Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

news.yale.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 77 posts

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#21

Post by mxjxjxjd »

jrkfjdifc wrote: post #16
mdp2021 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[flagged]

yeah, I wasted several years of valuable education time on a dead language instead of a foreign living one and it is NOT worth it unless you're a very specific kind of person. it is not going to help you understand English. I learned Latin. It's not helpful for anything. It's totally useless, and it's closer to English than Sanskrit. It was a total waste of time

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#22

Post by patcon »

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.

Isn't that a collapse in cognitive diversity?

Not to be "gotcha", but out of true curiosity: may I ask if you speak multiple languages fluently?

Different languages afford different ways of thinking and speaking? Just talk to a translator in works of literature or poetry. Some languages are more verb-y or noun-y, and so are more about getting between things than being something. Or have more or less ambiguity due to tonal systems.

And while ambiguity can create miscommunication when misused, it also allows for different minds to hear one thing, but interpret it in ways more personal to them. When used pro-socially (and not manipulatively), this can afford cooperation that might not otherwise be possible. Saying things while leaving some things unsaid, that has utility if our collective project is certain forms of synchrony -- we can sync on some things while the ambiguity allows asynchrony to remain unresolved in less important dimensions, etc

Imho monoculture is toward death, not toward something golden.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#23

Post by carefree-bob »

mdp2021 wrote: post #17
wbl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanskrit is not an ancestor of English. Sanskrit is a satem language English centum. Proto Indo Iranian diverged long ago.

> Sanskrit is not an ancestor of English Sanskrit entered into Greek, Greek into Latin, Latin into English. Edit: downvoter, express yourself clearly. I cannot see how the above sentence could be considered false, apart from gross interpretations of the chosen terms. Again: you have a relation with "jñāna, gnō̃́sis, gnosco, knowledge"; then you have relations in other dimensions (jña, jñāti, gnṓmōn, gnṓmōn...): the…

Both Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are the same age. Of course there may have been mutual influences as languages take cognates from each other.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#24

Post by mdp2021 »

nkrisc wrote: post #19
mdp2021 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sanskrit is not an ancestor of English Sanskrit entered into Greek, Greek into Latin, Latin into English. Edit: downvoter, express yourself clearly. I cannot see how the above sentence could be considered false, apart from gross interpretations of the chosen terms. Again: you have a relation with "jñāna, gnō̃́sis, gnosco, knowledge"; then you have relations in other dimensions (jña, jñāti, gnṓmōn, gnṓmōn...): the…

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.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#25

Post by mdp2021 »

carefree-bob wrote: post #23
mdp2021 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sanskrit is not an ancestor of English Sanskrit entered into Greek, Greek into Latin, Latin into English. Edit: downvoter, express yourself clearly. I cannot see how the above sentence could be considered false, apart from gross interpretations of the chosen terms. Again: you have a relation with "jñāna, gnō̃́sis, gnosco, knowledge"; then you have relations in other dimensions (jña, jñāti, gnṓmōn, gnṓmōn...): the…

Both Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are the same age. Of course there may have been mutual influences as languages take cognates from each other.

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

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#26

Post by applicative »

mdp2021 wrote: post #17
wbl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanskrit is not an ancestor of English. Sanskrit is a satem language English centum. Proto Indo Iranian diverged long ago.

> Sanskrit is not an ancestor of English Sanskrit entered into Greek, Greek into Latin, Latin into English. Edit: downvoter, express yourself clearly. I cannot see how the above sentence could be considered false, apart from gross interpretations of the chosen terms. Again: you have a relation with "jñāna, gnō̃́sis, gnosco, knowledge"; then you have relations in other dimensions (jña, jñāti, gnṓmōn, gnṓmōn...): the…

Sanskrit is no older than Kurdish; English Greek etc have the same relation to it as to Kurdish — they are all alike of Indo European descent.

Like Greek and Latin, Sanskrit is an anciently written language associated with major states and ‘civilizations’ - and, crucially, is like Greek and Latin in that it is still remembered if only by some thin intellectual or priestly stratum of societies.

So by use of those three, Indo European unity could be especially well validated by pure textual scholarship (especially if the scholar was British or German and thus on another branch). It is surprising as the result is intuitively scientific — how could I arrive at it if all I do is read and write?! - and was indeed of massive importance to the framing of Darwin’s quite different scientific enterprise, which needed different evidence .

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#27

Post by mdp2021 »

applicative wrote: post #26
mdp2021 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sanskrit is not an ancestor of English Sanskrit entered into Greek, Greek into Latin, Latin into English. Edit: downvoter, express yourself clearly. I cannot see how the above sentence could be considered false, apart from gross interpretations of the chosen terms. Again: you have a relation with "jñāna, gnō̃́sis, gnosco, knowledge"; then you have relations in other dimensions (jña, jñāti, gnṓmōn, gnṓmōn...): the…

Sanskrit is no older than Kurdish; English Greek etc have the same relation to it as to Kurdish — they are all alike of Indo European descent. Like Greek and Latin, Sanskrit is an anciently written language associated with major states and ‘civilizations’ - and, crucially, is like Greek and Latin in that it is still remembered if only by some thin intellectual or priestly stratum of societies. So by use of those thre…

If an awareness of Kurdish would help understanding Greek, than Latin, than our post-Latin languages in use, then such awareness would be surely welcome,

but "the thing with" Sanskrit is also about the prominence of its literature. The wealth of relations between the terms in those languages is enlightening, and there is an important literary corpus behind it.

(I am not quite prepared about Kurdish literature.)

--

Edit:

> still remembered if only by some thin intellectual or priestly stratum of societies

You are "setting the bar" so incredibly low...

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#28

Post by arjie »

mdp2021 wrote: post #25
carefree-bob wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are the same age. Of course there may have been mutual influences as languages take cognates from each other.

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.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#29

Post by messe »

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.

> which was clearly not my intention.

You did not express that clearly enough then.

Re: Study uncovers lost 'golden age' of languages

#30

Post by wbl »

carefree-bob wrote: post #23
mdp2021 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sanskrit is not an ancestor of English Sanskrit entered into Greek, Greek into Latin, Latin into English. Edit: downvoter, express yourself clearly. I cannot see how the above sentence could be considered false, apart from gross interpretations of the chosen terms. Again: you have a relation with "jñāna, gnō̃́sis, gnosco, knowledge"; then you have relations in other dimensions (jña, jñāti, gnṓmōn, gnṓmōn...): the…

Both Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are the same age. Of course there may have been mutual influences as languages take cognates from each other.

There was extremely limited contact between them until thousands of years later, and no real cultural exchange until the era of exploration.
Post reply on HN