Languages of the Silk Road.

Hannes A. Fellner has a post on the Junge-Akademie-Blog, Sprachkontakte an der Seidenstraße [Language contact on the Silk Road], that has a good many nice bits, like the section “Gegen Sprachpurismus” [Against language purism], and its whole thrust is against any sort of language essentialism (music to my ears), but I’m bringing it here for a map that even non-German-speakers can appreciate, the map “Sprachvielfalt an der östlichen Seidenstraße” [Language diversity on the eastern Silk Road] (scroll down until you see a map). It shows the amazing variety of languages found by archeologists in the area, including Sogdian, Pahlavi, Tocharian A and B, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese, Hebrew, Syriac, and Greek. That should be our image of the past (and, if you ask me, our ideal), not the linguistic monocultures too many people idealize these days. (Via a Facebook post from A Comprehensive Edition of Tocharian Manuscripts.)

Comments

  1. From that map I learned of Tumshuq Saka (“Tumšuqsakisch”) a sister language of Khotanese.

  2. David Marjanović says

    Der Standard is the best of Austria’s large newspapers, but it has an adblock detector. Bah. As if I’d ever click on an ad!

  3. Sprachkontakte an der Seidenstraße sounds suspiciously like a phishing operation aimed at Victor Mair.

    “Log in using your UPenn credentials to get access to our list of sprachbund words!”

  4. Google offered to translate the cookie agreement into English, aber es hat nicht funktioniert. Unwilling to sign up for something I don’t understand, I am left an der Tür warten.

  5. Here is a link to the map image itself (which will skip all the ad blocking shenanigans):

    https://i.ds.at/ZE27Dw/rs:fill:1600:0/plain/2023/02/14/kartesprachen2BreiteKLEINER1200pix.jpg

  6. PlasticPaddy says

    @maidhc
    Wenn Dritte Ihre Daten via Cookies auf unserer Webseite zu Werbezwecken verarbeiten, liegt die Verantwortung für die datenschutzrechtliche Konformität bei den jeweiligen Dritten.

    This looks like a typical statement to limit liability. I don’t think these things work (except to discourage or delay litigators or get insurers or third-party advertisers to pay related costs).

    Im Privacy Manager haben die auf unserer Website werbenden Dritten die Möglichkeit Sie über diese Verarbeitungstätigkeiten zu informieren, und somit eine informierte Zustimmung einzuholen. Die Verarbeitungen zu digitalen Werbezwecken erfolgen dabei zu den im Privacy Manager aufgezählten Zwecken. Über Verarbeitungen, die in der Verantwortung des STANDARD liegen, können Sie sich in unserer Datenschutzerklärung näher informieren.

    I do not know if the Privacy Manager allows a blanket “reject all”, and based on a quick reading of the whole thing, I would say that allowing 3rd-party advertisers to access your registration details or site use is part of their business model. The data processing that Der Standard itself does would seem to be more for internal/statistical purposes, but also includes ad-targeting. If you are a non-Austrian, I don’t know how effective or intrusive theit pop-ups or push notifications are, but they provide your info to Adobe and Facebook….

    Persönliche Daten, die Sie bei Ihrer Registrierung selbst hinterlegen, können Sie dort selbst ändern und löschen, oder Sie können den gesamten Account via E-Mail an foren@derstandard.at löschen lassen.

    This means you can “deregister”.

    You can get a no-ads digital Pur subscription for Eur 8 (monthly) or Eur 96 (yearly) with a discount on the first month/year.

    Here is a laudatory review of the Standard Pur subscription (the reviewer did not like similar offerings of “Spiegel” and “Zeit” in Germany:

    Das Pur-Abo von Standard.at: Wirklich ganz ohne

    Die österreichische Nachrichtenseite standard.at führte als erstes deutschsprachiges Medium ein werbe- und trackingfreies Abo ein. Und im Vergleich zu den Pur-Abos von Spiegel und Zeit muss man nicht viel dazu schreiben: Es ist in gleicher Weise werbefrei, aber darüber hinaus enthält es wirklich keine einzige Trackingeinbettung. Keine Reichweitenmessung, keine interne Nutzungsanalyse, kein Remarketingtool – auch nicht bei Login oder Registrierung. Der Server sendet nur die eigene Website und bindet dabei externe Content-Hoster ein (die aber keine Cookies oder Nutzerdaten erhalten). So gesehen passt der Name „Pur“ nur für das Abo des Standard. Für Datenschutzinteressierte ist es uneingeschränkt zu empfehlen.

    Source: https://netzpolitik.org/2020/nicht-ganz-ohne/

  7. J.W. Brewer says

    Unless I’m missing something, the map seems to muddle together apples (languages spoken side-by-side contemporaneously in a given location) and oranges (languages spoken at different times, perhaps many centuries apart, at the same location). To move to more recent times, how many different non-Sinitic languages were spoken simultaneously in the early 20th century by residents of the various foreign enclaves in Shanghai or other treaty-port concessions? Probably over a dozen in the most diverse such case? Plus however many Sinitic languages you may want to say were current in any such port.

  8. Re “It shows the amazing variety of languages found by archeologists in the area … That should be our image of the past (and, if you ask me, our ideal), not the linguistic monocultures too many people idealize these days,” what does it really mean to have a variety of languages?

    If a language is defined based on mutual intelligibility, the existence of multiple languages seems to simply imply that many people are unable to understand others. Similarly, the existence of a single language seems to imply every person is able to understand every other person by definition. Is it not better for every person to be able to communicate with every other person than it is for people to be unintelligible to others? Why should we value misunderstanding?

  9. Sigh. If that’s the way you feel, I’m not going to change your mind.

  10. If there are multiple languages, but people are multilingual, they can understand each other. Well enough, in fact, for the Silk Road to have prospered for a very long time.

  11. Besides, in our glorious ChatGPT future, everyone will be understandable to everyone, in whatever language they employ, for the limited ends left to us to pursue.

  12. If there are multiple languages, but people are multilingual, they can understand each other. Well enough, in fact, for the Silk Road to have prospered for a very long time.

    If every person was multilingual in the sense that they knew for example both English & Spanish, I would consider them to speak one language under “language is defined based on mutual intelligibility.” It would only be considered two different languages if there were at least some people who only knew Spanish & others who only knew English.

  13. You have truly unusual ideas about language, I’ll say that for you.

  14. If every person was multilingual in the sense that they knew for example both English & Spanish, I would consider them to speak one language under “language is defined based on mutual intelligibility.” It would only be considered two different languages if there were at least some people who only knew Spanish & others who only knew English.

    Above we have a fine example of testarudez, with a nice collection of intelligible words, heaped into a mysterious conclusion. Não é?

  15. Stu Clayton says

    testarudez

    Good to learn that word in Spanish. People of that disposition hunt me down, particularly at work. I like to have names for things that chap my ass.

    Não é?

    Pois é !

  16. David Eddyshaw says

    I think Caesar has a point. If absolutely everyone who spoke English spoke Spanish and vice versa, ti would not be unreasonable to regard them as two registers (or something) of the same language.

    The famous Vaupés region in Amazonia is a bit like that. Come to that, Arabs writing in modern Standard Arabic do not (I think) conceptualise this as writing in a foreign language, though an outsider would naturally see it as writing in a quite different language to what the writer actually speaks.

  17. I feel the question “what does it really mean to have a variety of languages?” followed by the potential answer “If a language is defined based on mutual intelligibility” in the original post made it clear what I meant. I had not intended to say this was the only interpretation.

  18. The “mutual intelligibility” definition of language is meant only to clarify, however vaguely, the boundary between separate languages and separate dialects: (monolingual) Spanish and Portuguese speakers speak differently and they can’t understand each other, so those are counted as seprate languages. Argentine and Mexican Spanish speakers speak differently but they can understand each other, so those are counted as dialects of the same language, not as separate languages (caveats and exceptions galore apply.) That’s all.

  19. (P.S. I just learned that galore is a borrowing from Irish.)

  20. Is it not better for every person to be able to communicate with every other person than it is for people to be unintelligible to others?

    Over the last 50 years, the most bitter conflicts in Europe have been between peoples who speak the same language – Northern Ireland, ex-Yugoslavia, Russia vs Ukraine (with most of the Russian antagonism directed at Russian speaking Ukrainians, not Western Ukrainians).

    Apparently people find other people who speak the same language but don’t want to be part of their tribe vastly more threatening than “real foreigners”.

  21. @DE If absolutely everyone who spoke English spoke Spanish and vice versa, ti [sic] would not be unreasonable to regard them as two registers (or something) …

    So are there examples of multiple-register (or something) languages/dialects where one has gender, the other not? Or where one has a parallel set of vocabulary for nearly all everyday topics, as well as vocabulary cognate (for some very generous interpretation) with the other?

    To answer @Caesar’s drift: sociolinguistically, as soon as one language/dialect group suspects the other is beginning to understand them, they’ll talk with a thicker accent and/or throw in more argot. Using ‘in’ vs ‘out’ language is an ‘Act of Identity’ as one Professor I studied with put it.

    Big-endians vs little-endians.

  22. Jen in Edinburgh says

    I mean, the idea that people could cooperate better if they understood each other goes back at least to the Tower of Babel – I get that hat is on god’s side of the question, but it’s not an unheard of notion!

  23. David Eddyshaw says

    So are there examples of multiple-register (or something) languages/dialects where one has gender, the other not?

    Modern Standard Arabic has cases – spoken Arabics, not. Many Australian languages have (or had) a separate “mother-in-law” register in which all common vocabulary is replaced (though admittedly the morphology and syntax are unaltered,)

    (I applaud your desire to cite my ipsissima verba, BTW. These things will matter to future scholars, naturally keen to garner every scrap that might illuminate Eddyshaw Thought for posterity.)

  24. ipsissima verba ?

    I thought you were exemplifying your point: Spanish ti = English ‘you’. And illustrating that it was perfectly possible para ti in Spanglish to chop about the grammar whilst remaining intelligible.

  25. David Eddyshaw says

    Hah! Once again, you have overestimated me! Bwahahahah!

  26. Stu Clayton says

    Big-endians vs little-endians.

    Different types of computer hardware have one or the other, thus defusing the issue. What a cop-out. Tolerance for all.

  27. the map designers really made that plateau a dead ringer for anatolia (down to lake van over by dunhuang), didn’t they? with pontus still a linguistic hotspot!

  28. David Marjanović says

    Apparently people find other people who speak the same language but don’t want to be part of their tribe vastly more threatening than “real foreigners”.

    Yugoslavia is itself a case in point. Slovenia was let go after a few days of skirmishes. Croatia… not. North Macedonia just quit quietly.

  29. Indeed, the article first applying the names big-endian and little-endian to computer hardware and communications is entitled “On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace”. Note the publication date. Forty years later the peace we have is, of course, a pax romana: big-endianism is a niche like non-Chalcedonian Christianity.

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