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.
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