Even though we associate language death with modern times, languages have been dying out in Late Antiquity too. Sometimes (well, most of the time) we learn about how it happened in quite unusual ways. A little thread 🧵 1/ Isidore, Etymologies, bk. IX.1 On languages St. Gallen, Cod. Sang. 231 - ThreadSky

calthalas.bsky.social • 69 days ago

Even though we associate language death with modern times, languages have been dying out in Late Antiquity too. Sometimes (well, most of the time) we learn about how it happened in quite unusual ways. A little thread 🧵 1/

Isidore, Etymologies, bk. IX.1 On languages
St. Gallen, Cod. Sang. 231

Comments

astroomens.bsky.social•68 days ago

📌

calthalas.bsky.social•69 days ago

Let's start with Cyril of Scythopolis who in his Vita of Euthymius, a 5th C. monk living in Palestine, describes the last known instance of spoken Galatian - a Celtic language from Asia Minor. A monk has been possessed and after he recovered he would only answer in his native language: Galatian. 2/

calthalas.bsky.social•69 days ago

Jerome, best known as a translator of the Bible, was probably a native speaker of Illyrian and in his Commentary on Isaiah (written around 410) 7:19 preserved the local Pannonian Vulgar Latin word for beer: sabaium which derived probably from Illyrian. 3/

calthalas.bsky.social•69 days ago

Ammianus Marcellinus (writing at the very end of the 4th c.) also mentions sabaia. Apparently emperor Valens was nicknamed by his enemies "a sabaiarius" because he had a weakness for sabaia, "a drink of the poor in Illyricum, made from barley or some other grain" (Amm. XXVI, 8.2) 4/

calthalas.bsky.social•69 days ago

Anonymous Pilgrim from Piacenza, who went to the Holy Land around 570, wrote that monks at Mount Sinai spoke Latin, Greek, Syriac, Egyptian (Coptic) and "Bessian" - possibly the language of the Bessi, a Thracian tribe, one of the last mentions of Thracian. 5/

St. Gallen, Cod. Sang. 133

petertarras.bsky.social•68 days ago

This passage is very fascinating, as it indicates very early translation activity on Mount Sinai. I've seen "Bessian" interpreted as Arabic or even Persian, but that it's a language that went extinct in Late Antiquity is a very intriguing perspective.

publicuniversal.bsky.social•69 days ago

followup question: are there any late antique/medieval examples of intentionally recording a clearly dying or extinct language, especially one that wasn't already ossifying as a literary language?

radrien.bsky.social•59 days ago

If it was ossifying as a literary language, there needn’t have been any special effort to record it. But several languages became preserved as literary or liturgical languages after they were no longer spoken-like Coptic (Ancient Egyptian), classical Latin, classical Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit.

ancientlinguist.bsky.social•69 days ago

The Codex Runicus seems to be an example. The last Pagan country which wrote Akkadian produced this at the behest of their Danish conqueror who reluctantly took part in the Northern Crusades.
https://www.druidwisdom.org/ancient-druid-rune-text-translations/nordic-codex-runicus-1190-ce/codex-runicus-pages-1-25-denmark-1190-ce/introduction

jamesleyland.bsky.social•68 days ago

It has been suggested that Jerome's saintly blooper gave us the name Titus Andronicus ... his "Chronicon" is at Merton College, with its mash-up of Titus Livy & Lucius Andronicus (line 5).