How do we know old/ancient pronunciations?

[Lemur866]

If you just mean how do we know what people were speaking 6000 years ago before writing was invented, here’s the article on Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European language - Wikipedia

This reconstruction has been an ongoing project for literally 200 years when the correspondences between Indo-Iranian and European languages was first noted.

As for how long people have been speaking regular language, that’s an open question. Anatomically modern humans appeared around 200,000 ago. However, behaviorally modern people are only known from something like 50,000 years ago. Maybe the change to modern behavior was sparked by some sort of linguistic revolution. But that’s speculative. As far as we know the first anatomically modern humans had fully developed language. And even archaic humans almost certainly had language, we just don’t know how different it was compared to modern human language. Archaic humans - Wikipedia

At one point we have today’s fully modern humans who have fully developed languages, and at another point we have our common ancestor with chimpanzees who have complex vocalizations and gesture but don’t have language. Where that line happened is very speculative.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

Prescriptivism is nothing new, and corrective handbooks written in late antiquity give us an idea of how their compilers though words should be pronounced–i.e. the classical Latin, old way; versus the patterns of pronunciation and usage that were developing in everyday speech of the time. An example is the Appendix Probi from around 300 CE; this was essentially list of words implying for each one, "pronounce it like this, not like that. Even by this time the list is replete with examples illustrating the phonological developments that accompanied the evolution of the Romance languages. For instance, masculus non masclus illustrates the weaking and dropping of certain unaccented syllables. In many examples like numquam non numqua we see the dropping of final /m/, although in other examples new consonants were beginning to appear where they hadn’t been before, as in Hercules non Herculens. IANALinguist, but from what I’ve seen I don’t believe the simplification of consonant clusters had gotten underway by this time, e.g. classical Latin Septimus versus modern Italian Settimo; however, we do see single consonants between syllables being dropped, e.g. Flavus non Flaus, as well as /n/ before /s/, as in ansa non asa

Later centuries saw the publication of similar works intended not to correct people’s usage, but as a reference to contemporary scribes so they could understand words and usages in earlier works.

[Clothahump]

Here are two great discussions on original English pronunciation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqmgeth4tFY

[Driver8]

[quote=“Clothahump, post:23, topic:813223”]

Here are two great discussions on original English pronunciation.

[/QUOTE]

Thanks for these. I had seen the Globe segment but the New Zealand university lecture was new to me and very interesting.

It can be a little dry, and I tend to listen to it in small doses, but “The History of English” podcast is a really good dive into the understanding of how English came to be, going back to what we know about the Indo-European roots. It touches on pronunciation and how we can figure out what it was too.

[foolsguinea]

@Lemur866

So yes, at one time “knight” really was pronounced “kunicht”. But even there I have to use a digraph to represent the middle guttural sound. Gh, ch, or ƿ are ways to represent that sound.

Not ƿ (thorn) but ȝ (yogh).

[Isilder]

@Slash1972

T For instance, if there was a German/English rosetta stone, would the researchers have determined that the Germans pronounced their country similar to the English pronunciation of “Germany”?

Well there is a simple answer to that… Because we still say their word for themselves, in a similar way to the modern english word “us”. Their word is deutch. it comes from their word for “us”. In holland they say dutch, which is the SAME word… a cognate of us and deutch. The country of Germany isn’t germane to the language.

The name “German” comes from the words the romans (and hence the latin language) used to name a Gaul tribe name , and the area on the map, and hence … the country which came into being in 1871… (but did exist as the Holy Roman Empire - an alliance with many areas such as Bavaria , and the feudal Bavarian Circle , Prussia, and so on,which is a long complicated history with definitions and redefinitions ) However, the

Deutch and the other “Germanic” languages are in fact from Scandanavia.

Paul the Deacon wrote in the Historia Langobardorum that the Lombards descended
from a small tribe called the Winnili who dwelt in southern Scandinavia…

Note that the Lombards then went on to rule (what is now) Italy till 774 right ?

Well thats how Old Germanic got to the HRE (Deutchland) … migration.

Its not as simple as Mr Lombard went south and imposed Germanic language there… there were numerous migrations southward… An earlier invasion was the Teutons going up the Rhine, and then circling around France and the Iberians before defeat. They were probably a mix of rebels, eg Gauls and Celts with some Teutons, anyway.

Of course there were many more, with so many less dramatic they are obscure…
But Norse migrated south.

And so the modern english word “Germany” is not a good example… its an academic word locked in by its origin in the Latin language.

A good example for finding out how “Rosetta stones” help tell us about historic pronunciations is the Icelandic, as it is extremely INSULAR. That means that the changes in pronunciation are evolutionary inside Iceland, and not imposed by invasion (mostly.)

See History of Icelandic - Wikipedia

Fixed rules of spelling didnt exist. They wrote down words phonetically. If the pronounciation changed, the spelling changed. So by tracking many words spelling through the scandanavian languages, the pronunciation can be followed back from modern pronounciation to then… The probably of accuracy is increased when there are many modern pronunciations and spellings, and the tracebacks arrive at the same pronunciation…

[Filbert]

@Slash1972

How did they know that the non-hieroglyph languages on the Stone were properly equating the same sounds? For instance, if there was a German/English rosetta stone, would the researchers have determined that the Germans pronounced their country similar to the English pronunciation of “Germany”?

I interpret that as just meaning names of people. Places often have multiple names and names that are totally different in other countries (no-one calls their own country the equivalent of ‘land of barbarians’), so probably aren’t a good choice, as you say.

The names of foreign rulers or dignitaries, especially if relations are reasonably cordial, are more likely to be pronounced as similarly as possible to how the person introduces themselves.

I’m not a student of ancient civilisations or anything, I just suspect it’s never been the polite thing to do to meet a visiting prince and go ‘Your name’s far too complicated, mind if we just call you Bob?’

[Clothahump]

@Driver8

Thanks for these. I had seen the Globe segment but the New Zealand university lecture was new to me and very interesting.

It can be a little dry, and I tend to listen to it in small doses, but “The History of English” podcast is a really good dive into the understanding of how English came to be, going back to what we know about the Indo-European roots. It touches on pronunciation and how we can figure out what it was too.

You are quite welcome!

Bill Bryson’s book Mother Tongue is also quite fascinating.

[Derleth]

@Clothahump

You are quite welcome!

Bill Bryson’s book Mother Tongue is also quite fascinating.

It gets a lot wrong, though. We even have a thread on the topic:

@Dreaming_of_Maria_Callas

I enjoyed Bryson’s travelogue Lost Continent, so while at the library I picked up his book on the evolution of the English language, Mother Tongue. This book is utter crap. I found factual errors, urban myths, and folk etymologies on nearly every page. Some of the “wisdom” he imparts to layman readers who sadly might not know he’s full of crap:

• Russian has no words for “engagement ring”, “efficiency”, or “to have fun.” This one sent my Russian-speaking fiancee into lengthly laughter. <sigh>, if only could explain to her family what that thing is on her finger. :rolleyes:

• Finnish has no profanity whatsoever. Its only term of exasperation is bizarrely the phrase “in the restaurant!”

• Hardly one chapter into the book he pulls out the old great Eskimo vocabulary hoax and passes it off as gospel truth.

• And before the book’s end, he swears a British government official in 1989 said “If English is good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.” Of course, that story has been attributed to hundreds of people over the last hundred years, from the governor of Texas to an anonymous missionary in Africa.

• He repeatedly cites Mario Pei as a great linguist, though Pei is essentially the Bill Bryson of the 50’s whose works have been condemned by many linguists as craptacular pieces of myth and oversimplification.

• He asserts that Germans are naturally cruel because their language has the word “schadenfreude”.

A look at the biography page will show that Bryson has no formal training in linguistics (he doesn’t even have a university degree). He’s just a journalist who apparently loathes fact-checking.

Anyone else read this man’s language works. I hear he has another book about English called “Made in America”. Is that one just as bad?

UnuMondo

Everything2 has a good list of some of the errors in the book as well and they give page numbers.

[jnglmassiv]

@markn_1

If a poem has “sound” rhyming with “wound”, we don’t know exactly how those two words were pronounced, but we know they both ended in the same sound, unlike modern pronunciation.

"We wound up listening to the sound of the crashing waves. " This rhymes for me. The other meaning of the word as in Wounded Knee, of course, does not.

[bob_2]

Here is a good (I think) attempt at Middle English: - YouTube

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Isilder

Well there is a simple answer to that… Because we still say their word for themselves, in a similar way to the modern english word “us”. Their word is deutch. it comes from their word for “us”. In holland they say dutch, which is the SAME word… a cognate of us and deutch. The country of Germany isn’t germane to the language.

I think I understand what you’re getting at, but I have to clear up a few points. The English word “us” is a pronoun, and other languages have their equivalent way of expressing that concept; in German it’s “uns” and Dutch has “us”. The endonyms used to name a country and its language typically derive ultimately from a word meaning “people” or “men”; typically the original word is obsolete in the modern language. Endonyms used by Native Americans and aboriginal peoples elsewhere usually follow this pattern.

It’s not deutch, it’s deutsch

The Dutch call their language Nederlands, and a Dutch person calls himself or herself a “Nederlander.”* Our word “Dutch” is an exonym which originally also included German, when referring to language.

Further demonstrating the extraordinary of number of different exonyms for the country between France and Poland, and its language, it turns out that the closest word the Dutch have to “Dutch” is what they use to mean “German”, i.e. de duitse taal=“the German language” and de Duitsers=“the Germans”.
*IIRC unlike German, the Dutch language doesn’t require feminine endings on nearly every word used to denote a group or category of people. But I could definitely be wrong about that.

[TSBG]

I’m not sure poetry is a good way to tease out pronunciation either. Contemporary poetry–going back X decades, I’m not a historian of poetry–isn’t necessarily rhyming at all, or features assonance or consonance rather than “true rhymes.”

If we’re looking at really ancient “poetry” I suggest there’s no reason to infer pronunciation by rhyming, unless there’s also evidence to suggest that that language’s poetry valued the use of similar-sounding words in certain situations, and that we ALSO have some evidence for the ancient pronunciation of the word.

I mean AFAIK no one really knows how classical Latin was pronounced, and it is one of the most culturally important languages in history, with multiple spoken descendants and a rich written tradition. But could anyone alive today make herself understood in speech to Julius Caesar? I suspect not.

[Nava]

@TSBG

I’m not sure poetry is a good way to tease out pronunciation either. Contemporary poetry–going back X decades, I’m not a historian of poetry–isn’t necessarily rhyming at all, or features assonance or consonance rather than “true rhymes.”

Ah, but we do know that’s very much a recent development; we also know that different languages have different rhyming schemes, and which poetical genres were introduced when (often also by whom), etc. You don’t need to be a “historian of poetry”: didn’t your [Insert Native Language] lessons include poetry? Mine did, as did my history lessons and Littlebro’s art lessons (I was Science Track, we got to draw stuff instead of analyzing other people’s drawings).

[MrDibble]

@foolsguinea

Not ƿ (thorn) but ȝ (yogh).

While you’re right that gh is yogh, ƿ is wynn, not thorn (þ)

[CalMeacham]

It’s not “ancient” pronunciations, but one example I’ve encountered of using rhymes to deduce pronunciations is given in one footnote to The Annotated Ancient Mariner, with annotations by Martin Gardner. Addressing the question of how the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, pronounced his last name, Gardner gives cites of Coleridge’s own poetry in which he rhymes things with his own surname.

Unfortunately, poets treat pronunciations as rather “elastic”. Gardner produced three different couplets, each of which requires a different pronunciation of his name – he rhymes id with whole ridge in one place and with scholerage in another. So take pronunciations based on rhymes as indicative, rather than absolute. I frequently see things like “again” being rhymed with “rain”, and would inform lexicographers of the future that the two words don’t sound at all alike in present-day colloquial American speech.

[kk_fusion]

@Dinsdale

How far back before communication was essentially grunts and hand/body motions?

One number I’ve heard is, at least 30.000 years, because from that time we found tools whose use is so complicated that instructions could only be given verbally.

[Derleth]

@CalMeacham

I frequently see things like “again” being rhymed with “rain”, and would inform lexicographers of the future that the two words don’t sound at all alike in present-day colloquial American speech.

Lexicographers of the future will have the IPA and a whole barrage of linguistics textbooks to help them out, as well as sound recordings, which aren’t going to simply evaporate in the future.

[Nava]

@kk_fusion

One number I’ve heard is, at least 30.000 years, because from that time we found tools whose use is so complicated that instructions could only be given verbally.

That seems to stem in part from the idea that sign-based communication will always be inherently inferior to voice-based. It’s not necessarily so.

[Blakeyrat]

@Corry_El

Same AFAIK with Mayan and figuring out the phonetic use of the glyphs. It’s based on the similar language people of the region still speak. If a language was somehow completely wiped away you might not be able to figure out much at all.

I was about to say I always wondered if Mayan leaders like “18 Rabbit” were actually named 18 Rabbit, or if that was just a combination of glyphs that represented or sounded like his actual name.

Then I looked it up in Wikipedia, and apparently they do have an actual name for him: Uaxaclajuun Ub’aah K’awiil

Now I’m curious how they came to know that name belongs to “18 Rabbit”. (Obviously I’m no linguist; I bet these questions were settled decades ago.)