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Designing Rosetta Stones for future civilisations

Miland-tól, 2009. május 31.

Hozzászólások: 16

Nyelv: English

Miland (Profil megtekintése) 2009. május 31. 8:51:38

Developing the theme of Rosetta Stones in a previous thread, my question now is: what kinds of texts should we have, in both Esperanto and another language, so that its language could be rediscovered?

The krestomatio would have to cover a sufficiently representative slice of the language that, once the texts were understood, they would enable decipherment of other texts in the language by deducing the meaning of words in context. So there would be a balance between comprehensiveness and economy. With carvings only a page or a few pages worth could be put on a wall, for example. Engraved metallic plates might enable perhaps a book to be stored.

Imagine that you wanted English* to become accessible, by creating a 'Rosetta Stone' of bilingual Esperanto and English texts. If you had only one page, what would you put in? What about a dozen pages? And finally, the most implausible (though not impossible), a whole 'book' of engraved metal plates?

*Suggestions for other languages are welcome, this is only an example.

russ (Profil megtekintése) 2009. május 31. 9:14:30

To be genuinely useful for teaching a forgotten language to future civilizations, I'd want pictures, not only text. A simple picture dictionary showing basic concepts like "viro", "virino", "hundo", "unu", "du", "tri", etc would seem a very helpful quick method for teaching basic vocabulary directly instead of hoping people would pick it up from context in sample texts.

But if you're doing it only with a small amount of text as you suggest, then I'd probably want to have multiple other reference languages that are widely spoken now and so most likely to still be at least somewhat known to the future civilization, e.g. English, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic. The choice of other reference languages seems more important than the specific sample text chosen. I'm skeptical that only one page of ANY text would suffice to reconstruct other texts with any real confidence. But I would probably attempt it by computing a concordance of the most commonly used roots in Esperanto now (e.g. the Baza Radikaro), and simply composing a simple sample text that uses them all, with a clean simple natural style checked by respected Esperantists of various nationalities, then translating that sample text into the other reference languages with simple straightforward translations (and of course verifying the quality of those translations as well).

Oŝo-Jabe (Profil megtekintése) 2009. május 31. 10:31:44

We also can't forget part of what made the Rosetta Stone so useful: the repeated use of the name Ptolemy. If an example text is going to be used, it should probably mention a name, and possibly a few other important words a specific number of times, so that frequency analysis will help in the reconstruction of the language.

erinja (Profil megtekintése) 2009. május 31. 11:43:34

I would make sure that the text itself is something likely to make it into future generations and be recognized for what it is. I would choose something like a passage from the Bible, and also ensure that it had Biblical proper names, so that it would be recognized for what it is. Even if the accompanying languages had since died, future researchers should be able to find that passage of the Bible and use it to decipher the text.

andogigi (Profil megtekintése) 2009. május 31. 14:07:35

Oŝo-Jabe:We also can't forget part of what made the Rosetta Stone so useful: the repeated use of the name Ptolemy. If an example text is going to be used, it should probably mention a name, and possibly a few other important words a specific number of times, so that frequency analysis will help in the reconstruction of the language.
Part of the reason Champolion was able to unlock the Rosetta stone was his belief that the hieroglyphics were phonetic.

We could could kill too birds with one stone by using the same concept under different parts of speech and use this as a key. Keeping the roots the same could prove that the roman alphabet was meant to convey phonemes., even if they couldn't figure out what the sounds were.

(Ex. Next to a pic of a man running write: "la kuregisto rapide kuregas". Next to a man walking write "la promenisto malrapide promenas", etc.)

Abii (Profil megtekintése) 2009. május 31. 20:18:08

I would make sure that the text itself is something likely to make it into future generations and be recognized for what it is. I would choose something like a passage from the Bible, and also ensure that it had Biblical proper names, so that it would be recognized for what it is. Even if the accompanying languages had since died, future researchers should be able to find that passage of the Bible and use it to decipher the text.
That's assuming it reached a christian known society. If you were to be given a random text that mentions the names of (but you wouldn't know it), say, Finnish deities over and over again I'm sure you'd struggle a great deal.

andogigi:
Part of the reason Champolion was able to unlock the Rosetta stone was his belief that the hieroglyphics were phonetic.

We could could kill too birds with one stone by using the same concept under different parts of speech and use this as a key. Keeping the roots the same could prove that the roman alphabet was meant to convey phonemes., even if they couldn't figure out what the sounds were.
Maybe we could leave a comprehensive picture dictionary of mouth-shape to letters for them. lango.gif

jchthys (Profil megtekintése) 2009. június 1. 0:06:45

Abii:
I would make sure that the text itself is something likely to make it into future generations and be recognized for what it is. I would choose something like a passage from the Bible, and also ensure that it had Biblical proper names, so that it would be recognized for what it is. Even if the accompanying languages had since died, future researchers should be able to find that passage of the Bible and use it to decipher the text.
That's assuming it reached a christian known society. If you were to be given a random text that mentions the names of (but you wouldn't know it), say, Finnish deities over and over again I'm sure you'd struggle a great deal.
The Bible is very well known outside Christianity and is perhaps even the most read book in the history of the world; thus it would be the most logical choice compared with most other literary works.

russ (Profil megtekintése) 2009. június 1. 5:23:48

jchthys:The Bible is very well known outside Christianity and is perhaps even the most read book in the history of the world; thus it would be the most logical choice compared with most other literary works.
Or Harry Potter. ridulo.gif

The answer really depends on just how far in the future this civilization is supposed to be. If it's really far, then I'd assume the Bible and every other book we currently know, as well as major languages like English etc are all forgotten, and any such Rosetta Stone would be better off starting from scratch with a well-tuned text that consciously intentionally shows off the most common important parts (vocabulary and grammar) of the target language, instead of assuming the future readers will already know the essential meaning of the sample text.

Also: as a practical matter, most passages from the Bible (at least those which I've read) don't really give a wide representative sample of common useful everyday vocabulary and grammatical forms that would be most helpful to a new learner of a language.

Miland (Profil megtekintése) 2009. június 1. 9:15:25

Teaching a language by a rekta metodo to a future civilisation with no linguistic bridge to ours is a different problem from the one I had in mind (but well worth starting another thread on).

The idea of a Rosetta stone is that it enables the use of knowledge that is already there and makes wider comprehension possible. Biblical texts are as likely to survive as modern languages, which is why using them is a good idea.

Senlando (Profil megtekintése) 2009. június 1. 15:56:59

it's hard to say, but i think at least one of the worlds 3 main languages (in my opinion, Spanish, English, and Mandarin) would survive in some form for a very long time, perhaps to become the heads of a family of languages.

but out of all the languages, most likely the Chinese text would be the most endangered, because it's not phonetic, and is much easier to forget. just like how hieroglyphs where forgotten.

Also because Mandarin doesn't have a phonetic spelling (other then pinyin, and various alphabets for learning), most likely the pronunciation of Mandarin and other Chinese languages would evolve the most.

so my personal opinion, is that the ideal roseta stone have text in, English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese charactes + the aditional pinying (although i would improve on the pinyin, to make the pronunciation more accurate! for example write "shuai" instead of "shui" for water!)

I would also add Esperanto, just to give the people of the future a model for a very good planned language, if it's not already the official language of the future. haha.

i would consider adding Arabic, Hindi, and perhaps even Swahili, there's no telling which languages would survive and thrive!

this is with the hope that at least one of those languages, remains similar enough where they can be used to decode the other languages.

it looks like it's going to have to be a really big stone. perhaps it would be better to convert a well-fortified, much-higher-then see-level, away-from-any-fault-lines-or-volcanoes, bomb-shelter into a giant Rosetta Stone?

btw, adding pictures could help to. ridulo.gif

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