Linguistics and Ancient Languages

The life and works of Homer.

Aristarchus devised symbols for making notes in his authoritative edition of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey".

Sanskrit is an ancient Indoeuropean language.

These are the languages the ancient people of India and Pakistan are thought to have spoken.

What was the first alphabet?

The Comparative Method is used by historical linguists to deduce ancestral languages.

Quizzes to help identify the features of the phonemes in the IPA.

The English Great Vowel Shift helps to explain why we have such trouble figuring out how to pronounce Latin.

The place of Hebrew in the languages of the world.

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Resources on the meaning of Hebrew names for modern children.

A theory about the a-ending in the neuter plural and feminine singular.

Nostratic is the name for a proposed ancestral group of language families.

The Novilara Stele and the North Picene language.

Oracle bones contain writing from ancient China.

Proto-Indo-European is a theorized language.

The story of the Tower of Babel is used to explain the origin of the many languages of the world.

From Alistair Boddy-Evans, About.com Guide to African History. A look at the Nilo-Saharan Language group, one of the four major language groups in Africa as identified by anthropologists and historical linguists.

Readers respond to the question: How Do You Decide Which Bible Translation to Use?

Learn about the issues involved in Bible translation that make it hard to know which version of the Bible is best for studying Biblical history.

About.com's Chinese Culture Guide tells about the origin of the non-alphabetic, square Chinese characters used in writing.

The site consisted of seven tombs, in which the preservation was fabulous, including intact silks, maps, and scrolls in addition to the human remains there. Among the scrolls were seven medical manuscripts, which together comprise the most ancient manuscripts on medicine found in China to date.