Life is a complicated thing. We chugh along and then...bam...we are hit with something we think we can't survive. I've been hit by that train. But trust me. You do get by. You survive. You even find happiness. I promise. I really do. The tunnel is long and the dark is dark. But the light at the end is good and you can find happiness. As a veteran I can promise this. That light will be there.
Resurrecting a Dead Language- Part 1
So I’ve written in the past about the evolution of language and how linguistics attempts to make sense of all this. What I’d like to do now is to explain how a dead language- a language no one speaks today (and hasn’t for the past 3,000 years!); a language that was not written down or preserved for us in any form- can be resurrected from across the lost millennia. The process itself is fascinating, like a mystery where every clue contributes to the ultimate answer. It also provides insight into the migration patterns of these ancient peoples and their descendants. But more than that, once those descendants have been identified and the mother language has been reconstructed, its culture, and even some of its mythology, can be retrieved from the mists of time. To me, this is the most fascinating aspect of historical linguistics, the ability peer deep into the past and catch a glimpse of an ancient people whose only legacy is in the daughter languages and cultu...
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