You can hear the representative of the ancient Egyptian language, Middle Egyptian, starting at the 3:56 time mark. Unfortunately, I do not know what they are saying!
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Interesting videos. It is a pity they had no translation to what they said in all these ancient languages.
I see that the Phoenician language is illustrated by an animation of a facial reconstruction of the so called Byrsa boy, who was found in 1994 at Byrsa, the walled citadel above the harbor of ancient Carthage. His remains was dated to the 6th century BC
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^ Yes, but again I question the accuracy of the superficial features, skin color, hair etc.
The Mayan didn't look Mayan and the Chinese guy looked half-Chinese. I was surprised the Egyptian man actually looked Egyptian as in Baladi though I had a hard time hearing his speech as well as a few others because the voices came out hushed like whispers.
It's actually difficult to reconstruct the sound of languages especially Afrasian languages like Egyptians since typically only consonants were expressed. I wonder how they were to construct Middle Chinese since that script is based on characters.
Archeopteryx Member # 23193
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The Mayan is inspired by the film character Middle Eye in Mel Gibsons film Apocalypto from 2006. He was played by Gerardo Taracena a Mexican film and theatre actor and dancer.
BrandonP Member # 3735
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: I wonder how they were to construct Middle Chinese since that script is based on characters.
They're probably linking each character in the script to a modern Chinese word. Though that does make me wonder how confident we can be that every historical document written with Chinese characters necessarily represents the Chinese we're familiar with today. What if someone who spoke a totally different language (e.g. Mongolian or Vietnamese) was to write in Chinese characters? Would we translate the text as Chinese or something else?
Djehuti Member # 6698
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The only direct link we have with Middle Egyptian language is modern Coptic; however the Coptic we have today is only the Boharic (northern) dialect. The Sahidic dialect is extinct, though as Ausar and some linguists have pointed out remnants survive in Sa'idi Arabic dialect. The same way Nahuatl (Aztec) survives in rural dialects of Spanish in Mexico or Maya vestiges in Yucatan Spanish.
Punos_Rey Member # 21929
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: I wonder how they were to construct Middle Chinese since that script is based on characters.
They're probably linking each character in the script to a modern Chinese word. Though that does make me wonder how confident we can be that every historical document written with Chinese characters necessarily represents the Chinese we're familiar with today. What if someone who spoke a totally different language (e.g. Mongolian or Vietnamese) was to write in Chinese characters? Would we translate the text as Chinese or something else?
In itself a problem as the literary Chinese did not directly correspond to vernacular spoken Chinese dialects at that time. There has been work to reconstruct the sounds of Classical and Old Chinese though
As far as your other question, depending on the document it wouldn't correspond with modern Chinese dialects. For the last part such things do still happen, consider Japanese for instance which has largely derived its written system from classical Chinese and has certain readings for Chinese characters in addition to the way they're regularly pronounced in Japanese.
Djehuti Member # 6698
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^ You are correct Punos. That's why I question some of these reconstructions because the written scripts may not always preserve the exact word sounds. Take Egyptian and other Afrasian languages which originally only expressed consonants and not vowels.
It is only in more derived scripts where the exact sounds are preserved like Korean Hangul and Japanese Nihongo etc. as opposed to the original Chinese character system.
BrandonP Member # 3735
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: The only direct link we have with Middle Egyptian language is modern Coptic; however the Coptic we have today is only the Boharic (northern) dialect.
Do you think these could be descended from more ancient dialects of Egyptic?
Ibis Member # 23674
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Yes, but again I question the accuracy of the superficial features, skin color, hair etc.
The Mayan didn't look Mayan and the Chinese guy looked half-Chinese. I was surprised the Egyptian man actually looked Egyptian as in Baladi though I had a hard time hearing his speech as well as a few others because the voices came out hushed like whispers.
It's actually difficult to reconstruct the sound of languages especially Afrasian languages like Egyptians since typically only consonants were expressed. It's actually difficult to reconstruct the sound of languages especially Afrasian languages like Egyptians since typically only consonants were expressed. I wonder how they were to construct Middle Chinese since that script is based on characters.
Agreed, It's interesting that we have become so accustomed to vowels that we can't even wrap our heads around how a writing form that doesn't use them would sound like.
Djehuti Member # 6698
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^ That's because in Afroasiatic languages vowels are more diverse in sound expression than consonants so the latter is easier to express. Plus all root words in Afroasiatic are essentially consonant based but the problem is that the vowels effect how the word is conjugated. This is why when reading early Semitic scripts you have to figure out the context of the sentence. Because Egyptian hieroglyphs are character based, you have an easier time with the meaning due to the specific characters used.
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Do you think these could be descended from more ancient dialects of Egyptic?
Yes, Coptic is a direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian. From what I've read, Egypt has always been linguistically divided between the Delta and the Valley. In The Tales of Sinhue for example, the protagonist Sinhue who is from the Delta says he can barely understand the speech Egyptians from the southern valley. Many scholars take this to mean that there was a dialectic difference with some or barely intelligibility. So these were the ancestors of Boharic Coptic and Sa'idic Coptic with the latter becoming extinct and the former being preserved as liturgy of the Coptic Church in the Delta.
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