Language Related, Conlangs, Language Policy, Indo-European, Language Origin

Actually some time since I had a series of language related quora questions appear as a post here. Time for a new one:

Conlangs

Hans-Georg Lundahl shared
https://www.quora.com/profile/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2/One-could-add-that-while-Atlantean-is-fictitious-as-native-language-of-the-submarine-population-it-is-not-fictitious-a

Studied Latin (language) at Lund University

Jan 25 2025

One could add that, while Atlantean is fictitious as native language of the submarine population, it is not fictitious as vocabulary and grammar that are functional enough to write movie lines in.

That’s why linguists don’t refer to such things as “fictitious languages” plus the obvious that the term refers to sth else, to when not just the native language or whatever of a population doesn’t have that population, but when it doesn’t even have words and grammar.

Q I

What language is used in the Justice League and Aquaman movies to represent the Atlantean language? Is it English or a fictional language?
https://www.quora.com/What-language-is-used-in-the-Justice-League-and-Aquaman-movies-to-represent-the-Atlantean-language-Is-it-English-or-a-fictional-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied Latin (language) at Lund University

Jan 25 2025

If it’s English, then Atlantean is a fictional language.

If it’s a “fictional language” it’s not fictional but constructed.

In the real novel by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Return of Don Quixote[1], there is a fictional play, Blondel the Troubadour. There are lines quoted from Blondel the Troubadour, and those lines are obviously real lines of poetry. But all the other lines of the play are fictional, because Chesterton didn’t write them and because the novel character supposed to have written the play doesn’t exist.

So, if what we hear in the movies (which I have not seen) is English, then Atlantean is fictional. If instead we hear some words of Atlantean, at least for those words Atlantean isn’t fictional but constructed.

Looking up the word “Atlantean language” it seems it’s actually constructed[2] , namely by Mark Okrand.[3] He probably didn’t construct a complete language, at least not yet, but he very probably constructed lots more of it than just what is heard or written in the films. The actors did take very real and not fictional language lessons in order to master, as comprehensible language, the lines they were saying in Atlantean.

Footnotes

[1] http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/Don_Quixote.txt
[2] Atlantean language - Wikipedia
[3] Marc Okrand - Wikipedia

Q II

Can a fictional language be created and used as a native tongue?
https://www.quora.com/Can-a-fictional-language-be-created-and-used-as-a-native-tongue/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Dec 3 2024

I think there was a child who was raised in Klingon.

So, he is a native speaker of Klingon, even if he quit using it at age five, so perhaps “was” would be more appropriate.

A conlang or constructed language for long is actually a better term. A language is “fictional” if it is stated in a fictional work as existing. It is constructed if it is actually shown. So, in Lord of the Rings Westron is a fictional language, consistently replaced with English, but Quenya is a constructed language, with a poem by Galadriel and an Oath of Elendil as actual samples.

Constructed languages can be constructed to the level of completion when one can use them, Esperanto is in principle no different from Quenya, and Esperanto is usable. And any language which one can use, one can also transmit to children.

Q III

How would you create a new language? What factors would you consider in designing its writing and pronunciation?
https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-create-a-new-language-What-factors-would-you-consider-in-designing-its-writing-and-pronunciation/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Oct 31 2024

Totally depends on what you would want it for.

Artlangs like Quenya or Black Speech, obviously a good portion of beauty or ugliness.

Auxiliary languages, and I’d priorise those spanning a region of related languages, the maximum matches and minimum dysmatches of words in the auxiliary language and any really occurring language of the region.

Language politics

Q IV

What language would be most beneficial for a Uyghur to learn?
https://www.quora.com/What-language-would-be-most-beneficial-for-a-Uyghur-to-learn/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied Latin (language) at Lund University

23.III.2025

Normally Uyghur and Chinese, both.

Q V

Do you believe there will be a time when learning multiple languages is no longer necessary? If so, what language do you think will become the universal language and why?
https://www.quora.com/Do-you-believe-there-will-be-a-time-when-learning-multiple-languages-is-no-longer-necessary-If-so-what-language-do-you-think-will-become-the-universal-language-and-why/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Mar 14 2025

Learning multiple languages is already not necessary, it’s an option to get the opportunities that learning languages gives you, not a life necessity.

I do NOT believe that there will be a universal language, or, if there is, that it will totally replace the others.

God confused the languages because it served and still serves a purpose. And one is, preventing too much unity among those who disobey God, and another is, learning languages is an occasion for humility.

Q VI

How do professional linguists choose which endangered languages to study and preserve?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-professional-linguists-choose-which-endangered-languages-to-study-and-preserve/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

24.III.2025

Personal interest comes into what languages you study. Endangered or otherwise.

That and opportunity in which ones you preserve.

By the way, preservation of endangered languages is just one of the jobs you can do as a linguist. I don’t think you can speak of “professional linguist” but rather of “academic linguist” as the opposite of amateur linguist in my self description. Linguist is a competence, not exactly a job title. Though, obviously, any authority or company that uses linguists can make their job title for the relevant job “linguist” whether it’s a film maker helping to teach the actors a language or a missionary trying to translate the Bible into the latest discovered language that has no alphabet yet.

Q VII

When does linguistic evolution become acceptable in formal writing?
https://www.quora.com/When-does-linguistic-evolution-become-acceptable-in-formal-writing/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

24.III.2025

When it becomes used by a sufficient number of writers who are already considered competent.

Babel and Indo-European

Q VIII

Can you explain the difference between a proto language and a parent language?
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-explain-the-difference-between-a-proto-language-and-a-parent-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Dec 19 2024

When two or more languages are seen as related:

• their parent language is whatever one really spoke before the splitting up;
• their proto-language is whatever one reconstructs as their parent language, whether it coincides well or ill with it and whether they had a common parent language or not.

Parent language is also posited without splitting up. In the Old Norse period, Swedish and Icelandic were still pretty much the same language. Proto-Norse (which isn’t totally a proto-language as defined above, since it is attested) is its parent language. Koiné is the parent language of Dhimotiki, and would be so even if the Pontic split off didn’t exist.

Q IX

Is it true that all languages have a direct ancestor or original language, except for English which was derived from multiple languages?
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-all-languages-have-a-direct-ancestor-or-original-language-except-for-English-which-was-derived-from-multiple-languages/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Feb 3 2025

Most languages do have direct ancestors, including English.

Anglo-Saxon is the oldest ancestor of English we have in writing.

English isn’t a just total mixture of AS with Old Norse and Anglo-French, it’s AS taking on words and features (sometimes in basic grammar) of ON and AF. It’s Sprachbund, not language mixture. This is also a pretty common thing.

Between the Koiné Greek of Aristotle and Modern Greek, for instance, you have admixtures of Latin, Turkish, probably Albanian and Bulgarian too, and maybe more.

French descends from Latin, but has admixtures of Gaulish, Frankish, Arabic, and more recently other languages (I’d say Italian, Spanish, German loans are post-1500).

Russian descends from Old Russian or Old East Slavic, a language not directly attested as they wrote Church Slavonic, but indirectly shown when someone in a Church Slavonic text would insert an Old East Slavic name of a person or a place without translating. So do Ukrainian and Belarusian. Russian then has admixtures from Tataric and probably some Finno-Ugric languages that are not there in Ukrainian or Belarusian.

Feb 3 2025

Kaden Vanciel

Those languages mentioned are descendants of Proto-Indo-European if I may point out.

Feb 4 2025

Hans-Georg Lundahl

That is disputed.

They certainly are correctly classified as Indo-European, but there is some dispute whether Indo-European is a family, descending from a common proto-language, or a Sprachbund.

Q X

How do linguists decide which language family a heavily mixed language belongs to?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-linguists-decide-which-language-family-a-heavily-mixed-language-belongs-to/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

23.III.2025

Depends.

1. Normally, you go with basic grammar, majority of words.
2. But in some cases this can give equivocal results, Armenian was once, wrongly, considered part of the Persian or Iranian family. It has many loan words from Persian, and I suppose some of them are so old they don’t sound like modern Persian. Like “joy” and “royal” in English don’t sound like “joie” and “royal(e)” in French.

If you were digging for an occasion to argue for Indo-European family unity rather than all included language families starting as “heavily mixed languages” by each other and then separated from that neighbourly situation, well, the problem is, so much vocabulary is missing from each “branch of Indo-European” … For instance, take the words “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister” … There is only Proto-Indo-European and Germanic that has all six. Latin and Irish have other words for son and daughter, and Welsh has another word for father too. Greek has other words for brother and sister. Baltic and Slavic both have other words for father, Slavic has the “ther” ending sometimes replaced by “-ts” in masculine (like in the other word for father) and “ka” in feminine, so only sister ends in “r” …

It’s not an easy task to determine what the Indo-European word for “head” was, and I thought the situation was similar for “hand” but it turns out the Greek word is shared by Armenian and by Hittite, so it’s original. It’s “replaced by other words” (or never borrowed) in Celtic, Latin/Romance, Germanic, Balto-Slavic. The words one to ten, twenty, hundred, are similar across the board, but the teens and the tens above twenty are made in different ways. The word for thousand is different across the board, with Germanic sharing one with Balto-Slavic. The way the teens work are also similar between Baltic and the words “eleven” and “twelve” in Germanic, different in Slavic.

twelve or thirteen men

Polish: dwunastu lub trzynastu mężczyzn
Lithuanian: dvylika ar trylika vyrų

Germanic -l(e)ve(n) = Lithuanian -lika.

But we don't say **threlve, we say thirteen.

The Slavic like the Baltic is consistent from 11 to 19, and the Slavic ending is separate, the Germanic ending from 13 to 19 is separate.

In Greek and Latin, you simply add "and ten" or "ten" to the unit, so, basically Latin "eleven" is "oneteen" ...

Let's test twenty or thirty instead ...

Polish: dwudziestu lub trzydziestu mężczyzn
Lithuanian: dvidešimt ar trisdešimt vyrų (adds "ten" which would in Germanic and Latin be an addition rather than a multiplication)

If we compare the Polish endings for twelve and twenty, which is closer to "ten" ("dziesięć")?

dwunastu or dwudziestu?

Polish too adds "ten" which in Latin and Germanic would be addition. To be fair, it seems probable "dwunastu" is short for "dwu na dziestu" if we compare Ukrainian:

twelve or twenty
дванадцять або двадцять = dvanadtsyatʹ abo dvadtsyatʹ

So, Polish makes teens like Greek "one and ten" in Greek, "one on ten" in Polish.

One “clear marker” of Indo-European is verb endings, but Finnish has more Indo-European verb endings than Germanic, even at the oldest stage. And Germanic is, while Finnish isn’t Indo-European.

Q XI

Can speakers of Indo-European languages understand each other as if they were speaking one language?
https://www.quora.com/Can-speakers-of-Indo-European-languages-understand-each-other-as-if-they-were-speaking-one-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Mar 9 2025

Russian, Spanish and English are all Indo-European languages.

According to a certain theory, this means they all descend from Proto-Indo-European.

But according to how you select for what groups (I named Slavic, Romance and Germanic in my three examples) are Indo-European, this simply means they share certain key features. Or each a sufficient number from a larger list. These are NOT sufficient to understand each other.

Q XII

How do linguists trace the evolution of ancient languages to their modern descendants?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-linguists-trace-the-evolution-of-ancient-languages-to-their-modern-descendants/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

24.III.2025

Depends very much on whether they use documentation (like between Latin and French) or reconstruction (like between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Italo-Celtic, Proto-Italo-Celtic and Proto-Italic, Proto-Italic and Old Latin).

When it comes to Latin to French, the period between Caesar and Alcuin is one where spoken language changes while the written retains basically the spelling of Caesar’s language, and the tracing is one of sound changes reflected in spelling mistakes. For the principle, imagine a version of English where no H is pronounced, but where people also don’t go to English schools. You could detect that by someone writing “hover the ill” instead of “over the hill” … From Alcuin on, there is a very brief gap of some decades before you get that first texts often considered as “written in Old French” (definitely not Classic Old French, some reassign them to Proto-Gallo-Romance …) namely Strassburg Oaths and Eulalia Sequence. And as, from Alcuin on, the spelling convention was fixed in Latin, the conventional relation of sound and spelling could be preserved instead of an old spelling from Eulalia and Roland up to the printing press.

When it comes to Proto-Indo-European to Latin, the method is very different, since the process (real or supposed) has no written traces, by the time we get to Old Latin it’s by definition already Latin.

You collect a number of languages supposed to descend from Proto-Indo-European. In each clear family (like Germanic or Italic) you chose one or more of the oldest language forms (in Italic you’d prefer Latin and extinct Umbrian over French or Italian). You look at things that are identic or similar in meaning and reasonably similar in sound. Second person in -S (though in lots of Old Germanic languages, it could look like -ST instead)? Italic, Greek, Germanic …. a word meaning “carry” (in general) or “deliver a baby”? Fero, phero, bära, ge-bären, beirim (Old Irish biru?), bhárati …

You make a large collection of those things, you hope they have been inherited by the original mother language, since that is your working hypothesis, you try to work out how it sounded in the original language, and in this connection you need two things:

• a proto-form
• sound changes that lead from the proto-form to the forms that are attested.

So, for the verb mentioned, and it’s one of the flag ships for Indo-European scholarship, take this approach, first just use the stem:

*bher- → bhar- (Old Indian, Sanskrit)
*bher- → *βer- → *φer- → fer- (Latin)
*bher- → *βer- → *ber- → lengthened in second last syllable : bär- (Swedish), ge-bär- (German), bear (English) …

Then do the same thing for the endings that correspond. Spoiler, not all endings do correspond, though many do.

Q XIII

Can the phonology of Proto-Indo-European be reconstructed for a specific reconstructed morpheme, such as 'to be'?
https://www.quora.com/Can-the-phonology-of-Proto-Indo-European-be-reconstructed-for-a-specific-reconstructed-morpheme-such-as-to-be/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Dec 4 2024

Yes and no.

• If you assume that PIE existed
• and if you take one of the reconstruction models

THEN you can reconstruct precisely the phonology of a specific morpheme.

Q XIV

What can ancient writing systems tell us about how humans think and communicate?
https://www.quora.com/What-can-ancient-writing-systems-tell-us-about-how-humans-think-and-communicate/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

24.III.2025

Usually, a single language has one writing system, rarely two (Old Swedish has been written both in Runes and in the Latin alphabet). If any at all.

One writing system can be used by more than one language or language family. In that case, there is always cultural contact either present or at least past.

So, for instance, if prior to Göbekli Tepe people from Spain to Indonesia repeated 32 not obviously pictorial signs, and if after Göbekli Tepe you find very different types of proto-writing popping up in Mohenjo-Daro and Greece and perhaps elsewhere, we can conclude that before Göbekli Tepe there was a single language or at least languages in contact with each other, and after Göbekli Tepe a discontinuity both with that past and with each other in different places.

Q XV

What are some of the earliest known languages? Is there evidence to support the theory that all languages evolved from one common language?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-earliest-known-languages-Is-there-evidence-to-support-the-theory-that-all-languages-evolved-from-one-common-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Oct 31 2024

A few things to keep in mind.

• The idea all languages over the world, from Chinese to Kiché evolved from a single language, called “Proto-World” by adherents should not be confused with the idea that all Indo-European languages (46 % speak them as first language over the world) evolved from Proto-Indo-European. The strictly linguistic evidence for the latter is not uncontrovertible, Trubetskoy who founded Balkan linguistics was against it, and the linguistic evidence for the former is obviously much more slender than that. One adherent (Merrit Ruhlen, I think, or he could have cited earlier adherents) reconstructed 32 root words he considered as recurring all over the world, while for Proto-Indo-European Pokorny lists 2,222 main entries. To be clear, not all of those are evidenced from all “branches of Indo-European” some get only three out of ten big ones, and not always even plus a few small obscure ones.
• There is theological evidence that the actual first language was Hebrew, and that most non-Hebrew or at least all non-Semitic and plenty of non-Hebrew Semitic ones did not naturally evolve, but split off from Hebrew by miraculous change, see Genesis 11, yes, this is how the text is taken by Church Fathers and Scholastics who have commented on it. The Hebrew spoken immediately after the Flood, before Babel need not have been strictly letter for letter the same that Moses would write down 1447 years later if it was at the Exodus event he began writing. But it would still be at least as recogniseable as Old English from Beowulf or King Alfred is seen from Modern English. Probably a bit more due to longer lifespans.
• Evolution believers think that human language began to exist some time between “at least” half a million years ago “as far back as” in Homo erectus and as late as Homo Sapiens only, around the time of the Neanderthal extinction or even pushing back to 90 000 years ago. Compared to that, the earliest languages we have now are recent. There is nothing in language development since these earliest attested languages (they obviously think Sumerian is older than any recognisable form of Hebrew), whether they survived or not, to remotely illustrate the ideas of Evolution believers that language as we know human language developed from “more primitive” predecessors. The “language of the great apes” in Tarzan is strictly speaking fan fiction on evolutionary linguistics. It has no support in actual historic linguistics. So, all “evidence” for human languages developing from different strands of hominins independently or from a single strand are speculations in the shadow field evolutionary linguistics, no support at all in linguistics proper.

To the first question. As I said, Evolution believers would say Sumerian was spoken as early as 3500 BC (a carbon date I consider as equivalent to a real date between 2039 and 2022 BC), and written down only 900 years later, and obviously Hebrew even in the form of Proto-Sinaitic is not recorded in writing earlier than well after that.

Wikipedia has an excellent entry on that. List of languages by first written record.[1]

Footnotes

[1] List of languages by first written account - Wikipedia

Q XVI

Did ancient civilizations have a common language or did they speak different languages and were isolated from each other?
https://www.quora.com/Did-ancient-civilizations-have-a-common-language-or-did-they-speak-different-languages-and-were-isolated-from-each-other/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Oct 31 2024

1. Mankind in the Upper Palaeolithic could have had a common language, as Genevieve von Petzinger found 32 symbols recurring everywhere from Spain to Indonesia. Of these, the hashtag has been found in Neanderthal caves.
2. For Göbekli Tepe, we have no written remains at all.
3. Proto-writing after Göbekli Tepe seems diverse.
4. Deciphered writings even later definitely are diverse, and record different languages.
5. Nevertheless, while Egyptians, Sumerians, Akkadians, Hatti, Hittites, Mitanni, Elamites had different languages, they were not isolated, but had already established relationships using the skills of bilingual people.

Here is how I read this, as a Christian:

1. Pre-Flood and early post-Flood mankind, up to the death of Noah 350 years after the Flood all spoke Hebrew. Neanderthals would have before the Flood spoken a dialect in which AH and OH didn’t occur. Or at least those with flat roof skulls, a feature posing a problem to pronounce such vowels.
2. 350 to 401 after the Flood, the elites from all around the world were drafted by Nimrod to Babel. He had no use for writing, neither had his colleague over in Jericho.
3. In 401 when Phalec was born, or rather somewhat before it, perhaps as much as seven years, mankind was breaking up bc of the confusion of tongues. Hence his name, as the seven years up to his birth had seen men divide more and more. The ones who tried to write afterwards were “reinventing” the lost “wheel” and coming up with new shapes.
4. Once writings are made that we can still or at least again read, the languages were obviously already different.
5. And these civilisations with deciphered writings started out so late after Babel that they had begun to reconnect through bilinguals. All of above writings come from the times of Joseph in Egypt or later.

Some will pretend this doesn’t make sense with the time scale, well, it does if carbon dates are inflated and more and more the further back we go, past a certain point which I consider the fall of Troy.

Language Origin

Q XVII

What is the logic behind how spoken language works? How were noises and sounds associated with things and ideas to form the "word"?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-logic-behind-how-spoken-language-works-How-were-noises-and-sounds-associated-with-things-and-ideas-to-form-the-word/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Answer requested by

Lucas Gomas

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Mar 10 2025

The logic is, it is mainly notional.

You mainly predicate one notion about one other notion.

This means, the phrase is nearly always at least two morphemes.

Also, in order to have a sufficient number of morphemes, for this to work, the morpheme is nearly always at least two phonemes, not just one noise, but a number of them in a specific order.

You cut things with a knife. You tuck someone in a blanket. Cut and tuck contain the same three phonemes, but not in the same order.

The next question you ask is how this came to happen. Well, for those who insist it happened by evolution, no one knows how. For those who insist it didn’t happen by evolution, some of us know God gave this as a gift to Adam on the very first day he was alive.

Other

Q XVIII

What is the most effective way to understand an ancient text from a different language without having to learn all related languages beforehand?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-effective-way-to-understand-an-ancient-text-from-a-different-language-without-having-to-learn-all-related-languages-beforehand/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

25.III.2025

Feast of Annunciation

1. To learn THAT language.
2. or to read in translation.

In either case, you are perfectly entitled to inform yourself about ancient translations, if any.

“Battologein” means “stutter-speak” and while the Vulgate picks on about the probable intended sense of “holding speaches nervously” by stating “use verbosity” the Syriac and Coptic, as I have been told on Quora, translate “stutter” …. not a single translation prior to the heresiarch Calvin uses “vain repetitions” as a translation.