Of course my main field of interest are Semitic languages (hence this channel). But there are also other languages that fascinate me. For the sake of variety I just wanted to read out some other old languages. A often used text for language comparison is the Lord's Prayer because it was translated into many languages, also some that are extinct now. The first language is Old High German, which I am interested in because it is the oldest written form of my native tongue. I'm reading the Lord's Prayer in three OHG dialects: Frankish, Alemannic and Bavarian. The second language is Gothic, the oldest written account of a Germanic language. The third language is Latin... quite well known. Actually the Lord's Prayer should be read out in Ecclesiastical Latin since it must have been translated somewhen in the early middle ages. But I chose Classical Latin just because it sounds so much better and archaic. With diphthongs and nasalization etc. The fourth language is Coptic (the Sa'idic or Sahidic dialect), the language of Egypt before the Islamic conquest. I've just started learning it (to learn something outside Semitic but still Afro-Asiatic) and my pronunciation is based on the Introduction to Sahidic Coptic by Thomas Lambdin. I do not use the Greco-Bohairic pronunciation, which is nowadays used in Coptic liturgy (after all this is not Bohairic). And I haven't learned much about the reconstructed Coptic phonology, yet. But Lambdin's pronunciation seemed acceptable to me so far. I might possibly make a sequel to this video... note the short explanation in the end of the video.

• published: 26 May 2013
• views: 8567