r/language • u/RodMigz • 3d 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

39 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

16

u/Deuce03 3d ago

My picks:

  • Sumerian

  • Gothic

  • Pictish

  • Minoan

1

u/RodMigz 2d ago

Damn, I should've said pictish.

1

u/irishitaliancroat 7h ago

Is it attested for at all beyond place names?

10

u/denizyosi 3d ago

Anatolian languages like Hittite,Lydian etc.+Thracian.

2

u/RodMigz 2d ago

Oooo

2

u/RodMigz 2d 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 3d ago

Sumerian and Elamite

4

u/theworldvideos 3d ago

Brittonic

2

u/J00ls 3d ago

Isn’t that alive and well as Welsh?

1

u/Llywela 2d 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 3d ago

Khitan, Coptic. Latin, Sumerian

3

u/RoyalCubit 3d ago

Egyptian.

1

u/loublain 8h ago

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

4

u/ReligionProf 3d ago

Harappan.

4

u/Decent_Cow 3d ago

Etruscan

3

u/ChilindriPizza 3d ago

Judeo-Catalan

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

2

u/airheas 3d ago

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

3

u/MonsCorvinusRubella 3d ago

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

3

u/Apatride 3d 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 3d ago

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

2

u/dmkam5 3d 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 2d ago

The Buddhist kingdom being Western Xia

2

u/mostobnoxiousgoastan 3d ago

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

2

u/KJpiano 3d ago

Dacian language (completely unknown)
Gothic
Latin

2

u/Lazarus558 3d ago

Beothuk

Etruscan

Whatever language the Indus Script people used

Proto-Cro-Magnon

2

u/ewigesleiden 3d ago

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

2

u/ah-tzib-of-alaska 2d 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 3d ago

LINEAR B

6

u/Deuce03 3d 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.

2

u/slowamigo 3d ago

LINEAR A

1

u/Bright_War949 3d ago

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

1

u/YeilKhaa 3d ago

French! (This is a Star Trek joke)

1

u/RRautamaa 2d 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 2d ago

Phoneican

Coptic

Elamite

Xianbei Language (As Serbi)

1

u/sheran13 2d ago

Tocharian, specifically Tocharian B

1

u/TubaralhoDoMar 2d ago

Etruscan all the way

1

u/Jollybio 2d ago

Hittite, Dalmatian, Dacian, Etruscan, Tocharian

1

u/ShockSensitive8425 1d ago

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

1

u/marygoldsandpuffins 1d ago

livonian but i have to wait like a decade

1

u/Nesciens10 17h ago edited 17h 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 17h 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 16h 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.

1

u/Witch-of-1692 5h ago

Pictish!

-2

u/rushmc1 3d ago

Grammatically-correct English.

2

u/Ralphjuniorjunior 3d ago

Okay, boomer.

0

u/rushmc1 3d ago

Not even close.

1

u/Toc13s 2d ago

According to which set of rules?

0

u/rushmc1 2d ago

Mine, of course.

-5

u/Time-Priority949 3d 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)..