Tag: artificial

Five lines of ancient script on a shard of pottery could be the longest proto-Canaanite text ever found, archaeologists say

According to the BBC News ‘Oldest Hebrew script’ is found:

The shard was found by a teenage volunteer during a dig about 20km (12 miles) south-west of Jerusalem. Experts at Hebrew University said dating showed it was written 3,000 years ago – about 1,000 years earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Other scientists cautioned that further study was needed to understand it.

Preliminary investigations since the shard was found in July have deciphered some words, including judge, slave and king. The characters are written in Proto-Canaanite, a precursor of the Hebrew alphabet.

I found it interesting because of … Read the rest “Five lines of ancient script on a shard of pottery could be the longest proto-Canaanite text ever found, archaeologists say”

When a language should be considered artificial – A quick classification of spoken, dead, hypothetical and invented languages

Following Mithridates’ latest post and comment on artificial language compared to revived language, I consider it appropriate to share my point of view on this subject. For me, the schematic classification of languages into “natural” and “artificial” could be made more or less as follows, from ‘most natural’ (1) to ‘most artificial’ (20):

NOTE 1: There are 20 categories, as there could be just 4 (living, dead, reconstructed and invented) or 6, or 15, or a million categories corresponding to one language each, based on thorough statistical studies of vocabulary, grammar, ‘prestige’, etc. Thus, 20 is only the … Read the rest “When a language should be considered artificial – A quick classification of spoken, dead, hypothetical and invented languages”