h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You're a pretty enlightened lot at h2g2. Not only do you write fascinating guide entries and engage in wise conversation on all sorts of things, you have some very impressive skills among you - particularly in languages.

I came across a website recently which is trying to preserve our language heritage by putting resources online to help people explore, learn, and so preserve some of our dead languages. It's the Linguistice Centre at the University of Texas.

Here's the link for anyone wanting to get to grips with Old Irish, for example:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/iriol-0-X.html

Scroll down for a number of lessons based on specific texts.


And this is just one of many languages. The links to the left of the screen have similar lessons covering Old English, Old French, and many more.


Maybe it's a bit late for New Year resolutions, but adopting a dead language could be just the thing to stimulate your mind, and teach you more about how your mother tongue developed.


Let me know if you decide to investigate any

Time would be my enemy, but it's a project.

Thanks! I bookmarked the Gothic for review. Yummy stuff! And supercool for UT to put it online.

I actually know a joke in Gothic.

And I believe I remember one of the authors of the Old Irish course - we met in Old Saxon class a scandalous number of years ago. I remember that horrible old professor at the Institut fuer vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft (comparative linguistics). He knew the word for 'house' in 36 languages. But not much else, I'm afraid. He was what they call a 'Fachidiot' - someone who doesn't know anything outside his specialty.

Well............I don't even *have* a specialty.


I've tried so hard to know a little about a lot of things. If I were marooned on an island with someone who liked quiltmaking, Glen Campbells' music, John Waters's films, pumpkin bread recipes, and the mystery novels of Laura Levine [or any number of other combinations], we would have enough in common to talk for perhaps a week before lapsing into silence.

Recent television series are my weakest point, but I've borrowed and watched DVDs of the most illustrious ones, so at least i know the main characters of "Office," "30 Rock," "Mad Men,"and nine or ten others.


Which reminds me that it's time to watch DVD['s of another ten or eleven series.....

But getting back to languages: as a member of a community chorus, I've had to learn how to sing in a lot of different language -- about 16 at last count. If I ever take an ocean voyage near any dangerous reefs, I should hope there are other community chorus members ion board in case we end up together on an island .

Are there dead languages that people still sing in? Apart from Latin, of course - we can't really call that one dead.

Ancient Greek, as opposed to modern Greek. I've sung "Agincourt Carol,"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWzleOtDv30

"Summer is icumin in"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWWEHAswpFI

"L'homme arme"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-E2_iNmYOE

and one Renaissance Czech piece that I can't even remember now.

I learned this one ages ago. It's Walther von der Vogelweide's 'Palestine Song'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rgmPjYVwOM

It's pretty current - it could be sung by various militaries in the Middle East.

It goes:

Now my life has gained some meaning
Since my sinful eye beholds
The sacred land and soil
That is so honoured.
Now has come to pass what I have ever prayed for:
I have arrived at the place,
Where God trod the ground in human form.

Later it says, 'Christians, Jews, and heathen claim that this is their inheritance. May God give us the right of it...'

Now, if we could just keep Crusaders and current-day Saladins from messing up all the statuary and harming the locals...

We saw his grave recently, in Würzburg. I've never actually sung anything he wrote, would like to try. Maybe I should join a choir in Würzburg.

Can you say those old versions of English, French or Norwegian are really dead? Haven't they just evolved? You could say that Shakespeare's version of English is dead, but then again, it's not as if it's entirely incomprehensible to us. Sorry, I haven't looked at the link yet, I was just wondering when a language is really dead.

This is an excellent question. And there are real answers. I will now put my hat on.

Gothic appears to be completely extinct - although researchers were really surprised to find some Gothic speakers in the Crimea in the 18th Century, because they had always thought the language had died out centuries earlier.

While it could be argued that Middle English (Chaucer) just became Early Modern English (Shakespeare) and then divided into Textspeak and Lolcats, Old English is definitely dead. Go have a listen at this:

https://archive.org/details/caedmon_librivox

It's basically a dialect of German.

Now, Old English's sister Germanic language in Britain DIDN'T die out. It just became Scots. (There's a reason for those subtitles in 'Trainspotting'.)

Remember: a language is just a dialect with its own army.

Apologies, Old English link again:

http://archive.org/details/caedmon_librivox

Ripley readers, for the use of.

Aramaic, the language that was spoken in Jesus' area and time, is still spoken, from what I've read. There's a Chinese language spoken just by women, which was on the verge of extinction. I don't know if it's been revived or not.

Even at the time of Claudius, speakers of Etruscan were exceedingly few. Claudius managed to learn it. I don't know if any modern researchers have reconstructed it enough to be spoken.

Esperanto is spoken by up to two million people worldwide, though most or all of them may use it as a second or third language.

"Only a few hundred words of the Etruscan vocabulary are understood with some certainty. The exact count depends on whether the different forms and the expressions are included."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_language

[I will be very embarrassed if it turns out that the edited guide has an article on Etruscan, and I forgot to check on it. ]

There are many dying and dead languages. Some other researchers here can tell you about the languages that Tolkien studied to develop his elvish, orcish, dwarvish and other langages. Some of those are from small pockets of Northern Europe. There are more languages spoken in small corners of Eastern Europe that are nearly gone. There are also many languages from Africa, South and Central America, and Southeast Asia that are dying or have died in our lifetimes.

Languages die all the time and we just simply can't save them all.

That reminded me of an obituary I wrote once for a language that died: A86292200

Madonna and Elvis? Well, it's possible. Madonna was 19 when Elvis died, but I doubt that they ever sang together.

When is a language declared dead? Is Latin dead?

It's dead when there are no mother-tongue speakers, I imagine.

Latin is dead (if you discount the Papacy), but not only is it the root of many western languages, its words and phrases have been into the fabric of western society in so many ways: medicine and other sciences, law, mottoes, etc. (A21776754)

No reason to discount the Papacy. A language is dead when it is no longer in everyday use. You're unlikely to hear folks on the Vatican grounds discussing the weather, sports, or how their husband's gout has been acting up lately in Latin.

Still it is the Vatican's official language, and that keeps things going.

Sure, but that doesn't change Latin's status. Latin is just the most used dead language, but it's still not used for everyday conversation.

It's kind of like one of those Old West ghost towns. People visit all the time, but no one lives there.