Computer now used to decipher ancient languages

[Red]

This is interesting, apparently a new computer system is being used to decipher ancient languages that have been hard to crack. Ugaritic was the language tested in the new system.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/ugaritic-barzilay-0630.html

The bad news is that the programming needs a similar language so that it can make assumptions about the language being deciphered.

 

[vonmazur]

This is interesting, apparently a new computer system is being used to decipher ancient languages that have been hard to crack. Ugaritic was the language tested in the new system.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/ugaritic-barzilay-0630.html

The bad news is that the programming needs a similar language so that it can make assumptions about the language being deciphered.

Thanks for posting this, I have wondered when/if they will do Etruscan?? Can't they use Finnish, Estonian and Turkish as a guide?? (For Ugaritic I meant to say..)

Dale

 

[Slim Shady]

Looks like google translator has some competition =)

 

[Kevin Daly]

Thanks for posting this, I have wondered when/if they will do Etruscan?? Can't they use Finnish, Estonian and Turkish as a guide?? (For Ugaritic I meant to say..)

Dale

This technique is good for cutting down the time it takes to decipher lanugages that we already have a good handle on (because they have known relatives), but won't help with the really tough nuts. It should however increase the number of readable texts.

Etruscan is a language that is apparently unrelated to any known language, and the surviving texts are limited to funerary inscriptions, religious documents and things like that, which makes it difficult to get a comprehensive picture of grammar and syntax (even where the meaning of texts is known they tend to be formulaic).
We can however read the alphabet perfectly (it's derived from an early Greek alphabet, and is a distant ancestor of our own), and there are enough bilingual inscriptions that reasonable progress has been made with the limited material available...but there are big gaps.