Listen to what our ancestors' language sounded like 6,000 years ago

[Grapesoda]

https://soundcloud.com/archaeologymag/sheep-and-horses


Linguists have recently reconstructed what a 6,000 year-old-language called Proto-Indo-European might have sounded like. This language was the forerunner of many European and Asian languages, and now you can listen to what it may have sounded like.

Photo by Horus Neo Ikon Epifanes

Over at Archaeology magazine, Kentucky linguist Andrew Byrd does a dramatic reading of a story written using only the vocabulary we are certain existed 6,000 years ago. Eric Powell explains:


Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was spoken by a people who lived from roughly 4500 to 2500 B.C., and left no written texts. The question became, what did PIE sound like? In 1868, German linguist August Schleicher used reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary to create a fable in order to hear some approximation of PIE. Called ?The Sheep and the Horses" . . . As linguists have continued to discover more about PIE, this sonic experiment continues and the fable is periodically updated to reflect the most current understanding of how this extinct language would have sounded when it was spoken some six thousand years ago. Since there is considerable disagreement among scholars about PIE, no one version can be considered definitive.




Here's the translation of the story (which may sound familiar to people who watched the movie Prometheus):


A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

[clickity click]

Originally Posted by Grapesoda

https://soundcloud.com/archaeologymag/sheep-and-horses


Linguists have recently reconstructed what a 6,000 year-old-language called Proto-Indo-European might have sounded like. This language was the forerunner of many European and Asian languages, and now you can listen to what it may have sounded like.

Photo by Horus Neo Ikon Epifanes

Over at Archaeology magazine, Kentucky linguist Andrew Byrd does a dramatic reading of a story written using only the vocabulary we are certain existed 6,000 years ago. Eric Powell explains:


Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was spoken by a people who lived from roughly 4500 to 2500 B.C., and left no written texts. The question became, what did PIE sound like?.

Mmmm pie...

[mineistaken]

how come if no written texts were left?

[CurrentlySober]

Originally Posted by Grapesoda

https://soundcloud.com/archaeologymag/sheep-and-horses


Linguists have recently reconstructed what a 6,000 year-old-language called Proto-Ondo-Ouropean might have sounded like. This language was the forerunner of many European and Asian languages, and now you can listen to what it may have sounded like.

Photo by Horus Neo Ikon Epifanes

Over at Archaeology magazine, Kentucky linguist Andrew Byrd does a dramatic reading of a story written using only the vocabulary we are certain existed 6,000 years ago. Eric Poowell explains:


Proto-Ondo-Ouropean (POO) was spoken by a people who lived from roughly 4500 to 2500 B.C., and left no written texts. The question became, what did POO sound like? In 1868, German linguist August Schleicher used reconstructed Proto-Ondo-Ouropean vocabulary to create a fable in order to hear some approximation of POO. Called ?The Sheep and the Horses" . . . As linguists have continued to discover more about POO, this sonic experiment continues and the fable is periodically updated to reflect the most current understanding of how this extinct language would have sounded when it was spoken some six thousand years ago. Since there is considerable disagreement among scholars about POO, no one version can be considered definitive.




Here's the translation of the story (which may sound familiar to people who watched the movie Poometheus):


A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

Originally Posted by clickity click

Mmmm poo...

Exactly

[aka123]

My ancestors didn't speak that, or at least it is in doubt.

"Many higher-level relationships between Proto-Indo-European and other language families have been proposed, but these hypothesized connections are highly controversial. A proposal often considered to be the most plausible of these is that of an Indo-Uralic family, encompassing PIE and Uralic. "

Proto-Indo-European language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


My ancestors did speak Uralic language (similar higher level group).

[Grapesoda]

Originally Posted by aka123

My ancestors didn't speak that, or at least it is in doubt.

"Many higher-level relationships between Proto-Indo-European and other language families have been proposed, but these hypothesized connections are highly controversial. A proposal often considered to be the most plausible of these is that of an Indo-Uralic family, encompassing PIE and Uralic. "

Proto-Indo-European language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


My ancestors did speak Uralic language (similar higher level group).

what trips me out is Magyar is related to Finish but nothing in the area

Hungarian is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is also spoken by communities of Hungarian people in neighboring countries?especially in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine?and by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide. Like Finnish and Estonian, it belongs to the Uralic language family, with its closest relatives being Mansi and Khanty. It is one of the few languages of Europe that are not part of the Indo-European family.

The Hungarian name for the language is magyar [ˈmɒɟɒr] or magyar nyelv (About this sound listen (help·info)). The word "Magyar" is also used as an English word to refer to Hungarian people as an ethnic group, or to the language.