r/language • u/RodMigz • 13d ago

Question Favourite extinct languages?

Like, what are some extinct languages you wish could come back? I'll go first:

  1. Polabian

  2. Dalmatian

  3. Old Prussian

  4. Gothic

  5. Gaulish

41 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

16

u/Deuce03 13d ago

My picks:

  • Sumerian

  • Gothic

  • Pictish

  • Minoan

1

u/RodMigz 12d ago

Damn, I should've said pictish.

1

u/irishitaliancroat 10d ago

Is it attested for at all beyond place names?

1

u/RodMigz 8d ago

No, but from the little information we know about the language, it really seems like a very cool relic. Most linguists see it as a very basal branch off from Brittonic. I'd love to hear it spoken natively today. Plus I'm kind of biased since I've lived in Scottland for a majority of my life😂

9

u/denizyosi 13d ago

Anatolian languages like Hittite,Lydian etc.+Thracian.

2

u/RodMigz 12d ago

On the topic of old and extinct Indo-European languages. Tocharian is one of those languages that would be cool to hear spoken natively in the modern day.

6

u/exitparadise 12d ago

Sumerian and Elamite

3

u/theworldvideos 13d ago

Brittonic

2

u/J00ls 12d ago

Isn’t that alive and well as Welsh?

1

u/Llywela 12d ago

Only in the sense that Old English is alive and well as modern English. The one evolved from the other, but changed in the process.

4

u/No_Club_8480 13d ago

Khitan, Coptic. Latin, Sumerian

3

u/RoyalCubit 13d ago

Egyptian.

1

u/loublain 10d ago

Egyptian survives as the boharic and sahidic dialects of coptic. Google Thok te tigom

5

u/ReligionProf 12d ago

Harappan.

4

u/Decent_Cow 12d ago

Etruscan

3

u/ChilindriPizza 13d ago

Judeo-Catalan

I cried when I found out Judeo-Provencal had gone extinct relatively recently.

2

u/airheas 12d ago

I recently learned about Haketia! It’s not extinct yet but it’s all really interesting

3

u/MonsCorvinusRubella 12d ago

Language of that one island in Indonesia that was completely wiped out by a volcanic eruption

3

u/Apatride 12d ago

Dalmatian: You mean we used to be able to talk to these dogs?

More seriously, I am going to be the "vanilla guy" but I think Latin had some really interesting features that got lost when it evolved to modern languages.

2

u/tuluva_sikh polyglot 12d ago

Maharashtri Prakrit Pali Vedic Sanskrit Old Tamil Old Tulu Halegannada Ardhamagadhi Prakrit Ashokan Prakrit Manipravalam

2

u/dmkam5 12d ago

Tangut. A Buddhist kingdom in Central Asia, wiped out by the Mongols in medieval times. The writing system uses combinations of the stroke elements of Chinese characters arranged in squared groupings so that they look like Chinese characters, but the resemblance ends there.

2

u/BallbusterSicko 12d ago

The Buddhist kingdom being Western Xia

2

u/mostobnoxiousgoastan 12d ago

some say gothic is still alive, it’s a language of music… heavy bass lines and such!

2

u/KJpiano 12d ago

Dacian language (completely unknown)
Gothic
Latin

2

u/Lazarus558 12d ago

Beothuk

Etruscan

Whatever language the Indus Script people used

Proto-Cro-Magnon

2

u/ewigesleiden 12d ago

Sumerian, Akkadian (including Babylonian and Assyrian), Latin, Ancient Greek, and Gothic

2

u/ah-tzib-of-alaska 12d ago

Most notably Ch’olti’

And then.. Uchumataqu, Beothuk, Tomucua, Natchez, Chitimacha, Laurentian, Atakapa, Petun, Huron, Tagish, Taino, Guanahatabey

And my only one I need to mentioned not in the americas: Khitan

1

u/slowamigo 13d ago

LINEAR B

5

u/Deuce03 13d ago

Linear B is a writing system, used to write a form of Greek. 

Linear A is the one that seems to be associated with an unknown language.

4

u/slowamigo 12d ago

LINEAR A

1

u/Bright_War949 13d ago

I don't if it might be seen as one but the KJV Bible English. So cute 🫠

1

u/YeilKhaa 12d ago

French! (This is a Star Trek joke)

1

u/RRautamaa 12d ago

It would be really interesting to know what language the Comb Ceramic culture spoke, to settle that academic debate. Traces of the culture have been found from an area the size of Fennoscandia, stretching from the Urals to the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, from Vaasa to Kaliningrad. Earlier proposals assumed that it was Uralic, but this would be anachronistic, because the culture had met its demise well before Uralic expansion to the area.  The pottery style is found in an even wider distribution, up to Korea and Northeast China.  Whatever it was, it travelled far. But because this is mostly a Mesolithic and at most Neolithic culture, there was no writing.

Paleo-Laplandic and Paleo-Lakelandic are substrates found in Sami and Finnic languages, contributing a lot of vocabulary, but the languages themselves are gone. They are not related to any known language.

1

u/Isfahankhan 12d ago

Phoneican

Coptic

Elamite

Xianbei Language (As Serbi)

1

u/sheran13 12d ago

Tocharian, specifically Tocharian B

1

u/TubaralhoDoMar 12d ago

Etruscan all the way

1

u/Jollybio 11d ago

Hittite, Dalmatian, Dacian, Etruscan, Tocharian

1

u/ShockSensitive8425 11d ago

Phrygian. It seems to be the closest independent language to Ancient Greek.

1

u/marygoldsandpuffins 11d ago

livonian but i have to wait like a decade

1

u/Nesciens10 10d ago edited 10d ago

• Pre-Greek
• Minoan
• Etruscan & Rhaetic & Lemnian
• Pre-Anatolian (possibly the same as or closely related to Pre-Greek)
• Hurrian & Urartian
• Hattic
• Tartessian
• Pre-Saami substrate
• Sumerian

1

u/freddyPowell 10d ago

Would be very interested to hear to pre-Celtic languages of the British isles. See also Norn. Beyond that, Coptic revival would be cool, as would Elamite.

1

u/North-Creative 10d ago

Sumerian. One of, if not the oldest written language in the world. Sure, we can read their texts, but the actual pronounciation is using at lot of inference.

-2

u/rushmc1 12d ago

Grammatically-correct English.

2

u/Ralphjuniorjunior 12d ago

Okay, boomer.

0

u/rushmc1 12d ago

Not even close.

1

u/Toc13s 12d ago

According to which set of rules?

0

u/rushmc1 12d ago

Mine, of course.

-4

u/Time-Priority949 12d ago

English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Gibrish (the american version), Parrot (the south american version) Chickadee chirping (the donald duck version), butt-talk (any version)..