For ancient & dead languages, how do historians know when they have deciphered/translated them successfully?
What frame of reference exists for them to know that they have for certain deciphered and translated, say, a Sumerian tablet? How can they ever know that they are correct if there's nothing to really say "yeah, that's what it's saying"?
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Peer-review, mostly.
Also, if you can translate other texts, without sounding silly.
>frame of reference
The Rosetta Stone (examples of older translations which language by language have led us to quasi living languages like Latin, Greek and Hebrew.)
/this
Often in a language we already know exist merchant vocabulary lists for those we don't.
From that few words you can usually reverse engineer other words and the grammar.
Often Languages as well are close enough that you can transfer stuff over. Hebrew and Arab are for example REALLY close and it easy to learn the other if you know one of them.
There are some ancient languages where neither is the case. And guess what: We don't have a clue what they say.
So basically: for some a frame of reference DOES exist, some languages are very similar/related and can be used for each other, basing the rest off the few we know are definitely right, and if nothing else just everyone looking over each other's work and eventually agreeing/coming to a consensus?
Thanks for the replies! This is something I've always wondered about, especially for Sumerian and really ancient stuff like that.
Oh my god, you moron.... Rosetta stone has only egyptian and ancient greek on it, not hebrew or latin
you know you got it when it makes sense of all the texts you can find
Wow, you obvious don't understand and have no clue. He speaks of a method, cross translation from an unknown language to a known language and onto a third. Duh!
>Hebrew
>Latin
>ancient dead language
wut
is that everything, or is some missing from the tablet being broken and stuff?
I agree theyre wrong about Hebrew, but Latin is definitely a dead ancient language .
He had a text in egyptian and in ancient greek, just going by that with that it would be impossible to do a translation, the change happened because the french guy doing the translation realized that the native people in Egypt could speak a language related to it.
is ancient greek much different than modern greek..?
Not really. And people in Europe never forgot how to read ancient greek.
But user is talking about coptic and ancient egyptian.
Modern Greek has a simplified grammar and phonology, and the vocabulary has naturally changed over time, but the basic core of the language is the same, so a speaker of modern Greek can usually get the gist of an ancient text, although trying to translate may often lead to tragic misinterpretations. Biblical Greek (koine) texts are of course much easier than Ancient Greek (Homer).
ah okay, thanks!
For all the conquering, I'm surprised that there is much similarity at all between ancient and modern Egyptians! Wonder how genetically similar they are
The Copts are the descendants of the ancient egyptians.
Settled, old, developed and populated peoples are hard to completely erase. Specially genetically.
How about the modern people of Mesopotamia and the ancient Mesopotamians?
I know the Assyrians at least are still pretty much the same people.
Ancient Hebrew != Modern Hebrew.
The modern Greeks don't speak the same language of Plato and the modern Hebrews don't speak the same language of Solomon in the same way modern Italians don't speak the same language of Julius Caesar.
I can't say much except that all mesopotamians except sumerians were semitic peoples, like the arabs that live there.
I guess this is a good thread to ask in.
Why didn't Greek develop its own derivatives like Latin did with the Romance languages? Is it because Greeks got btfo by Arabs and Slavs?
specially modern hebrew since is basic a conlang like esperanto.
It did you just don't know about it.
Tsakonian is an example of it.
Because Greece is small as fuck? Pontic greek was apparently distinct before the turks genocided the place, although I don't know if it could be considered a different language or a dialect (the difference is almost always more political than linguistic, anyways).
Alexanders empire didnt spread it much?
The ERE wasn't small at all and the Romance languages didn't just develop in the Italian peninsula.
That's very little compared to what Latin became.
Wasn't the ERE just Greece and Anatolia for most of its history?
i think so, yeah
Outside of what you could call "greter Greece" including western Anatolia, greek was the mother language only for small urban elites. Most of the people spoke local languages like coptic or syriac. That's why they came to be used in churches opposed to the government.
Well in the case of indo European there were some guys who claimed that they had deciphered the language, they then all translated a never before translated text and all came to about the same conclusion, maybe it was Assyrian also, I might disremember.
You're thinking of Akkadian.
that makes more sense since Assyrians still exist today
