However, I did find this video where a man is speaking (or at least attempting to speak gothic-- as no one really knows what it sounds like) gothic. He is reading the story of the prodigal son in Luke. All of the written gothic language is from the copies we have of the bible. Start at 4:17.
From how the guy in the video is speaking the gothic language, it sounds quite a bit different from the German language as we know it today. Since I don't have insight from a gothic language expert, my brother-in-law (who I've referenced before... he's a German literature major) let me film him reading the story of the prodigal son, Luke 15:11-17...
(pretend this is a video of Chris speaking German....it's taking eons to upload...it will be on soon!)
As I watched the first video in Gothic and the second in modern German, it made me think how languages can evolve and branch off-without any deliberate effort. Why didn't humans start speaking the same language? It started me thinking. I did some research on it and I thought these quotes are interesting...
"In 1866, a ban on the topic was incorporated into the founding statutes of the Linguistic Society of Paris, perhaps the foremost academic linguistic institution of the time: ‘The Society does not accept papers on either the origin of language or the invention of a universal language."
Evolutionist Carl Zimmer said this on the origin on language:
"No one knows the exact chronology of this evolution, because language leaves precious few traces on the human skeleton. The voice box is a flimsy piece of cartilage that rots away. It is suspended from a slender C-shaped bone called a hyoid, but the ravages of time usually destroy the hyoid too."
Just as we have no information on the sounds of the Gothic language, we really don't have that much information on the topic of oral language itself. There is no physical evidence of language-once said, it disappears- unless written down. There is this sort of mysteriousness with oral language as we never really know the exact way it came to be and how there can be many different languages, and how languages can die off.
Historical Oral Knowledge--it is kind of interesting to try to study something that doesn't exist any more. Modern oral tradition exists now, but anything beyond the memory of those living is just gone, or preserved in some secondary way. Even video, although it preserves the feel of oral tradition better than writing, is not at all the same as actually sitting down and having a conversation with someone. I know that I sometimes feel like I should be able to access any knowledge with just a few clicks of my computer, and for the most part I can, but then I come to subjects like this and there is just...nothing. Or almost nothing. It is a strange feeling.
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel because that's how what it's like for me to try and find people that know the language of my civilization.
ReplyDeleteLanguages can definitely change and like you said, it's not always that deliberate. It's a modern example, but being from Canada there are lots of words that aren't used or don't make sense down here when I use them but are common up home. It's all english but just the different locations and backgrounds has caused there to be changes and differences.
I really like the quote you included by Carl Zimmer. That guy reading makes it sound like it's related to English. My problem with his reading is that I feel like it doesn't help us learn anything about oral tradition, except what it could have sounded like.
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