What did ancient languages sound like? • Hacker News Board

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#61

Post by FlyingSnake » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #59

FlyingSnake wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern (north Indian) Sanskrit pronunciation uses Hindi/Urdu style of pronouncing vowels which was significantly influenced by Arabic and Persian. This has to be the most far-fetched and absurd claim I’ve heard so far. Sanskrit has been orally transmitted since several millennia and there’s no change in its pronunciation and grammar since days of Panini. That robust oral tradition is well researched and proven to b…

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.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#62

Post by fooker » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

FlyingSnake wrote: post #56

fooker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Sanskrit absolutely doesn't sound like it did in ancient the ancient times. Modern (north Indian) Sanskrit pronunciation uses Hindi/Urdu style of pronouncing vowels which was significantly influenced by Arabic and Persian. Ancient Sanskrit pronunciation was essentially similar to what we call the Prakrit language, which was a more colloquial version and spoken by most people. Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati are a bi…

> Modern (north Indian) Sanskrit pronunciation uses Hindi/Urdu style of pronouncing vowels which was significantly influenced by Arabic and Persian. This has to be the most far-fetched and absurd claim I’ve heard so far. Sanskrit has been orally transmitted since several millennia and there’s no change in its pronunciation and grammar since days of Panini. That robust oral tradition is well researched and proven to b…

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.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#63

Post by jacobolus » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

minitoar wrote: post #8

keiferski wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: is it possible that the sounds made by sheep would have changed over time?

Different sheep make different sounds today. Mostly it’s just yelling. I think our perception of it insists on a leading consonant that just isn’t there.

The sheep/goats sometimes start yelling before opening their mouths, which seems to usually sound like maaaaaa, but can sometimes sound more like baaaaa, gaaaaa, waaaa, yaaaa. When they open their mouths before starting the yell there is no leading consonant sound.

Don’t think I have ever heard an initial 'v' sound though.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#64

Post by fooker » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

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.

Grammar hasn't. Pronunciation has, a lot.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#65

Post by Ar-Curunir » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

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?

While it’s very true that we have a much better idea of how Sanskrit was pronounced millennia ago than we do for most languages, we can’t make absolute claims like yours.

No, that’s not true. there’s a bunch of varieties of Sanskrit, including Vedic Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit, and various local dialects. Not all of these have been preserved in oral traditions.

Second, even within the preserved oral traditions, pronunciations vary across schools. For example, the “kru” part in your Samskruta is pronounced differently in different parts of India; some people do say “kri”

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#66

Post by Ar-Curunir » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

stan_rogers wrote: post #46

gpraghu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How fossilized? While it is not used as an everyday language, there is a yet growing library of literature, and vigorous philosophical debate that happens in Samskruta. BTW, an unrelated rant, the other thing that grinds on me is that the Ganga river is ALWAYS referred as Ganges (another anglicization)! Ganga is easier to pronounce, so why did that get anglicized, I wonder?

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…

And Paninian/Classical Sanskrit is not even Vedic Sanskrit!

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#67

Post by schoen » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

fooker wrote: post #62

FlyingSnake wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern (north Indian) Sanskrit pronunciation uses Hindi/Urdu style of pronouncing vowels which was significantly influenced by Arabic and Persian. This has to be the most far-fetched and absurd claim I’ve heard so far. Sanskrit has been orally transmitted since several millennia and there’s no change in its pronunciation and grammar since days of Panini. That robust oral tradition is well researched and proven to b…

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 pronunciation.

Relatedly, I went to a spoken Latin event where I (an American) spoke Latin with an Italian man. His pronunciation and mine were wildly different, although we could understand each other. Neither was all that similar to the academic linguists' view of what our conversation would have sounded like thousands of years ago, though I guess his vowels were generally closer and my consonants were generally closer.

People retaining ancient languages for liturgical and scholarly uses are generally not that great at preventing the pronunciation from shifting, and I think that's true across the board. ("Atque memento, nulli adsunt Romanorum qui locutionem tuam corrigant." -- Henry Beard.)

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#68

Post by schoen » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #29

yumraj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, BTW I appreciate all the sibling replies as well. So basically it seems they used the proper nouns to start and then built up on that. And also used Coptic to fill gaps.. I do get the point about Greek approximation since just as an example in modern India, Alexander is referred to as Sikander . Similar, yet very different.

The Al- most likely got lost in Arabic due to being reanalyzed as a determiner instead of as part of the name.

For the Greeks, it even had an intelligible meaning

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%BB%CE%AD%CE%BE%C...

I think the a- in the al- in Alexander is supposed to be the alpha privative

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

like our "ward off" or something.

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#69

Post by hawk_ » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

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.

there are no recordings from panini's times and panini's texts pertain to grammar. they don't prescribe pronunciation - like precise position of tongue lips etc...

Re: What did ancient languages sound like?

#70

Post by throwawaysea » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

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?

> How come there is no discussion of that at all?

Leaving aside the linguistic debate in the comments here, there’s often no fair or truthful or representative discussion of the ancient East’s legacy (or others) for reasons relating to imperialism, colonialism, and supremacist thinking. I don’t mean that in the explicit “we’re taking over your country way” but in the more subtle or implicit ways. Western world views and Eurocentric histories are everywhere, from academia to Wikipedia, and due credit or consideration isn’t given elsewhere.

The problem persists even in the very countries we are talking about, like India, since their earlier “original” Hindu culture was changed by invasions (whether from the Islamic Middle East or Christian Europe). My understanding is that when the British finally left India, their academic culture still persisted in the form of Western education that replaced earlier forms of education, textbooks sourced from Western publishers, taxpayer funding into this system, and the adoption of languages like Hindi and English as the official languages (rather than say Sanskrit or Tamil).

So to answer your question in the broader sense beyond this article and discussion, there is no discussion of these things in part because of the power of Western spheres and in part because Eastern spheres themselves haven’t retained their own knowledge or promoted themselves adequately either domestically or internationally.