Essentially the things that have gotten me interested in Linguistics again, proto languages are the languages we believe to have spoken before splitting off into smaller branches. An example of this would be proto-indo-european which is believed to be language from which most European and some Asian languages are derived from. The language has been reconstructed a few times to varying degrees of accuracy but we have a fair idea of how it would have sounded. So, I know we have at least a few linguists on EC, do they seem interesting to you. Do they have any practical purpose? I first thought that they could be used as a Lingua Franca, anyone else?
You'd probably enjoy this: http://gormendizer.co.za/wp-content...ttgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf
I'm no linguist myself, but I do find older, or even dead languages to be quite interesting. After all, even dead languages still play an important role in modern culture, even if it is an invisible role. So long as interest in our past exists, the language still survives in some way.
I see them possibly playing a part in archaeology - there's a huge debate over where exactly Indo-European originated from, exactly, in a way that parallels the migrations of Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic peoples. That's just one example. Perhaps knowing exactly how the first languages sounded and started? There's still a huge grey area there, and lots of speculation and theory.
More than a proto-language, I have quite a big interest in the Scots language, which is technically English, but with a tinge of Scottish accent into it. There's actually a wikipedia section written in Scots. I find it hilarious. An article on Buildings.
Of course they are interesting! As a linguistics major, I'm fascinated by proto-languages and historical linguistics in general. It's very interesting to reconstruct a proto-language and see what languages like English, Sanskrit, and Irish Gaelic can have in common. Until the 18th century, I don't think people even realized that the ancient language of India (Sanskrit) could possibly be related to Latin and Greek, Europe's most influential ancient languages. But when you look at the reconstructed roots, you can see where the languages have common ancestors: The PIE root "bĘ°er" meaning "to bear, to carry, to bring", gives us: English: bear Latin: fero Greek: phero Sanskrit: bharami Old Irish: biru Old Armenian: berem So even a language as foreign to us as Old Armenian has a word that sounds much like our word "bear". That's what's so interesting to me, that they're all connected and they follow regular patterns. Words that begin with "b" in our language, and are derived from "bh", always begin with "f" in Latin, like "brother vs. frater", "bean vs. faba", "beech vs. fagus", "be vs. fui", etc. I guess it could be used as a lingua franca, but proto-languages lack all the developments that have happened in daughter languages. Some people have attempted to create lingua francas based on proto-languages, however.
For me, the 'protos' can be very useful to understand certain splits in languages. Such as a different usage in words, or different phonemic shifts. That's what I find interesting about these kind of languages. As for practical usage, I don't think they are very useful. Usually the vocabulary is outdated due to contemporary words not existing.
I just read that the PIE root for "hundred" (kmtom) might have originally just meant "a large number/amount". Not very useful to us
Lol, I meant that using a proto language today as a native language is not very practical, due to the missing words. :lol: I was not very clear, sorry!
I like proto-languages. That's the secret of picking up a lot of languages. If you already learned Danish, then go ahead and learn Norwegian, Icelandic, and Swedish. I plan on learning German (and becoming fluent in it), then moving onto Dutch due to the similarities. I also want to conquer Catalan and Italian for the same reason. I understand them to quite an extent, since they're in the same language family, why not? I find it interesting how much Finnish and Hungarian are related to each other though.
They have more academic purpose than any practical communicative purpose. In any case, language shapes and is shaped by its context; the languages we speak now reflect our world, our societies, and thing relevant to us. Proto-languages reflect a world so distant from what we have, older than known history. ---------- Post added 16th Oct 2014 at 07:36 AM ---------- As far as I'm aware, Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian (as well as Karelian, if one considers that a separate language and not just a very independent Finnish dialect), originated in the Urals millennia ago. At least I know the peoples who speak those languages did genealogically. Of course, Finnish and Hungarian are not mutually intelligible, less so than English and French or English and German, unlike Finnish and Estonian.
It has been tried, believe it or not! Check this out. Essentially, a group of people have tried to adapt reconstructed Proto-Indo-European into a modern day language, for the purpose of it being a lingua franca. They've added modern words, coined from reconstructed Proto-Indo-European roots, so you can express pretty much anything in this language. Unfortunately, because it's based on a reconstructed Proto-language that was spoken 6,000 years ago, dnghu doesn't really resemble any modern language, so its use is somewhat limited.
Language Games: Philosophers Play Pictionary - Existential Comics Beetle in a Box - Existential Comics
That is a very interesting link. What I find so interesting about PIE is that it is so unlike most of the world's languages. It breaks almost all the world trends of phonology: has only mid vowels (most of the world's languages lack mid-vowels or did in their early stages), it has voiced aspirates without unvoiced counterparts (also extremely rare), it has an array of labiovelars (rare in the world's languages), and has numerous consonantal vowels (also extremely uncommon)...how a language originated like that is fascinating to me.
Yeah, PIE (Proto-Indo-European) as reconstructed is quite weird in terms of phonology. Many mainstream PIE-ists think it only had two contrastive vowels, /e/ and /o/. All other vowel variations can be explained by laryngeals and by semi-vowels alternating with high vowels in certain positions. Nobody really knows where PIE comes from. When you go so far back in time, it becomes more and more difficult to establish connections between language families so perhaps we'll never know if Indo-European was related to other language families or not.
Finnish and Hungarian might be related, but they're not alike exactly. What I do find fascinating though is that I can understand parts of ancient Turkic/Whateverish that was spoken somewhere far in Central Asia, thanks to my native Turkish. Was doing some research on mythology and folklore and was in for a few surprises, such as also basically understanding Crimean for the most part as well.
I like learning about the grammars and phonemes since I grew up in a bilingual household. I like all the obscure languages and ethnolinguistics.
