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Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

news.yale.edu

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Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#31

Post by mdp2021 »

messe wrote: post #29
mdp2021 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That still does not make Sanskrit an ancestor language of English You are taking 'ancestor' in a strict technical sense, which was clearly not my intention. > though both English and Sanskrit do share a common ancestry several thousand years ago And those roots can be found and recognized in the subsequent languages, and there lies the value.

> which was clearly not my intention. You did not express that clearly enough then.

My bad :)

It's just that I cannot allocate the safest amount of effort in composing. I thought it was clear enough.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#32

Post by stephenhuey »

derektank wrote: post #20
aboardRat4 wrote: post #13

The golden age of languages is when there is only one language left, and everyone can understand everyone without cunning translators and hallucinating llms.

Unfortunately, even if we had a single language, I doubt we’d be free of misunderstandings. Jargon, double entendres, shibboleths and other barriers to understanding all still exist even when everyone is nominally speaking the same language

If we got down to only one language, that natural human tendency would be for new languages to grow out of that. They naturally change all the time, and suppressing that is a loss, not a gain.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#33

Post by wl »

niemandhier wrote: post #9
gregdaniels421 wrote: post #2

> political currents don’t have to move in one direction. It’s not inevitable that endangered languages become extinct. There really isn't any good incentive to learn a language with very few speakers, since unless you already know a speaker, you really can't practice the real language. People were a few years ago at least hoping llms could help preserve the languages, but more most of them, there just aren't enough…

People learn Klingon or Esperanto. You could probably convince me to join a hypothetical “Worshipful society of Gentlemen speaking Sumerian”.

There's a lot of disagreement about Sumerian grammar. If you like to argue, that might be a bonus.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#34

Post by mdp2021 »

arjie wrote: post #28
mdp2021 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point is in the strength of said relations in view of understanding the underlying roots in current languages.

Is that the point? Seems like Greek or Latin are more useful to an English speaker for familiarity, and Sinitic ones for foreign-ness. Sanskrit occupies a space that is less useful for a Western audience as a sibling language to English in a valley of novelty and similarity.

> Seems like Greek or Latin are more useful to an English speaker for familiarity

It is that consideration of the several implementations (so, include Sanskrit - it augments the material importantly) clarifies the cones of meanings in the roots.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#35

Post by wl »

mdp2021 wrote: post #11
gregdaniels421 wrote: post #2

> political currents don’t have to move in one direction. It’s not inevitable that endangered languages become extinct. There really isn't any good incentive to learn a language with very few speakers, since unless you already know a speaker, you really can't practice the real language. People were a few years ago at least hoping llms could help preserve the languages, but more most of them, there just aren't enough…

> learn a language with very few speakers Learn Sanskrit. You were writing in a descendant language just now. If you learnt the roots, you would understand the descendants better. And they are your tools, and knowing your tools is important. Other more obscure languages? Well, as implied, languages are related... So studying the network clarifies the whole.

Or learn Hittite. It's got the oldest corpus in the Indo-European language family. You've got your standard assortment of Indo-European cases. Grammatical gender is animate/inanimate and the animate gender has yet to split into masculine and feminine. The script is tons of fun, especially if you write it with a stylus on clay. And as a bonus, you get to learn a smattering of Sumerian and Akkadian vocabulary.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#37

Post by derektank »

stephenhuey wrote: post #32
derektank wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, even if we had a single language, I doubt we’d be free of misunderstandings. Jargon, double entendres, shibboleths and other barriers to understanding all still exist even when everyone is nominally speaking the same language

If we got down to only one language, that natural human tendency would be for new languages to grow out of that. They naturally change all the time, and suppressing that is a loss, not a gain.

Hmmm maybe. There are obviously benefits to adapting languages to better describe the environment the speaker finds themselves in. But the utility of being able to communicate with others (especially if they are the overwhelming majority) is probably higher. In the absence of geographical separation, I don’t think new languages would have become mutually incomprehensible.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#38

Post by ben_w »

mdp2021 wrote: post #24
nkrisc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still does not make Sanskrit an ancestor language of English, though both English and Sanskrit do share a common ancestry several thousand years ago. English has borrowed words from many languages, as all but the most isolated languages have.

> That still does not make Sanskrit an ancestor language of English You are taking 'ancestor' in a strict technical sense, which was clearly not my intention. > though both English and Sanskrit do share a common ancestry several thousand years ago And those roots can be found and recognized in the subsequent languages, and there lies the value.

> You are taking 'ancestor' in a strict technical sense, which was clearly not my intention.

Blutly, this was not obvious, and what you suggested would have been equally true if you'd said:

  Learn Lithuanian. You were writing in a descendant language just now. If you learnt the roots, you would understand the descendants better.
Because Lithuanian has about as much in common with PIE as Sanskrit does.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#40

Post by nkrisc »

mdp2021 wrote: post #24
nkrisc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still does not make Sanskrit an ancestor language of English, though both English and Sanskrit do share a common ancestry several thousand years ago. English has borrowed words from many languages, as all but the most isolated languages have.

> That still does not make Sanskrit an ancestor language of English You are taking 'ancestor' in a strict technical sense, which was clearly not my intention. > though both English and Sanskrit do share a common ancestry several thousand years ago And those roots can be found and recognized in the subsequent languages, and there lies the value.

That wasn’t clear to me. Yes, they share similar roots because they have a common ancestor language. Just like any pair of extinct or extant languages descended from PIE.
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