The world is full of different languages;
old, new, worldwide, local, beautiful, not-so-beautiful,
alive and well, and completely extinct; and
it’s these extinct (or at least very old)
languages that I want to examine, specifically
more of them since I already talked about
a few in a previous video.
In that video I talked about Latin, ancient
Greek, Etruscan, Egyptian, Phoenician, and
Sumerian, all interesting and notable languages,
but it leaves a lot still yet to be mentioned,
so join me as I bring you along part two of
this adventure to hopefully bring me out of
this view slump I’ve been in…
I mean shed light on these interesting ancient
languages.
Let‘s start by going way back in time and
talking about a language language nerds love
to nerd out about, Proto-Indo European, a
language we actually have no record of whatsoever.
In fact it is actually a kind of reconstructed
language, made by basically looking at all
the parts of where grammar and vocabulary
of different Indo-European languages are similar
enough (but not too similar), and reconstructing
what the original word must have been, seeing
as the language existed long before writing.
For example the English word ‘father’
corresponds with the Latin ‘pater’, the
Greek ‘patér’, and the Sanskrit ‘pitr’,
giving us the Proto Indo-European ‘pH-tér’.
Despite this lack of physical evidence, we’ve
been able to largely piece together what their
culture was like solely through the words
linguists were able to reconstruct, by looking
at the words for things they would have had
access to, for example linguists have worked
out that the Proto-Indo Europeans likely had
things like wheels, domestication, the plow,
and as mentioned in my Roman misconceptions
video the worship of a god called the “sky
father”.
Xidnaf made a really good video all about
this that I would recommend.
The Indo-European family has its name because
its languages are spoken throughout almost
all of Europe, and the Indian subcontinent.
There are many languages of the Indo-Iranian
branch spoken in the region today-- Hindi,
Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Farsi, Pashto, etc.--
but one notable example dating back to ancient
times is Sanskrit (saṃskṛtam).
Sanskrit is still spoken to this day, although
not by as many as its close relatives, but
it has influenced the other languages of India
(including many non-Indo-European languages),
seeing as it is the language of many classical
Indian texts, including the Vedas and Upanishads,
some of the most instrumental scriptures in
Hinduism, as well as many important texts
in religions like Buddhism and Jainism.
According to census data, roughly 2.3 million
people in India and Nepal speak the language,
though only about 25,000 claim it as their
native language.
Another family of the Indo-European languages
is the now extinct Anatolian branch.
The Anatolian languages were spoken in…
well it doesn’t exactly take a genius to
figure that one out, does it?
There were numerous languages in this family
that we still have records of, including Lydian
and Luwian, but the most notable was that
of Egypt’s famous rival, the Hittites.
Hittite, also known as Neshite from their
endonym ‘nešili’, was spoken in around
the mid 2nd millennium BC, around the same
time as Egypt’s New Kingdom, so far back
that yes, it did in fact write in cuneiform.
The Hittite language was of course the language
of the Kingdom of Hattusa, the kingdom ruled
by the Hittites.
The Anatolian languages were spoken up until
the early 1st millennium AD, when Greek would
become more dominant over Anatolia, pushing
these languages further and further into obscurity.
Let’s stick with cuneiforms for a bit and
get our Semitic fix with some good ol’ ‘akkadu-u’,
or Akkadian.
The main language of the Akkadian Empire in
Mesopotamia, Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic
language spoken from around 2500 to 600 BC,
originating from the central Mesopotamian
region of Akkad, riding on the back of the
Akkadian conquests of Mesopotamia to largely
become the lingua franca of Mesopotamian diplomacy
up until the Bronze Age Collapse, even serving
as the language of later empires including
the Babylonian and Old Assyrian Empires.
Akkadian was preceded in this role however
by Sumerian, which would leave a lasting influence
on the language, especially in the writing
system.
NativLang made a really good video all about
this, but essentially when the Sumerians wanted
to talk about something they could either
use a pictogram or spell out the symbols used
to make the sound of the word, later the Akkadians
would do much the same, either using pictograms,
or spelling out the Akkadian word, but they
would also spell out the Sumerian word and
pronounce it in the Akkadian way.
Seriously though if you’re curious about
this, go check out NativLang’s video, I
don’t want to steal views from him.
[Crashes onto couch] You need Jesus?
Sticking with Semitic languages, the language
many biblical historians believe Jesus would
have spoken in his day-to-day life may not
have been Hebrew-- which was generally used
as a liturgical language-- but the closely
related Aramaic (Arāmāya), having been used
as a common language throughout the region
since its spread as one of the languages of
the Neo-Assyrian Empire 800 years prior.
Aramaic is actually very closely related to
Hebrew, but in ancient times used its own
writing system based on the Phoenician script,
whose lineage would later split to form the
Hebrew script and the Syriac alphabet that
Aramaic uses today.
And yes, it is in fact still spoken to this
day.
Aramaic is spoken in numerous different dialects,
and is spoken fluently by around 1-2 million
people spread throughout pockets of Syria
and the rest of the Levant, notably among
Christian and Jewish (and especially Syriac,
Chaldean, and Assyrian) communities, but largely
by the older generations, meaning the dialects
are likely to soon fade away, though efforts
are being made to record and catalog them.
Let’s finish this video by jumping across
the ocean to the northern reaches of Central
America, where the Maya language was and still
is spoken, as are the Maya languages.
The Maya languages form the Maya language
family, spoken throughout what has now become
southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and a
tiny bit of Honduras and El Salvador, spoken
by about 6 million Maya today across 21 different
languages and dialects, the largest of which
being the Yucatec branch, known most commonly
as just “the Maya language” or “maya’
t’àan” meaning ‘flat speech’, spoken
by about 800,000 native speakers on the Yucatán
Peninsula, and known to linguists as Yucatec
Mayan to distinguish it from other Maya languages
like K’iche.
The Maya languages today use the Latin alphabet,
but before the Spanish came over the Maya
also had their own writing system made of
different glyphs, with words written either
as logograms or as a syllabary script to spell
out the sounds of the word, very similar to
how Sumerian wrote (although at least no one
was simping them like the Akkadians with Sumerian).
So that was six more interesting ancient languages.
If this video does well I might just make
a third part to this, in which case please
suggest some more interesting languages I
could cover in that video.
As always like and share this video, consider
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so you can learn something new every Sunday.
