{"id":9787,"date":"2023-11-15T11:58:52","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T18:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9787"},"modified":"2023-11-04T12:13:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T19:13:32","slug":"listening-to-the-ancient-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9787","title":{"rendered":"Listening to the ancient past"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@EquatorAI\" target=\"_blank\">Equator AI<\/a> created a video series that answers the question of what ancient languages sounded like. They even tackle some purely reconstructed proto-languages like Indo-European that was re-built from later derived (but documented) Indo-European languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first video demonstrates Old Norse, Latin, Old English, Proto-Celtic, Phoenician, Hittite, and Akkadian. I can affirm the Latin is understandable but has an interesting accent. We do actually have some idea of how things were pronounced in Latin, because ancient documents exist that gave pronunciation guides or even (in a mirror of modern grammar Nazi&#8217;s) complained about common pronunciation errors.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wc22W3bos64?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This second video shows off Proto-Indo-European, Sabaic, Sanskrit, Aramaic (bonus points for the video character looking like Jesus), Sumerian, Old Chinese, Ge&#8217;ez, and Gothic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wC0UG-Oq_90?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Since it is all AI generated, it seems like it would be an interesting way of adding authentic language pronunciation to games about the past. Imagine playing Civilization and having each of the ancient leaders speaking their actual languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you like this, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLU1WuLg45SiyrXahjvFahDuA060P487pV\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLU1WuLg45SiyrXahjvFahDuA060P487pV\">maybe give learning Latin a try<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/listen-to-the-sounds-of-ancient-languages-brought-to-life-by-ai-71061\">https:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/listen-to-the-sounds-of-ancient-languages-brought-to-life-by-ai-71061<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Equator AI created a video series that answers the question of what ancient languages sounded like. They even tackle some purely reconstructed proto-languages like Indo-European that was re-built from later derived (but documented) Indo-European languages. The first video demonstrates Old Norse, Latin, Old English, Proto-Celtic, Phoenician, Hittite, and Akkadian. I can affirm the Latin is understandable but has an interesting accent. We do actually have some idea of how things were pronounced in Latin, because ancient documents exist that gave&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9787\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28,26,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-ideas","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-2xR","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9787"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9790,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9787\/revisions\/9790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}