Parlor Game: The Unknown Language Genie

[dhok]

Let's say that a magic genie comes up to you and offers you a full grammar and lexicon of any language ever spoken, at any point in time. What would you ask for?

I'm not really sure what I'd go for, but I have a shortlist:

PIE's direct ancestor, 3 millenia prior (whatever it was)
Sentinelese, now
Minoan, 1500 BC
Tartessian, 700 BC
The ancestor of Basque, 1000 BC
One of the lost branches of IE: Dacian, Thracian, Phrygian, Illyrian, Venetic, etc.

[Vuvuzela]

I might ask for:
*One of the IE substrates (Germanic, Celtic, or Hellenic), so I could see what effect they had on their respective branches.
*The language of the paleo-Indians.
* The first language to develop click phonemes.
* The last direct descendant of English before either language shift or the extinction of the human species wipes it out.

[clawgrip]

I was thinking Minoan as well. Also, whatever language was a direct ancestor to Japanese and Korean and can be demonstrated as being related to Altaic, should such a language have actually existed. And an Ancient Egyptian phonology.

[linguofreak]

Hmmmm...

I might do something like this:

First I would select a small language family, or an isolate language. I would then take the most recent common ancestor of that family (Proto-Japonic, say) or the earliest known form of the isolate (Say Aquatanian, the ancestor of Basque) and designate it language X. Then I would ask for the grammar and lexicon of the most recent common ancestor of X and a language we shall call Y, which would be the closest known language to X apart from its known descendants, (providing that there is any link between X and any known language).

This way I would end up with one of three things:

1) The most recent common ancestor of X and some language outside its family (though I wouldn't necessarily know *which* language, and neither X nor Y might be extensively documented). This would be the case if there are no languages such that: A) The language is a descendant of X. B) We know the language exists/existed. C) We do *not* know that the language is a descendant of X.

2) If there *are* languages that fulfill all three of A), B), and C) above, I will end up with X itself. If X is well known enough to establish that I have ended up with X, we then know that there's a language we know about that, though we don't know it, is a descendant of X.

3) If X is not related to *any* known language other than its known descendants, I will end up with nothing, which will tell me that, among known languages, X is an isolate. If I could ascertain that the genie would allow me to make another request if I requested a language that did not exist, I would select values for X most likely to be completely unrelated to anything else so as to try and get the most information possible (1 grammar and lexicon, and as many possible "sorry, no such language" answers as possible).

Being able to make further requests when a requested language does not exist would also allow me to make requests like "A language of Middle Earth/Almea/$FAVORITE_CONWORLD that Tolkien/Zompist/$AUTHOR did not fully document", which would allow me to either rule out the existence of those conworlds (the overwhelmingly likely case), or establish that one of the actually *does* somehow exist, and get a heretofore unknown language out of the deal.

[brandrinn]

Nobody? Fine, I'll say it.

Proto-World.

[Xephyr]

Sentinelese

There'll be a description of it, eventually

Minoan

This too. Only a matter of time at this point. Fun fact: evidence suggests that this language had voiced implosive phonemes, and a palatalized series.

The ancestor of Basque, 1000 BC

Man who the hell cares?

One of the lost branches of IE: Dacian, Thracian, Phrygian, Illyrian, Venetic, etc.

Why? They're not likely to differ that much from Hittite or Old Avestan or whatever, and there isn't anything written in them, so....

Tartessian, 700 BC

This'd be cool.

Proto-World

You realize it'd have like 200 words and hardly anything in the way of syntax, right?

My answer: the language of the Proto-Elamite script. Or, if it's a familiar language, at least the guide to reading it.

[Radius Solis]

Proto-World? Think bigger! Ask the genie for grammars of all speech varieties or precursors thereof spoken at each 100-year interval going back for the last million years. And I demand our scenario include a wish genie to give us world peace, a cure for cancer, fifty million dollars apiece, an end to the Republican party, and a library to hold all the goods from the grammar genie.

[clawgrip]

Minoan

This too. Only a matter of time at this point. Fun fact: evidence suggests that this language had voiced implosive phonemes, and a palatalized series.

Do you have any news or sources for this? I am interested.

[Xephyr]

Reconstructing "Minoan" Phonology - The Approach from Universals of Language and Universals of Writing Systems

[installer_swan]

The spoken language(s) of the Indus Valley civilization and some readers if the seals are indeed language and they had a script.

[Nortaneous]

If it's an actual language, whatever is in the Voynich manuscript.

Although I'd probably either do linguofreak's thing or get some pre-IE substrate.

[Torco]

the language spoken by the nearest contemporary alien civilization

[Click]

I'll ask for:

• the language of Vinča culture
• Harappan
• Bangime

[Pthagnar]

while you're all doing this, i'll ask him for English to see how good he is at writing accurate grammars. the results may... surprise us.

[brandrinn]

win.

[Soap]

Just PIE would keep me happy for the rest of my life. People have been trying to reconstruct PIE for 120 years and still have huge differences of opinion. I suspect the real language was much more beautiful than any of the wild guesses we've come up with.

[dhok]

Beothuk, maybe?

[Christopher Schröder]

I think I would go for Proto-Germanic myself — I would be very interested in seeing how different it would be from what has been reconstructed, and I'm also curious as to how close to Classical Latin it really was.

[Pthagnar]

yo, "Classical Latin" is a proper noun

[Wattmann]

In order of priority:

* Proto-Indo-Uralic
* Etruscan
* Proto-Indo-European (before Anatolian split)
* Vincha
* Beothuk
* "Pelasgian"
* Ancient Egyptian (preferably of before the fifth dynasty)
* Voynich
* Vandalic
* Hypothetical Modern-Day Vandalic (in an alternate universe)
* Burgundic
* Frankish
* Coptic
* Proto-Slavic (300 AD)
* Proto-Germanic (100 BC)

[richard1631978]

Whatever language was written in Linear A, & possibly the Phaistos Disc (if it isn't a hoax or an astrological table).

Etruscan

Indus Valley or the Easter Island script (these are interestingly similar).

[Torco]

really? no one cares about how the squids with trillateral symmetry from Alpha Centauri II speak ?

[zompist]

My first thought: Old Chinese. As our sources are so indirect, I'd really like to know what it was actually like.

Grammars for the pre-Inca civilizations of Peru. It's weird that we don't even know what language was spoken in Chan-chan.

In fiction, I wish C.S. Lewis had actually developed Old Solar.

[zompist]

really? no one cares about how the squids with trillateral symmetry from Alpha Centauri II speak ?

Tripartite alignment, trial number, with triliteral roots and three vowel lengths.

[Torco]

pulpy!