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To: SunkenCiv

HOW can experts in a written language know how it sounds?? I call BS. The first two recordings, the one guy sounds like he is trying to approximate (or has) a middle eastern accent. The second one, a woman, has an very obvious German accent. We don’t know how the original speakers sounded with their choices of vowels and any sound that we now use the letters “r” or “ch” for.

The reasearch is commendable. Learning what the writings tell us is important. Trying to “fake” an ancient accent is not.


37 posted on 10/02/2010 2:55:52 PM PDT by Yaelle
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To: Yaelle

The translation is the real thing because it results in coherent texts wherever it’s tried; multilingual texts are one of the reasons the pronounciations were figured out, since there were cuneiform texts containing already known languages (such as Greek). The archive of Hattusas in Anatolia was filled with tablets which could be pronounced but were not in any known language; Emil Forrer (Swiss, but the name looks French, and of course he spoke German) started to notice words that were German-like, which led him to crack one of the four or more languages found on the various tablets, and reconstruct an extinct IndoEuropean language.


38 posted on 10/03/2010 7:17:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Democratic Underground... matters are worse, as their latest fund drive has come up short...)
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