I do feel sad for the disappearance of the Coptic language as a native language. It is essentially the true Egyptian language, just the last stage of the evolution of this Egyptian language of the hieroglyphs and pharaohs. The language with probably the longest continuous literary tradition
Fun fact there was a movement called pharaonism in egypt (the movement is to revive ancient egyptian language and spread ancient egyptian culture) but the movement failed because of nasser arabism
I wonder which are more at risk of being forgotten: 1. Endangered/Extinct Languages of the New World (e.g. Cherokee, Navajo, Salish, Nuxalk, Powhatan, Nahuatl, Zapotec, Taino, almost every Aboriginal Australian language) 2. Endangered/Extinct Languages of Asia (e.g. Qiang, Uyghur, most Chinese languages that aren't Mandarin or Cantonese, Ainu, Jeju, Nivkh, the Ryukyuan languages, the Nuristani languages, Ket) 3. Endangered/Extinct Languages of Africa (e.g. Coptic, Berber, a lot of Khoisan languages like N|uu, a lot of languages that belong to African tribes I've never heard of) 4. Endangered/Extinct Languages of Europe (e.g. Occitan, Alsatian, Breton, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Provençal, Nissart, Picard, Lorrain, the other 20 or so varieties of French, Mòcheno, Cimbrian, both varieties of Sorbian, Sami, and many more) I would say 3 or 4 are most likely to slip our radar, 3 because we probably don't know those languages exist in the first place, and 4 because a lot of them are regional languages spoken as a secondary language alongside English, French, German, etc. We've seen languages wiped out because their people were wiped out (e.g. countless Native American and Aboriginal Australian languages), but the French, the Italians and the Germans aren't going away anytime soon, yet they're still losing some of their languages, and we don't notice because they still speak their main language, and may not even know about the other languages
I wouldn't worry about the first category, living somewhere with a high indigenous population and having been to several reservations I've seen firsthand that people care about their own languages and I honestly can't see them letting go
@Aaron O Donoghue Your Category 1 encompasses a wide range of different circumstances, contexts, cultures and situations that it's impossible to generalise. Of the 250-400 Australian languages that we know of, less than 20 are actively spoken and passed on to children. The same statistic goes for many languages spoken in countries where indigenous languages were actively repressed, leading to their extinction before records could be made of them. Of course, the status of Australian Indigenous languages is directly correlated with how the owners of these languages have been and are continually being treated by the powers that be. In stark contrast to the Australian context, Bolivia and South Africa have indigenous languages enshrined in their founding documents, and even though the reality of the livelihood of these languages leaves a lot to be desired, their safeguarded status which means that resources can be devoted to their maintenance and revival. Your Category 4 also encompasses a lot of situations that defy generalisation, but I disagree with your view that they are more threatened because they fly under the radar of most people's perceptions. European linguistic diversity is indeed underestimated, but these countries have comparatively many resources to safeguard these languages, as well as the structures in place to do so. In many ways, European countries lead the way in showing how minority languages can be protected in law and cultural representation; see Sami lands, Romansh in Switzerland, and the many regiolects of Italy, Flanders, and Spain (France might be a bit of an exception). Besides, many of these languages are incredibly well recorded, and will "survive" breaks in transmission, should younger generations lose interest altogether in acquiring them (which is admittedly a big factor in many of the languages you listed). In revivalistics, Modern Hebrew is held as an exemplar of a language that was 'revived' after having barely been spoken for centuries, facilitated by the wealth of its attestation, and catalysed by political willpower and resources. Meanwhile, as @gay videos remarks, community disinterest isn't a great threat in North American contexts (nor is it in many Australian contexts), but impoverishment and cultural oppression have dealt such major blows to most speaker communities that even if the languages are revived with the resources owed to them, they will never physically resemble their classical counterparts, i.e. the language as they were spoken before colonisation (see: Powhattan in northeastern US, Noongar in southwest Australia, all languages of Tasmania).
Only a few African languages will survive. These are those that made it as national languages (NL) or that are spoken by enough people (though they tend to mix that up with European languages). When there are too many tribal languages people mostly communicate by the national language. In mixed villages they will only do that. Here is my list of survivors among African languages: Somali (NL), Amharic (NL), Tigrinya (NL), Kinyarwanda (NL), Wolof (though I have seen that in written form), Lingali, Khoisan (depends on circumstances), Tamazigh, perhaps Sango (a Centralafrican creole language), perhaps Mooré and Hausa (they lack written form) and that´s it folks! In South Africa with its 11 national languages the winner is English and the first loser is Afrikaans. The language Swahili is an Arabic creole language and Madagascan is an Austronesian language.
@@ruedigernassauer this list is clearly completely random because you left out several languages with official status like Setswana, Kirundi, Comorian, Swati, Afar, Oromo, Sesotho, Chichewa, Seychellois creole, Ndebele, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu and Shona
@@gayvideos3808 OK, I forgot about Afar (Djibouti) and Oromo (Ethiopia). But: Kirundi (Burundi) is almost identical with Kinyarwanda (Rwanda).Comorian is an Arabic creole, Seychellois creole is a French creole. Those other languages are amongst those numerous South African languages which in my opinion will get replaced by English. I have been several times in Cameroon. Babies are only spoken to in French and that way they are unable to listen to stories from grandma or grandpa. Instead they listen to TV. I made a word list there and had to ask many people until an elderly lady told me their original Éwondo word for giraffe. But even she didn´t remeber it instantly and all the other people had probably never heard that word!
My dream is that we will someday find the lost writings of Emperor Claudius including his book on Etruscan history, which I hope also contains a dictionary.
I’m currently beginning to teach my girlfriend Sumerian, and I intend to raise our kids with it one day (as much as can be done). As far as I’m aware, it would make them the first speakers raised from birth with Sumerian in roughly 4000 years. (On top of that, it would be the best secret code since pretty much NOBODY anywhere will understand it)
@@ConnorQuimby oh no.... we've already settled on naming our daughter Inanna if we have one. lol! (wouldn't be the first in that regard, there's an actress named Inanna Sarkis).
@Taya Ramadan Yes and no. Let me explain. I’m “fluent” in the sense that I understand the language’s grammar (as much as can be known at the moment, since our knowledge of Sumerian is sadly incomplete). However, I have not memorized all the various attested terms, and thus I often will have to look up the appropriate word for something. Since no one has spoken Sumerian as a 1st language in 4000 years, there probably is no way of becoming truly “fluent” in the language. However, once I start working on memorizing words and practicing putting together sentences, I will be able to speak it as if it were still a living language. It’s a very difficult task because there are no Sumerians around to help or with which to immerse myself. Yet I am confident it can be done.
Hebrew was never just a liturgical language, in the sense that it was only used in religious ceremony and services. It was used for hundreds of years in correspondence, discussion and debate amongst the Jewish communities spread throughout the world. The language developed over time and it was influenced by the other languages that it's speakers came into contact with, particularly other Semitic languages like Aramaic and Arabic. It's revival as a first language, now spoken by millions of people, is none the less an outstanding achievement.
It should be noted it was used in secular instances as well such as in poetry, prose and theatre, the RaMHaL is credited as the founder of modern hebrew literature in the early 18th century.
I have been under the impression that it's not known for certain whether ancient Egyptian or Sumerian had a script first. Considering that Coptic is a continuation of Egyptian maybe it should be revived. I think it's also still used as a liturgical language which should make reviving it easier.
I'm Mexican myself, but I allways felt a fascination about minority languages, extinct languages and languages in general. I was learning Monegasque (The "national" language of Monaco) time ago, but due to the lack of resources and contents, and the almost nonexistant use of the language, I decided to stop learning it. The government of Monaco established it's mandatory to learn Monegasque at school, but it doesn't guarantees the survival of the language, because the learners doesn't use the language for communication, and TV shows or news broadcasts at least don't exist; they use French, and it's OK, that's their mother tongue at the end of the day. I want now to learn Romansh, the national language of Switzerland, because I think its future and survival seem a little bit more hopeful because TV programs and books in the language exist, but it seems to me that much more is needed for its speakers not to adopt German as their language of communication.
@@_utahraptor Yeah, but Monegasque is a unique language. I think it's an extremely beautiful language, because it sound like Italian and French combined, and it's weird because it's "spoken" in an area where Occitan is the traditional language, not Ligurian.
I personally would really like for Nahuatl (Nawat/Pipil specifically) to be revived. As my mother and her family are from El Salvador, there is a high likelyhood of my ancestors speaking the language, and they seem to be so beautiful. Though nobody really thinks of them, I would love to spend my efforts in the linguistics field dedicated to reviving the languages from their current stand-still of only a few thousand speakers left, to something just a little bit more.
Ainu does deserve better, I'd be fine if even just Hokkaido Ainu was completely revived, but it'd be nice to see Sakhalin Ainu revived as well Also my addition to the list, Gaulish, a mainland european celtic language spoken in nearly all of France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, the southern half of Germany, and the Northern quarter of Italy as well as parts of the Balkans and Anatolia. It's grammar is relatively similar to Latin, but in my opinion has a more pan-european phonetic inventory, with the very modern german sounding ts sound, called tau-Gallicum (Gaulish T) by the Romans, and a lack of Latin qu, which became p in Gaulish (ex; Latin equus "horse", Gaulish epos "horse"). Much like Etruscan, it's vocabulary is limited, but luckily for us it does have a modern nephew of Welsh, and a first cousin of Latin, so it could easily be reconstructed from the ground up using available evidence into a mostly realistic form.
Gaulish is a fascinating language but how exactly are we supposed to revive it when we know very little about its syntax ? And it's not the old "uncle of Welsh", nor the "first cousin of Latin". Sure, the languages are related but the exact relationship between Gaulish and the modern Celtic languages is still debated ; and similarly the nature of the relationship between Italic and Celtic is also debated (as Italo-celtic has been proposed but not accepted by everyone). What you're proposing here isn't a language revival but the creation of a latino-welsh, pseudo-neo-Gaulish conlang.
Gaulish did not have that big a range. Other celtic languages were spoken, but no ancient language could have that large a range and not fracture into dialects
We should revive Ancient Greek, Archaic Sanskrit and Ancient Egyptian, they’re too gorgeous to die Edit: also all the ancient languages of America before its discovery
Yeah, it probably just went underground for a few centuries. There was definitely knowledge of the language after its supposed extinction but nobody really mentioned it, is what I presume. This article is interesting: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_speaker_of_the_Cornish_language
There is a language in the processes of being revived. That is Prussian, which died in 1700. But there are also 'secret languages'. A musical vocal language use by Sami of Lapland when they sing (or yoik as they call it) These are sounds of nature that only they understand.
Yoik is not a language. It’s a type of music used for rituals long forgotten. The Sami nowadays don’t know what it’s original purpose was so they just lie and say it’s a mystical magical language only they can understand. It’s complete bs. They make up stuff all the time because they don’t actually know and they need people to remember that they exist. It’s desperation.
@@mikaelaincase2157I've never heard Sámi call yoik a language. Sounds like you have a personal racist vendetta against them that you have to shoehorn into every conversation
@@gayvideos3808 I know it seems that way but it’s not like that at all. I just know it’s the truth that they are aware of their decline and, in desperation, they need to get tourists to have interest in them to survive. I’m not from Scandinavia or anything so I don’t have any reason to despise them like they are ‘annoying minorities’… or something. I have northwestern Norwegian ancestry too so I might have some saami heritage myself. Even if I’m not I have been interested in Norwegian history for a long time and I have researched not only the saami of the north but their relatives the finns and the other finno-ugric people more east in places like Siberia. Anyway; From what I can tell this type of singing is very much a common thing among north Asian peoples. It’s likely then that they all share a source right? Even Native Americans have similar music which they undoubtedly inherited from their Siberian nomadic ancestors. So if the saami truly are speaking a mystical language only they understand…. Then why do other cultures do it too? Idk bro it just seems very dishonest. Like cult leader “only I can read the alien tablet and prophecy our destiny” kind of dishonest. I don’t dislike the saami people in the slightest. I think they’re cool! I just dislike tourist trap scammy stuff. Don’t they already have much more interesting stuff to tell people that is REAL? Like they have been living off reindeer for thousands of years even back when it used to be COLDER up there! That’s impressive
It's hard to revive an extinct language without people really, *really* wanting it. So we have to look for languages that have a good "hook". Like... Classical Latin! I would be so on top of that it isn't even funny.
Revervanacularization is linguistical science this video is about imo. study of ancient or dead languages to revive a country, culture, people, or theology, usually thousands of years old.
I'd like to see Old Norse revived and the runic alphabet with it. I always wondered what the Norse runic script would be like by now had it continued to develop apace instead of being supplanted by the Latin alphabet.
Ainu is great but it's only the second most amazing language in Sakhalin simply because Nivkh is extraordinary (a language isolate which, on top of sounding beautiful, also has some pretty neat Celtic-style consonant mutation). Uilta/Orok gets the third place; it's not bad at all but the fact that it belongs to a larger better attested language family (a very underrated one, though, Tungusic deserves more love!) doesn't make it as unique as the others.
Pretty much all the languages in Northeast Asia are criminally underrated. I actually am using Sakhalin as a base for a fictional island nation in a railroad simulator and fully intend to make the traditional languages very prevalent, but with Japanese present instead of Russian. Mostly that'll mean place names, but maybe I can make it a little more immersive. I hope so
I think the Polabian language (spoken till the 18th century by Slavs who settled near the Elbe in Germany) should be revived even though it would need to be supplemented by Polish and German vocabulary because not all words were preserved.
1:18 Cool phonology, doesn't miss any sounds imo, also aspiration distinction instead of voicing, pretty underrated, fun fact, Danish and Icelandic are the only only languages in Europe with that distinction in place of a voicing one.
but the aspirated /ts/ could be written as c, like Pinyin and (but used for the unaspirated one, but still /ts/) literally every Slavic language with a Latin orthography that's not a romanization (looking at YOU, russian romanization!)
The worst part about Etruscan is that one of the emperors was obsessed with it and made a comprehensive dictionary of it. However all copies have been lost.
Until Emperor Claudius' Etruscan dictionary is discovered, Etruscan will never be able to be reconstructed. We have its grammar, alphabet, and phonology, but we have so few actual words.
For example if I want to make a movie about let's say Tunisia in the 10th century (before the arrival of banu hilal), how do I know how did the Tunisians speak at that time if there's no written information?
You'd basically be doing comparative work from modern dialects descended from it and working backwards towards the original sounds from there. I did research of this sort on some of the Hmong languages in China when I was in grad school. It's a grind but surprisingly effective at getting you a picture of the ancestral language.
Someone made a movie with reconstructed Illyrian, called Illyricvm. I haven't seen it because it only came out last year and even getting modern Croatian movies in the US can be a crapshoot.
I think reviving all the ancient Canaanite and Levantine languages would be amazing. I mean the Levant used to be so lingualy diverse, with Phoenician, Amorite, Edomite, Moabite and Hebrew, and so bringing this diversity back would be so cool
I would geniunely wanna see Qarakhanid, Old Uighur and Volga Bolgar languages alive in the modern ages as a Turkmen. Well most basic reason is that they sound cool (yeah, really). Especially Qarakhanid had a massive impact in the history of us Turkic people and I believe it deserves a revival for that, Volga Bolgar is like the Qarakhanid of Volgan Turks and because of being the only attested Old Oghur Turkic language it's even cooler than Qarakhanid. Old Uighur is basically because it sounds cool and (probably) the closest language to Proto-Turkic
Best case scenario for Sumerian, someone makes a show about ancient Sumerians that becomes super popular and makes people want to learn ancient Sumerian language, and it becomes common at conventions in the manner of Dothraki and Klingon. Or maybe a video game; speaking of which, I believe that Zelda has huge wasted conlang potential because its fanbase would love if there was an actual Hylian or Rito language they could learn.
If you are serious about language survival and revival here is what must, and probably is going to, happen. The new language models of extremely powerful AI like GPT-4 must be employed. There is no Earthly reason that any threatened language cannot be recorded by these systems to complete proficiency taught by still speaking teachers as well as trained with written and audio records. Then even if the last speaker dies out (God forbid) anyone who wishes to revive a "dead" language can be taught and converse with a completely fluent AI. It would be a sort of language lifeboat. This is the answer!
I remember hearing about a language with only two vowels in it (ɚ and i) and only voiced consonants. It isn't completely extinct, because I also heard there's twelve known speakers of the language. Is it even a real language or was it just a conlang or something?
I've never heard of such a language. The only language I've heard of with just 2 vowels is Ubykh, an extinct language of the Caucasus whose vowels were /a/ and /ə/ (from what I read, these could combine with semivowels /j/ and /w/ to make other vowels as allophones, and mentioned /y/ as a possibility (and of course, the name "Ubykh" itself having a U, its native name being pronounced like /wəbəx/. The Wikipedia page mentioned that /wə/ has an allophone of /u/, /jə/ = /i/, /wa/ = /o/, /ja/ = /e/, /əw/ = /u:/, /aw/ = /o:/, /əj/ = /i:/, /aj/ = /e:/, /jəw/ = /y/, and I conjectured that /jaw/ = /ø/)), and had 84 consonants, most of which only differed subtly, with a few rare loanword-only or dialectal consonants. As for only voiced consonants, I've never heard of any language that has that property, especially as every language I know of has at least two of /p/, /t/, and /k/, all of which are voiceless stops/plosives Edit: I rechecked the Wikipedia page on Ubykh, and corrected some information I had gotten wrong above
I recommend Manchu for a proper revival. There are a decent number of second-language speakers, but almost no native speakers. It also has historical significance, being the language of the Qing dynasty. Bonus points if it brings more regionlism to China, just becsuse it'd piss off Beijing. Also, Mongolian script, which is just plain cool
Even classical latin is not a dead language, it's spoken by thousands of people. Check out Luke Ranieri's channel for a good example. So making a vulgar one of that should be easy
@@amirsur2750 Classical Latin is not spoken as a language, it's spoken as a tool for science, there's people that know it, but never speak it, never used as a daily language
But who would actually speak Etruscan? We should revive Ainou, so the Ainou people can have their own language, but there hasn't been a population identifying themselves as Etruscan for two thousand years? Who would want it?
If we could go back to about the 3rd century bce, the biggest European language would have been Galacian. It had 2 alphabets donated - a Greek one and a Latin one - but they weren't big on writing thing down.
Do you mean Galatian ? Because in that case it wasn't the biggest language in Europe - unless you actually mean Gaulish, to which Galatian was closely related. But we don't have enough documentation on this languages to actually revive them.
I expect it's possible to resurrect Sumerian, but most certainly it wouldn't be the same old, spoken, language. There cannot possibly be anyone, anywhere, that has the slightest idea about pronouncing or anything of that nature.
I definitely agree that all the Ainus should be revived, Ainu is based. Something else I'd like to bring your attention to though, Is endangered or extinct Sign Languages. I think we should bring back Plains Sign Talk as a national language of the U.S.A., Maybe revive Martha's Vineyard Sign Language too, And work on stopping Hawai'i Sign Language and Maritime Sign Language from going extinct while we're at it. Heck we could also try and preserve Creole Hawai'i Sign Language too, I'm not sure we have any other examples of a Creole sign language. (Although from what I've heard ASL _might_ be a creole between French Sign Language and some local sign languages, Such as the aforementioned Martha's Vineyard one. Also unrelated idea but let's stop putting "Sign Language" in the name of every sign language, We don't put "Spoken Language" in the name of every vocal language, So why do the opposite? We could instead use names like Vineyardese, Or maybe a slight identifier, I think "Hand Hawai'ian" sounds cool, And for ones with a commonly known abbreviation like ASL maybe we could just make it officially not stand for anything, I mean ASL or variants thereof are used across the world, So it's not really specifically "American" anymore.)