Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 20

= July 20 =

Questions on the Ancient Egyptian language and the proto-Nostratic language theory
Where could I find information about the questions of the pronunciation reconstruction of ancient Egyptian ( based e.g ) of still alive and spoken afroasiatic languages ??

And what to you about the alleged existence of a theory about a so-called protonostric language ??

Sincerely yours ,

István Csiszár ; Hungary 87.97.80.79 (talk) 14:20, 20 July 2015 (UTC)


 * There's an article on Nostratic languages. To summarize: while there are a few proponents out there, most historical linguists are skeptical. 128.146.172.106 (talk) 15:39, 20 July 2015 (UTC)


 * You've probably read this, and there's Coptic of course.Coptic language; see this Myrvin (talk) 16:31, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Proto-nostratic in this book. Myrvin (talk) 16:47, 20 July 2015 (UTC)


 * In case you haven't found it yet, the Hungarian Wikipedia has articles on both topics: Nosztratikus nyelvcsalád and Egyiptomi nyelv. Though apparently shorter than their English counterparts, you may find other helpful links in those articles as well.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 17:26, 20 July 2015 (UTC)


 * There are several competing (partial) reconstructions of Proto-Afro-Asiatic, none of which is anywhere near the stage of what we have for PIE. But PAA has a time depth of probably more than 10,000 years or so, much older than PIE.  Egyptian is just one lone survivor of one branch of the PAA family.  Knowing its vowels in the context of Nostratic theory is about as relevant as the plumage patterns of sparrows in the reconstruction of early dinosaur evolution--it's looking at a recent side branch to reconstruct ancient relationships.
 * Nostraticists also pretty much concede that PAA is a sister group, and focus more on Joseph Greenberg's Eurasiatic language hypothesis and Fortescue's Uralo-Siberian which are more coherent highly supported by the evidence. There are also problems with Nostratic in that it was based on the data available (the existence of reconstructions of families like the Dravidian languages and the Kartvelian languages) and ignored at-the-time not yet reconstructed groups of NE Asia.  And there are quite different proposals for Nostratic consonant correspondences between the original theory and the reconstruction by Bomhard which make the whole construct suspect.
 * It is true that Many English speaking linguists toe Lyle Campbell's line that long range comparisons should be "shouted down" but the skeptics do not address the data or offer their own alternatives, they make unhelpful a priori arguments based on models of what possibly can be reconstructed (e.g., "nothing older than 6,000 years") and refuse to listen to anything that contradicts those models. Such skepticism is not as broad outside Americanists and the anglosphere. μηδείς (talk) 22:27, 20 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Why do some editors introduce their contributions with a blob?
 * Do you need a special blob licence? Myrvin (talk) 10:43, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You can take this to talk, but your comments have nothing to do with the OP's question. μηδείς (talk) 16:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)