholar in India, who has deep knowledge of the classics. I don't deny that there were likely some influences, but the care and precision with I was taught recitation is something I have not encountered in any other discipline. I am an engineer, but if I start from the Ashtadhyayi, I don't see how things could have changed much.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#143

Post by gpraghu »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #61
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make it the only language in the world to be passed down unmodified, which seems... unlikely.

I understand it comes across as jingoistic, but truly Sanskrit grammar and pronunciation hasn’t changed since Pānini. The word Sanskrit itself means “constructed” and there was a rigorous effort to prevent ambiguity.

It is NOT Sanskrit, which was foisted on the world by the british. Please be respectful and call it by it real name, given by Panini which literally codified and formalized it.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#144

Post by gpraghu »

chakkepolja wrote: post #136
gpraghu wrote: post #5

You mean “What did ancient European languages sound like” perhaps? I would submit that Samskruta (NOT the anclicised Sanskrit) sounds exactly like how it did in ancient times. How come there is no discussion of that at all?

Vedic Samskrutham was pretty much different I guess. And regular people didn't speak sanskrit in classical age. They spoke regional languages like Prakrit and Pali.

Vedic Samskrutam was a different language than Paninis classical Samskrutam. We need to recognize size that.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#145

Post by gpraghu »

prox wrote: post #118
stan_rogers wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly vocabulary has been added to, but the whole point of the work of Pāṇini and others was to prevent the Vedas from drifting over time. That freezing of the core of the language was deliberate and artificial. (The same thing applies to the Arabic of the 7th century. It exists nearly unchanged at its core for religious reasons, and a version with various additions functions as a lingua franca and language of ac…

Not only that, but in Vedic ceremonies you have a priest who is just there so no mistakes are made. >The brahman was the reciter of hymns from the atharvaveda who was largely silent and observes the procedures and uses Atharvaveda mantras to 'heal' it when mistakes have been made.

It seems to me that you are proving my point.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#146

Post by senorsmile »

selimthegrim wrote: post #72
LordDragonfang wrote: post #13

Of similar note, NativLang on Youtube has a fascinating series of narrated videos on how we know what various ancient languages sound like [1] (you'll have to forgive the cheesy graphics). I particularly liked the one on ancient Egyptian[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc4s09N3L2h3d_c5Z5d0J... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-K5OjAkiEA&list=PLc4s09N3L2...

I would be remiss if I didn't post Tocharian King of the Hill - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNe6nke1HFk

This is amazing!

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#147

Post by schoen »

gpraghu wrote: post #142
schoen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once went to a wedding involving academic linguists and Hindu prayers. A Hindu priest chanted a prayer in Sanskrit and then an academic linguist followed up by chanting the same prayer with his view of what it would have anciently sounded like. Notwithstanding the priest's own view of his Sanskrit as an ancient language, his pronunciation didn't match up with the academic linguist's view of the historical pronuncia…

I don't understand why an academic linguist is more qualified than a traditionally educated scholar in India, who has deep knowledge of the classics. I don't deny that there were likely some influences, but the care and precision with I was taught recitation is something I have not encountered in any other discipline. I am an engineer, but if I start from the Ashtadhyayi, I don't see how things could have changed muc…

My understanding is that it's not clear to what extent Panini understood or attempted to explicitly treat articulatory phonetics. Addressing articulatory phonetics well in writing alone is still hard, and understanding it in detail was immensely hard before the creation of audio recording, spectrograms, and x-rays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Sutras#Arrangement

So while a present-day understanding of classical Sanskrit grammar could be derived fairly directly from his work, that's still not any guarantee that you would pronounce Sanskrit just as Panini would have.

A moderately imperfect analogy is that while Jews have been carefully learning to read, recite, and copy the Torah for thousands of years -- including reading commentaries, which, while nowhere near as systematic or thorough as Panini, elucidate lots of grammatical issues -- there still emerged huge, systematic regional differences in the pronunciation of particular Hebrew letters, even in liturgical use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Hebrew

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardi_Hebrew

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Hebrew

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberian_Hebrew

among several others. The people using each pronunciation were often incredibly sophisticated in their religious scholarship and incredibly familiar with the underlying material, but they definitely didn't (and don't) pronounce it the same way.

Modern linguistics has been able to find evidence for comparing these pronunciation variants and also understanding their histories, and I believe something similar is true for Sanskrit pronunciation.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#148

Post by gpraghu »

fooker wrote: post #64
FlyingSnake wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand it comes across as jingoistic, but truly Sanskrit grammar and pronunciation hasn’t changed since Pānini. The word Sanskrit itself means “constructed” and there was a rigorous effort to prevent ambiguity.

Grammar hasn't. Pronunciation has, a lot.

You are almost completely wrong. How do you account for the precision of Panini as the previous commenter pointed out? How do you know to postulate that? There is NO other formalized grammar akin to Panini, so don’t judge Samskruta by other so called Indo European standards!

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#149

Post by gpraghu »

fooker wrote: post #83
KhoomeiK wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment but ironically your transliteration of the name of that language reveals that it certainly has undergone at least some sound changes. Why do people in the north pronounce the vocalic "r" as "ri" while in the south they use "ru"? Why do people in the north drop word final schwa but in the south they add a nasal bilabial? While it's very easy to pronounce Samskrta in a way similar to what was…

Exactly. This transliteration, in eastern India would be 'Shongskrito'. Which is no more right or wrong compared to saying 'Sanskrit'.

Songuahkrito is not Samskruta but Bengali. So what’s your point?

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#150

Post by gpraghu »

gpraghu wrote: post #5

You mean “What did ancient European languages sound like” perhaps? I would submit that Samskruta (NOT the anclicised Sanskrit) sounds exactly like how it did in ancient times. How come there is no discussion of that at all?

This has been an incredible discussion, thank you all for contributing. I hope my original point was made, which was that there is often bias when the western world talks about “ancient”, and I place the blame squarely on the imperialistic british for that. The other issue I want to point out is that there is a certain arrogance that the linguistic academia has as it relates to traditional scholars by regularly discounting their knowledge and assuming their own superiority. Not trying to change anyone’s beliefs, just an opinion I am expressing. I am going to drop out not for want of willingness to engage, but because this discussion is devolving into familiar patterns of debate. All I can say as a practitioner is that when I was taught, I was actually taught the “correct way” and the differences so I was always aware. There is an academic rigor in traditional teaching that Western academia seems to be unaware of.
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