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Topic: List of undeciphered languages

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Language

Decipherment

Linear A

Phoenician languages

Old European Script

Eteocretan

Etruscan language

Linear B

Vinca alphabet

Indus script

Voynich manuscript

Mycenaean language

Rohonczi Codex

Rongorongo

Pictish language

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	NL21_4: Vanishing Languages (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)
		When an endangered language (such as Gaelic) is spoken in a culture whose historical significance is widely appreciated--perhaps because it is associated with prowess in arts and crafts, or because it is known for its literary achievements--it may provoke widespread concern.
		And sometimes endangered languages that have suffered as a result of colonial expansion win support from speakers of the dominant language, who wish to distance themselves from the aggression of their ancestors.
		Language nationalists see their language as a treasure house, as a repository of memories, as a gift to their children, as a birthright.
	www.farsarotul.org /nl21_4.htm (3764 words)

	Linguist List - List of Ancient and Extinct Languages with Temporary Codes
		This language was spoken in the Middle Indic period, and figures prominently in the literature of the Jains, and is used to write their scriptures.
		The Greek language spoken during the middle ages, from approximately the fall of the Western Roman Empire until the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 AD.
		The language is characterized by dialects which show various stages of change in the path of the Greel language from the Koine used during the time of the Roman Empire to the Modern Greek language.
	www.linguistlist.org /forms/langs/GetListOfAncientLgs.html (638 words)

	Languages of the World
		Language family is the label often used for a conservative genetic classification, one that can be attested only when an abundance of cognates (related words) is available.
		The label language isolate is used for a language that is the only representative of a language family, as Basque or the extinct Sumerian language; the presumptive but unknown sister languages of isolates are dead and unrecorded.
		Dialects of two languages in the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European also are or were spoken in Europe: the Jassic dialect of Ossetic, an Iranian language, formerly spoken in Hungary; and the European dialects of Romany, which was spread by Gypsies throughout Europe and into America.
	www.ling.hawaii.edu /faculty/stampe/Linguistics/lgsworld.html (1332 words)

	List of Unices - Hutchinson encyclopedia article about List of Unices (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)
		Unix was developed by AT&T's Bell Laboratories in the USA during the late 1960s, using the programming language C.
		List of unclassified languages according to the Ethnologue
		List of undergraduate majors at The Catholic University of America
	encyclopedia.farlex.com /List+of+Unices (241 words)

	LINGUIST Codes for Ancient and Constructed Languages
		The workgroup's aim is to produce a supplementary set of language codes that will, in conjunction with the Ethnologue's set, constitute a complete set of codes for all languages of which there is any historical or current record.
		It then lists a proposed set of criteria by which codes should be assigned to ancient and constructed languages.
		Constructed languages cannot be treated by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, since they are almost never actually spoken, and are as much cultural objects as linguistic.
	www.language-archives.org /wg/language-codes/linguist-20020219.html (1627 words)

	The Conlang Yellow Pages
		This list includes links to over 300 conlangs on the Internet, including all constructed languages I've found listed elsewhere on the web, the pages of the members of the CONLANG mailing list, and many others which their authors have sent me links to by e-mail.
		I try to keep this a complete up-to-date alphabetical list of conlangs which have a presence on the Net; I'm not going to go through and write descriptions of each of the languages, as others have already done so and I can update the list more often, with more links, if I don't.
		I'm glad to be able to add this language to my "favorites" list, now that the page contains a large (and still growing) grammar as well as a number of original texts in Valdyan, the language of Valdyas in the world of Andal, which also contains the Charyan languages and cultures by Boudewijn Rempt.
	www.geocities.com /Athens/Crete/5555/conlang.htm (658 words)

	Quadrant Magazine (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)
		Ultimately the idea of a common ancestry for various languages came from the biblical story of the tower of Babel, but it was not until Jones that rather than comparing whole word units the emphasis was placed on sound units and the idea of common word roots.
		Once historical sound-changes in a known language, or a set of related languages, are established they can be used to “turn the clock back” and establish the sounds and words of a common ancestor or proto-language.
		Languages for which we have no written record, either because they did not employ writing or all traces of it have perished, have proven more difficult to deal with but the comparative method has yielded a surprising amount of information.
	www.quadrant.org.au /php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=1195 (782 words)

	Index of languages by writing system
		This is a list of the languages featured on Omniglot arranged by the writing systems with which they are written.
		This is not an exhaustive list of all the languages written with each writing system.
		For example, in Central Asia many languages were originally written with the Arabic alphabet, then switched to the Latin alphabet during the 1920s, then to the Cyrillic alphabet during the 1930s or 1940s.
	www.omniglot.com /writing/languages.htm (203 words)

	American Scientist Online - Uncracked Ancient Codes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)
		A sign list compiled as a sort of "alphabet" in the 16th century by Fray Diego de Landa, a Franciscan friar who served as bishop of Yucatán, was incorrect in some of its interpretations but offered a number of useful clues.
		Linear A, undeciphered, tantalizes, because about 80 percent of its signs resemble those of Linear B. Its system of numerals seems to be fairly clear: On several tablets, a term for "total" appears at the bottom of a tablet that includes a series of numbers.
		Sanskrit and early Dravidian, the ancient languages of India, seem to be the keys to deciphering the highly challenging script of the Indus Valley civilization of the third millennium b.c.
	www.americanscientist.org /template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/17666;jsessionid=baagfvrCcuOj_Z (1049 words)

	Ancient Languages of East Mediterranean: article by Cyril Babaev
		And now this only means two non-Indo-European languages with similar names, and there were quite a lot of such examples in the history: Hatti in Asia and a Germanic tribe Hatti; Picts in Scotland and Pictones in Aquitane, Venetians in North Italy and Venedes, the name for Slavs used by ancient Germanic tribes.
		The next language is Eteo-Cretan, spoken on the island of Crete, in the middle period of the Minoan civilization.
		We can however have an idea of the language for several reasons: First, the Linear script was borrowed by Greeks to write in their tongue, with the Linear B form.
	indoeuro.bizland.com /archive/article9.html (2559 words)

	Language (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)
		A language gauge determines the student’s level of proficiency and suggests appropriate courses.
		In addition to the country index, there are language name and family indexes, a table of the geographic distribution of living languages, and a list of nearly extinct languages.
		Designed by a professor of anthropology, the tutorial summarizes the distribution of the world’s languages, what languages are, how they are learned, and nonverbal communication.
	www.jocolibrary.org /printerfriendly.asp?DisplayPageID=16 (491 words)

	Elonka's List of Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers
		There has also been an attempt to sort this list by "fame", as defined by a loose formula involving the number of times that a particular cipher has been written about, and/or how many hits it pulls up on a moderately-sorted web search.
		According to the pamphlet, the friend spent the next 20 years trying to decrypt the messages, solving only one which detailed the tons of gold, silver and jewels that were buried, along with a general location.
		According to the story, the friend finally decided to walk away from the quest, and publish everything they knew about the situation in the (anonymous) pamphlet, which was supposedly published by another friend of the innkeeper.
	elonka.com /UnsolvedCodes.html (2084 words)

	List of writing systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		It has been suggested that List of alphabets be merged into this article or section.
		The usual name of the script is given first (and bolded); the name of the language(s) in which the script is written follows (in brackets), particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name.
		Ideographic scripts (in which graphemes are ideograms representing concepts or ideas, rather than a specific word in a language), and pictographic scripts (in which the graphemes are iconic pictures) are not thought to be able to express all that can be communicated by language, as argued by the linguists John DeFrancis and J.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/List_of_undeciphered_languages (1589 words)

	LINGUIST List 7.400: Daniels & Bright The World's Writing Systems
		For modern languages, one is given the original text, a fairly abstract Roman transliteration (where necessary), a phonetic transcription (though it is not always clear what dialect this represents), a word-by-word gloss, and a translation.
		For ancient languages the phonetic transcription is generally skipped, for obvious reasons, and in general deviations from the ideal sketched above are found where there is insufficient information about the script or language in question.
		In a posted response to my query (6.1096), Daniels stated that "the number of languages with a `phonemic' orthography approaches zero." There is no question, given the detailed descriptions in the book, that this statement seems to be true, in that writing systems tend to represent phonological structure that is certainly not "surfacey".
	www.linguistlist.org /issues/7/7-400.html (2863 words)

	Earliest Civilizations, the Steppe, Vedas, Upanishads, and the Mandukya Upanishad
		Mandarin Chinese has been expanding against the other Chinese languages because of its political, cultural, and demographic dominance and the peculiar relationship of these languages to each other (they are written with the same Classical Chinese characters).
		Their language has no known affinities, though the Caucasus is still home to similarly isolated and unique language groups, three of them.
		A chain of ancient non-Indo-European and non-Semitic languages -- of Elam, the Kassites, the Hurrians, and Urartu -- stretched from Sumer to the Caucasus, but too little is known of these languages, or of the early forms of the Caucasian ones, for certain connections to be drawn.
	www.friesian.com /upan.htm (5980 words)

	Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts
		Lost Languages investigates the most famous examples, leading us back to a far-distant past obscured by the ravages of time and haunted by code breakers hungry for glory.
		And yet the language spoken by the Etruscans remains wrapped in mystery; if penetrated, it could reveal the history of a pre-Roman society almost as great as ancient Greece.
		In Lost Languages, Robinson reports from the front lines of scholarship, where obsession, genius, occasional delusion, and sometimes bitter rivalry are de rigueur among the intriguing cast of modern characters who are currently competing for the rare honor of cracking these ancient codes -- and giving voice to forgotten worlds.
	www.zooscape.com /cgi-bin/maitred/WhitePulp/isbn0071357432 (741 words)

	Perhaps a draft RFC on Script codes?
		Note: John Clews was formerly Chair of ISO/TC46/SC2 (Conversion of Written Languages), which was responsible (in ISO committee terms) for overseeing the earlier stages of the development of earlier drafts of ISO 15924.
		Unique identification of a script is not always straightforward and obvious; therefore a number of scripts have been listed in Annex B pending further study before codes are standardized for them.
		This serves to help differentiate script codes from language codes and country codes: so, for example, Mong mon MON or Mong mn MN would refer to a book in the Mongolian script, in the Mongolian language, originating in Mongolia.
	www.alvestrand.no /pipermail/ietf-languages/2002-December/000507.html (1773 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Books \| Top 10s \| Andrew Dalby's top 10
		His latest book, Language in Danger, considers the consequences of the current language crisis, in which a language is dying every two weeks.
		A Russian linguist recently claimed to have reconstructed 'Eve's language', the language that is ancestral to all those spoken today.
		Cherokee is an Iroquoian language, although the Cherokee were not one of the original five nations of the Iroquois.
	books.guardian.co.uk /top10s/top10/0,6109,736896,00.html (1089 words)

	Amazon.com: Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts: Books: Andrew Robinson (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)
		Major breakthroughs, such as the Rosetta Stone and its key to Egyptian hieroglyphs, and continuing enigmas such as the undeciphered scripts of the Etruscans and Easter Islanders are explored with all the fervor of a contemporary news story.
		An altogether extraordinary and fascinating work, "Lost Languages" is an engaging and engrossing look at the ways that anthropologists and linguists have deciphered lost or forgotten languages.
		Deciphering ancient dead languages is one of the most fascinating challenges a man/woman can face in his/her lifetime, and the more obstacles faced by the challenger the better.
	www.amazon.com /Lost-Languages-Worlds-Undeciphered-Scripts/dp/0071357432 (2416 words)

	Straight Dope Staff Report: How come we can't decipher Indus script? (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)
		In Semitic languages, L is common as a single-letter word, but not so common in suffixes and prefixes; M is the only letter that is really common in Semitic suffixes, prefixes, and as single-letter words.
		Further evidence that Dravidian or related languages were once spoken in the general area comes from Linear Elamite inscriptions, found in the ruins of the ancient city of Susa in southwestern Iran.
		Babylonian and Akkadian and some other languages written in these related scripts were amenable to decipherment in part because they were members of the well understood Semitic family.
	www.straightdope.com /mailbag/mindusscript.html (3221 words)

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		Even if it were certain that 98% of their text and transcription were accurate, the apt comparison would have to be made with the clock that loses a minute an hour, wherein one can never be certain of what the exact time happens to be, even though it remains "approximately" accurate most of the time.
	rosetta.reltech.org /TC/downloads/tc-list/tc-list.9905 (16345 words)

	Timeline 3300 to 1300 BCE
		Undeciphered Indus Valley script on inscribed seals and molded tablets have been found there.
		Over 70 kings are listed in this dynasty and their dates are not well known.
		The languages of northeast Syria and Palestine appear to have been 1/3 Semitic, 1/3 Indo-European and 1/3 Hurrian.
	www.timelines.ws /0B3300_1300BC.HTML (9140 words)

	Humbul : Linguistics : linguistics of ancient and classical languages
		Linear A, the main writing system of the Minoan civilisation of Bronze Age Crete in the second millennium BC, is one of the last undeciphered scripts of the ancient Mediterranean.
		2002 and 2003 respectively marked the 50th anniversity of the initial decipherment and publication of Linear B texts, the oldest surviving form of the Greek language.
		Written on clay tablets dating back as early as 1375 BC, the script was used to administer the Late Bronze Age palatial economies of Knossos, Pylos, Tyryns, Mycenae and other centres but disappeared around 1200 BC following the collapse of the Mycenaean civilisation.
	www.humbul.ac.uk /output/headlist.php?sub=linguistics&code=FN.15001 (398 words)

	Phaistos Disk Decipherment update
		Her method is based on a combination of acronymic expanations and similarities between the disk symbols and the symbols from other linear scripts.
		The claim is that the language of the disk is Greek and that it contains the proof of a geometric theorem.
		King claims that the language is closely related to Mycenean Greek and that the disk is a call to arms.
	users.otenet.gr /~svoronan/phaistos.htm (3290 words)

	Cobblestone&Cricket: A Teacher's Guide to The History of Writing
		With the class, list letter combinations in English in which two letters make one sound, as in "sh" and "th." Then choose letters and letter combinations that can make a number of sounds, and list words in which they make each sound.
		If you have reference sources available on languages, have students list all the languages they can find in the magazine and find out which ones are Indo-European.
		Even in case three, however, the writing system for one language will not be exactly the same in another language.
	www.cobblestonepub.com /resources/cal0405t_2.html (1739 words)

	Cirth runes
		He wrote in one of his letters that the tales of Middle-earth (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarilion) grew from these languages, rather than the languages being created for use in the stories.
		Quenya (Qenya or High-elven), the most prominent language of the Amanya branch of the Elvish language family.
		Tolkien complied the "Qenya Lexicon", his first list of Elvish words, in 1915 at the age of 23 and continued to refine the language throughout his life.
	www.omniglot.com /writing/cirth.htm (242 words)

	Bublos.com, UK Books ›› Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts
		The book is divided into two halves; the first reviews the decipherment of various languages such as Linear B and the Mayan code, and is fascinating, while the second half concentrates on languages that still remain to be decoded.
		It describes in detail, with lots of pictures, the way that long lost languages were found and understood again in a simple, enjoyable way.
		Included in the pack, in the UK edition, is a free language learning CD from Eurotalk with a choice of 12 world languages--Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, Turkish and Welsh.
	www.bublos.com /isbn.uk/0071357432.html (970 words)

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