Angela Dansby has a BBC Travel post about a famous (among linguists) dialect of Greek:
As you enter the mountainous village of Pera Melana in Greece’s southern Peloponnese peninsula, you’re likely to hear the roar of scooters zooming down narrow roads and the chirps of birds stealing ripe fruit from trees. But if you approach the village’s central cafe, you’ll hear a rather unusual sound. It’s the buzz of conversations among elders in a 3,000-year-old language called Tsakonika. The speakers are the linguistic descendants of ancient Sparta, the iconic Greek city-state, and part of a rich cultural heritage and population called Tsakonian. […]
Today, only about 2,000 of the 10,000 Tsakonians, primarily elders, still speak Tsakonika at all, and the language is limited to 13 towns, villages and hamlets located around Pera Melana. While Greek is the region’s official language, Tsakonika is often spoken at home and casually in public here. Yet, its future remains uncertain. […]
Tsakonika isn’t just important to the identity and culture of Tsakonians, it is the only continuous legacy of the ancient Spartans. It’s also the oldest living language in Greece – predating modern Greek by about 3,100 years – and one of the oldest languages in Europe. […] Tsakonika is based on the Doric language spoken by the ancient Spartans and it is the only remaining dialect from the western Doric branch of Hellenic languages. In contrast, Greek descends from the Ionic and Attic dialects on the eastern branch. While each of these use a similar alphabet, Tsakonika has more phonetic symbols and differs in structure and pronunciation. Unsurprisingly, Tsakonika is closer to ancient than modern Greek, but none of these languages are mutually intelligible.
As you can see from that last chunk, there’s a fair amount of balderdash, as one expects in any popular piece on language (how can anyone say with a straight face that a modern dialect predates modern Greek by about 3,100 years?), but there’s a nice potted history of the region and descriptions of recent attempts to revive the dialect; this is promising:
The best effort to date is a three-volume dictionary published by Kounia’s uncle in 1986. Now several speakers are looking to update and republish it online. The municipalities of South and North Kynouria and the Tsakonian Archives morally support this initiative but lack the funds to do it.
Best of all, there’s an audio clip where you can hear a conversation in Tsakonian. Thanks, Trevor!
On Jan. 1, 900 BC., the Tsakonikan language emerged fully-armed from the head of Zeus (though some say it was from the head of [whoever was Sparta’s god]. I don’t see why you find that so hard to understand, Hat.
Now I am enlightened!
one of the oldest languages in Europe
Second only to Welsh, of course.
It’s even more remarkable they’ve kept the dialect going given that all remaining speakers are Laconic.
Huh, I had always thought the Spartans were Basque speakers.
Second only to Welsh, of course.
I think you mean Lithuanian, which, as everyone knows, is practically a dialect of Sanskrit.
You should all be writing for BBC News!
People are floating all these half-baked ideas with no apparent awareness of the Dravidian origins of all forms of Greek (via Illyrian and Hittite).
I was going to mention that but I figured I’d cede you the floor.
Via ancient Hebrew, Bayt Dravid.
Everyone knows that the langauge of ancients was clear and simple. Facebook like is its modern form.
“as everyone knows, is practically a dialect of Sanskrit.”
I tried to trace Qui veut retrouver sur les lèvres des hommes un écho de ce qu’a pu être la langue commune indo-européenne, va écouter les paysans lituaniens d’aujourd’hui
Supposedly it is from Les Annales des nationalités, № 5-6, p. 205, 1913
Though the labguage of the guardian of Eden was actually Proto, from which emerged Proto-Dravidian, and then Dravidian, and then all the other Proto- and Post-proto languages.
Everyone knows that the langauge of ancients was clear and simple. Facebook like is its modern form.
That is a common misconception, but actually the language of the ancients was really Proto-Emoji (see: Egyptian).
drasvi,
Apparently Prince Pyotr Kropotkin is to blame. He contributed this to the entry on Lithuanians in the 9th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1882:
“Their language has great similarities to the Sanskrit. It is affirmed that whole Sanskrit phrases are well understood by the peasants of the banks of Niemen”.
Matthew 5:37 — binary sufficeth well.
On a slightly more serious tangent: One thing that I find fascinating is how the Classical Spartans mythologized the Dorian invasion as the return of the Heracleidae, associating their elite with the greatest of the Bronze Age Greek heroes.
“Their language has great similarities to the Sanskrit. It is affirmed that whole Sanskrit phrases are well understood by the peasants of the banks of Niemen”.
Vanya, it must be easy to compose such a phrase. For a Russian some Sanskrit (and sometimes Hindi) words other than usual “three” (why 3 is the most universally preserved phonetic shape?) are surprisingly Russian. Up to a common (here) female name Sveta and common (there) female name Shweta. But the most famous (among Russians) example is “Vedas”. Baltic and Indo-Iranian converge here and there phonetically, and Lithuanian is quite conservative.
If anything that retains fragmentary mutual intelligibility with Sanskrit is Sanskrit, then Lithuanian is Sanskrit:-E
whoever was Sparta’s god
Apollo and Artemis.
In any case, Tsakonian (a name not related to Laconian) is not a language that has been evolving directly from Proto-Doric, which split from proto-Attic a couple of millennia ago. Indeed, Nick Nicholas’s monograph on it (mostly written in 1996-97 — as a break from his dissertation! — but not published until 2019) walks through the Swadesh 100 list for the three dialects of Tsakonian (Northern, Southern, and the extinct Pontic). Guess how many words he finds with a Classical-era Doric ancestor.
Two.
‘Belly’ is γαστήρ in Attic, but the Modern word is κοιλία, which in Attic meant ‘hollow’, a straightforward metaphor. But in Tsakonian (all three dialects) it is φούκ̔α /ˈfukʰa/, regularly < Doric φύσκα ‘large intestine, belly’. By the same token, ‘mountain’ is Attic ὄρος; in Modern it is βουνό regularly from Attic βουνός ‘hill’, and similarly in Pontic Tsakonian, which has more Modern Greek borrowings than the other dialects. But in peninsular Tsakonian it is σ̌ίνα (where σ̌ = /ʃ/ in modern Tsakonian spelling), < Doric θίς (gen. θινός) ‘bank, sandy hill’, although the derivation is not quite regular, or we’d get σίνα (cf. Doric σάλασσα ‘sea’ for Attic θάλασσα).
That’s it. The remaining 98 words are all either borrowings from Modern Greek or cognates to Modern Greek where Middle Greek is the common ancestor.
It’s true we have /y/ > /u/ instead of /i/, but so did Old Athenian and Maniot, both archaic compared to the contemporary standard. And there are occasional screaming Doricisms like α μάτι ‘mother’ (which is a Swadesh 200 word), and indeed essentially all native Tsakonian feminine nouns end in -α. There are deep archaisms like ϝαμνός /wamˈnos/ ‘lamb’ > Attic ἀμνός but Tsakonian βάνε, and much of the shouting is about them, but it would be surprising if the number of such ϝ /w/ > /v/ words exceeds five.
Much more interesting to Nick is what happens to the rest of the phonology. All consonant clusters either turn into affricates or get an epenthetic vowel: a Greek CVCVCV… language! A neat example is Northern Tsakonian άτσ̌οπο ‘man > husband’, as opposed to common Tsakonian αφροπο ‘person’, borrowed from older Modern Greek (the restored /n/ and /s/ in the contemporary standard come from Puristic). The word for ‘man’ in the other Tsakonian dialects is either άφροπο or is from Modern Greek άντρας < Attic ἀνήρ, gen. ᾰ̓νδρός.
The whole thing is a beautiful piece of historical lingustics, and I recommend it to anyone who knows at least some of the jargon.
“Apparently Prince Pyotr Kropotkin is to blame”
“Qui veut retrouver …” is a quotation from Meillet. I was not sure if Meillet actually said that and decided to find the source. I think I failed, because I don’t have a copy of les Annales des nationalités around:(
With experiments on peasants it must be trickier:(
In an account from the Council of Mantua Prussians are introduced as Bithynians of Prusias, who said to have attacked Romans and fled to Vistula.
This linguistic observation: “some foreign words sound familiar”, it was likely made by every person who happened to know two different languages. It is not that when I see teter attested in a Baltic dialect for “4”, I’m not surprised:).
This linguistic observation: “some foreign words sound familiar”, it was likely made by every person who happened to know two different languages.
Whenever I’m studying a new language, I always find lexical similarities to at least one language I already know, even when the languages are completely unrelated and have few or no shared loanwords from a common source.
Yes, and people really need to be taught the prevalence of coincidence very early in life.
Sometimes two languages are gratifyingly opposite, too, for example French and Dutch “je”. As Whorf has explained, no communication is possible between these two peoples.
Well, one must distinguish between the Rotterdam Dutch and the Goddam Dutch.
Early in life I read so many works of fiction where a main character, often the first-person narrator, says ich glaube nicht an Zufälle, “I don’t believe in coincidences/random”, at some point. Got on my nerves long before I found out about quantum physics.
(And no, those books did not have a religious message like “everything happens for a reason”.)
“There are no coincidences” is the first law of conspiracy theories.
(That said, there are real conspiracies out there, and their deniers and protectors rely heavily on universal anti-conspiracism for their arguments.)
A better religious message is: “Everything happens for a reason, but we have no idea what it is.”
It covers all but a few marginal cases.
…cuius quidem Bithiniti populi vestigia in ibi hodie apparent. Quare non nulli prisce lingue oracular retinentes ab Oolicis, Doricis, Vadicis et Ionitis populis conpetenter intelliguntur.
Well, this is in Lithuanian. Or in Italian. That is, in corrupted Latin. Is it saying some traces of those Bithynians can be seen to this day, and some retaining oracular(?) of former language can be properly understod by Aeolic(?), Doric, Attic(?) and Ionic people? Another text, from the same time:
Bithynici autem populi etiam in hactenus manent vestigia, quoniam nonnulli Prutheni priscae linguae retinentes oracula (or: vocabula) ab Aeolicis Doricis, Atticis (or: Vadicis) et Ionicis populis competenter intelliguntur.
With a translation: “To this day, however, there remain some vestiges of the Bithynian people, since some Prussians – retaining expressions (words) of the former language from the Aeolian, Dorian, Athenian and Ionian peoples – understand these correctly.” (from Prelude to Baltic Linguistics, chapter 4 The Latin Theory and Vilnius Latinizers, p. 49).
It seems, we disagree here as to who understood whom. But maybe he is right. Let’s call it “mutual intelligibility”:)
Wow. This book has one more example of experimental linguistics:
@de
The source of “Everything has a reason” seems to be Ecclesiastes, which is probably not the most representative canonical text. I would go more for something like “the Creation is knowable by observation and revelation, and understandable by reason and revelation”. But you have no doubt made a closer study than I have.
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” (Ecclesiastes, 9:11.)
I once attended a series of sermons on Ecclesiastes. Brave preacher. He was American. American Presbyterians know no fear.
The passage tends to remind me of Alan Bennett doing his uncannily plausible imitation of an Anglican bishop: “We worship God in His aspect of existence; others, in His aspect of nonexistence …”
I remember being annoyed after my first English lessons in fourth grade that English and translates as Danish og, but not vice versa. (Danish and is instead duck). Which is why something, according to Whorf.
Eccl 9:11 translated by George Orwell with a crucial emendation by Ivor Brown:
“Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that optimum or inadequate performance in the trend of competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”
(Orwell wrote “success or failure in competitive activities”, which Brown rejected as insufficiently — something.)
Apparently Prince Pyotr Kropotkin is to blame.
and of course uncle pyot would have a killer deadpan, so there’s know way of intuiting the odds of him trolling the hell out of the Encyclopedia Britannica…
Ha, I like the idea!
Well, it was not him.
I think Lithuanian became Sanskrit in early 19th century, when Greek and Latin ceased to be cool. Sanskrit is also more specific than “Scythian”. Let us note, that “Scythian”, “Aryan” and even “Sanskrit” can serve as metaphors of what we call “Indo-European” in absence of modern idea of PIE.
Even 15th century ideas like “Lithuanian is corrupted Latin”, based on similarities are correct. We can not expect them to produce the modern idea of PIE with reconstructions and laringeals h₁h₂h₃h₄h₅ at once, can we?
They expressed ideas of shared ancestry (of Lithuanian and Italian), and langauge change. They explained shared vocubularty this way. This is a lot. As an example of “common root” they took Latin – but Latin and Greek were the only old languages they knew, and if they are not the root – they are close to it.
Also, the Lithuanians were the last pagans in Europe, and their feigned retreat was what really defeated the Teutonic Knights at Tannenberg / Gruenwald.
Last pagans, and once the largest state in Europe:)
P.S. but let us note: ethnic Lithuanian people and speakers is one thing, princes, nobility and subjects of the princedom is another thing.
At Gruenwald there were regiments from, say, Smolensk. Most of the subjects were Russian speakers and Lithuanian legal code of 16th century was also in Russian. By “Russian” I mean, the self-designation. The idea to apply “Russian” exclusively to Moscovia is a new and confusing development:(
I note this not in the sense “Russians are cool” – why, Lithuanians are absolutely cool too (and among modern Baltic state it is the one that is not anyhow anti-Russian, despite the history of occupation since Stalin’s time).
But the history of Lithuanian state is history of my ethnicity and the history of Baltic speakers – who once lived a couple dozens kilmometers form Moscow – is history of my state and it is not how it is taught. Mostly everything is reduced to competition of Moscow and Poland for power, where you choose one of two superpowers as “good guys”, and ignore losers to the east:)
You should check out this 2012 thread.
Thank you, I will. Chancery Slavonic implies rather Russified Slavonic than Slavonicized Russian. I do not know how do they tell one from the other:-)
Before the Second World War, the language spoken in a third of its homes was Yiddish; the language of its streets, churches, and schools was Polish; and the language of its countryside was Belarusian. In 1939, almost no one spoke Lithuanian in Vilnius. In that year, the city was seized from Poland by the Soviet Union.
Wikipedia gives for Vilna and Vilna uezd in 1897 (here)
6 514 4.2% 87 382 41.85% Belarusian
3 131 2.1% 72 899 34.92% Lithuanian
47 795 30.9% 25 293 12.11% Polish
30 967 20.0% 6 939 3.32% Russian
61 847 40.0% 15 377 7.37% Yiddish
But for modern Vilnius and Vilnius muninicipality it has
88 408 16.5% 49 648 52.1% Poles.
So the countryside has reversed:) And it is one reason why they don’t seem to have tensions with local Russians (unlike Latvians): they do have tensions with Poland. But I assume most of today’s Lithuania absolutely spoke Lithuanian.
By the way, some (or all?) of oldest documents of vernacular Belarusian are in Arabic script .
There was a turn of history that I regret. There was a time when there was a collection of princedoms here.
Lithuania was one of them.
Speaking of their paganism, Baltic pagan priests were known in neighbouring Russian lands as well. And as for Orthodox Christianity, in 14 century there existed Lithuanian Metropolia and some Byzantine author referred to them as the fourth Rus. It of course has to do with big politics, but what I mean here is that Lithuania was a part of that “collection of princedoms”. A Lithunian prince was defending Moscow from Tokhtamysh.
Later Moscow would conquer other princedoms. Lithuania, the other powerful state, would join Poland. In 16th century calls against barbarian Russian and for Latinization of education (and, hopefully, of everything) were supported by the apparent fact that Lithuanian language is as much “from Latin” as Italian and Spanish:-)
Yet it was a major center of Russian literacy and a major document of Russian 16th century literature is the exchange between Ivan the Terrible and Kurbsky, in exile in Lithuania.
What I regret about this, is:
Most of major breakthrough in humanty’s history seem to have happened not in empires at all, but in regions split in smaller competing states, but united by common literature. So are Greek cities, so is Europe.
If Russia remained a collection of princedoms, it would be preoccupied with internal affairs and self-contained. “Major breakthroughs” are not guarranteed. We could remain backwards, because The breakthrough of the time was happening in Europe. But what is guarranteed is development of a very peculiar culture. This could be interesting.
Is modernizaion Peter-the-Great–style so cool? Why for most Russians it meant transition from serfdom to slavery then?
Divided we stand. United we fall.
Back to Latin, Lithuanians are people who say naktìs for “noctis” (I can see *noktis in Russian noch’, but that is because I know the history), výras for “vir” and avìs for “ovis”.
I think, in any given century — since the times when -s nominative was fashionable in Europe — there was at least one person in Baltic region who knew some Greek and Latin. They always could compare, and always they could see similarities. One famous example is:
Dievas dave dantis, [Dievas] duos [ir] duonos (without diacritics), “God gave teeth, God will give bread”.
It is also attested in Prussian, in Onomasticum by Leonhard Thurneysser: Deves does dantes, Deves does geitka
It is still compared to Greek, Latin and Sanskrit (Google will immediately offer lots of books doing so). I found a comparison to Greek in 1745, but such comparisons could be part of Latin teaching practice well before.
Most of major breakthrough in humanity’s history seem to have happened not in empires at all, but in regions split in smaller competing states, but united by common literature.
Yes, this is my take on things as well. I don’t like huge monster states that gobble up everything around them, and that includes my own US of A. Small is beautiful.
Last to adopt Christianity, and last to adopt antisemitism, which is why Jews settled there early on.
>You should check out this 2012 thread.
Or this: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-issa-valley-milosz/1030166466
…but most of the rest happened in China, or even in the birthplace of centralization, revolutionary France.
The numerous city-states of Sumer and the double kingdom of Egypt are not very different from each other in this regard.
One breakthrough happened in the Korean kingdom and was undertaken by the king himself… but that could be interpreted as a fragment of the Sinosphere.
In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, one of the points Paul Kennedy makes is that with a system of smaller, frequently warring states, there is a lot of pressure to keep innovating technologically, economically, and organizationally. Because frequent military ventures become such a strain on a state’s human and material resources, the tangible political rewards for even marginal improvements in efficiency and effectiveness can be immense. Conversely, states that failed to innovate were often doomed to political chaos and collapse. (The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is a signal example of this kind of failure. In the late seventeenth century, the Commonwealth still had the innate military and economic base to be a major power, but the country was failing to keep pace with the modernizing political and economic reforms of its neighbors. As Russia, Austria-Hungary, Sweden, and Prussia worked to retrench and centralize power, the Commonwealth never took the steps needed to curtail internal disloyalty and foreign meddling, leading to the state’s ultimate dismemberment.)
I read on WP the story of Cappadocian Greek, thought extinct until 2005, when thousands of speakers turned out to be living in Greece. I didn’t think that sort of thing happened in Europe anymore since very long ago.
…but most of the rest happened in China, or even in the birthplace of centralization, revolutionary France.
The numerous city-states of Sumer and the double kingdom of Egypt are not very different from each other in this regard.
The degree of inter-state competition is certainly only one if the factors. That said, China had long periods of disunity, and Egypt had such periods as well. The habit of innovation can go on for a while even when state structures become more monolithic. And for the theory to work, you need competing states of roughly equal size, not necessarily mini-states; these competing states can also show different degrees of centralisation – trying out different political structures is part of the competition of ideas. Revolutionary France is an exhibit for the theory, not a counter-example; a country that tried out new concepts and gained a temporary advantage, until the other European powers caught up (helped by Napoleon’s hubris and 1812). Concerning China or Egypt, it would be useful to check how innovation correlated with political (dis-)unity and with pressure from outside.
“The numerous city-states of Sumer and the double kingdom of Egypt are not very different from each other in this regard.”
Hard to say. Russians use light bulbs in the same century as Moroccans (samovars too). What does it tell about the authors of both technologies?
Greece, Europe and Renaissance Italy are the most famous examples of quick progress in science and culture. Italy’s contribution is less obvious. But this is a list of most famous periods of this sort. They all match the pattern: a space divided politically, but united by culture or langauge.
I also think, China too belongs to the list of celebrities.
For me personally physics in Germany is a very impressive exmaple. German-speaking space was partly divided and partly recently united.
I can of course list many similar spaces where exactly scientific progress did not happen (it is hard to speak about culture) – and spaces where it did happen, but that are not that famous. But if we are going to test it statistically we need accurate definitions:/
I need Italy here, because it is a celebrity, and thus it was not me who generated the list. I mean: you say, Latin America is such a space, but they haven’t succeeded in anything. And I say: “they do not always succeed. Name me a successful empire”, or: “they have not succeeded yet“, or “but samba!!!” – and indeed, art and new social structures are important too.
Without definitions it is not serious:(
The above is a disclaimer: I don’t think, examples and objections have much value. Now,
China:
The Warrying States period was discussed in another thread (and Russian princedoms too). Its other name is:
The Hundred Schools of Thought period.
The name changes depending on whether you study political history or something else:-/
Egypt and Mesopotamia:
Do we know who was making inventions, and who was borrowing? The ability to invent (creativity) is one thing, the ability to borrow (receptivity) is a different thing. If you borrow it centuries later, then maybe you don’t posses the second ability. Can we trace the flow of inventions, preferably at the scale of decades? I honestly, have a very vague idea of this. I think, for writing Sumers are thought to be the first, but no one can be sure. What else? Astronomy, mathematics, agriculture?
Another space that matches the definition is Semitic/Aramaic-speaking Middle East as a whole. I don’t know if it counts. There are not many empires of this size that we could compare to it, and there are too many other spaces covered by a language – “Berbers”, “Gaul” or “the Indo-European world”. And I need a period of quick progress. But it was exceptionally good at producing prophets and Jews.
Apparently it is not quite as certain as was once thought that cuneiform writing is older than hieroglyphic; the evidence seems pretty scanty. It also depends rather on a somewhat arbitrary judgment as to the point at which it is sensible to regard the two systems as real writing: both had forerunners that had been around for quite a while before anyone thought of sometimes using symbols purely to represent sounds, and for quite a while longer than that (well into the third millennium) this use was the exception rather than the rule.
The greater achievement is hieroglyphic, due to some anonymous genius who realised you could represent the sounds of different words by extracting the consonants and ignoring the vowels. Hence (eventually) all alphabets …
Syllabaries have been independently invented a good many times.
Since recently Safaitic inscriptions are a bit more famous than they used to be: Ahmad al-Jallad published a grammar sketch. These are hundreds of thousands small inscriptions on rocks in volcanic desert, likely by shepherds, in dialects close to Arabic.
One of mysteries about them is: why on Earth these shepherds needed writing? Here, in USSR, we built tens thousands schools and prepared millions teachers and taught formerly illeterate peasants and consider it a huge breakthrough that India has failed to repeat. And these bedouins from 100 AD just learned to write for fun!? On their own?
Actually, someone needs to travel to where modern shepherds live and also write on rocks (they do!) and ask.
What I mean, connecting spread of a technology to its “usefulness“, and, improtantly, to “civilization” (like Egyptian one) is not necessarly easy.
On European disunity: Habsburg Austro-Hungarian and Czarist Russian contributions to science support drasvi’s point. These empires not only independent states, but they were far different than the modernized states in many ways and could be called “backward”. But their copntributions to science and technology were very considerable.
weren’t the originators of writing mostly trading peoples and government administrators? There have always been a lot of urban Arabs, and the Bedouins have always been recognized as a competing force (Ibn Khaldun made that is theme).
The page in al-Jallad’s grammar.
An introduction to a book about pictures in the desert. It has some discussion of reasons to write on page 8. But, importantly, it has some pictures. The basalt desert looks exactly how I imagined a basalt desert.
😮 I had no idea.
Apparently it’s 2015, though, not 2005.
I’m not sure that achievement was that great. A picture stands for a thing, or for the word for that thing in all its grammatical forms. The grammatical forms differ mostly by their vowels, so the breakthrough is when you use the same sign to write unrelated words that happen to have the same consonants in the same order; that they may still differ in their vowels instead of being complete homonyms may not have been salient.
That couldn’t happen in Sumerian, where the same sign could only be used for complete homonyms (…or synonyms).