How do we know what Ancient Egyptian sounded like?

[folkeklarstrom]

No joke i had a brief internet ”debate” with someone who claimed that ancient egyptians spoke arabic🤣

[jax]

As a Polynesian, loved your pronunciation!

[excelsword]

As someone who is Māori, this was a great video. Just wanted to point out that in the word Māori "āo" is a dipthong, so you should try to pronounce it as one syllable/sound rather than two separate syllables. And great pronounciation on the /r/ as well!

[April-xlht]

Very similar to biological evolution and how we can derive the traits of ancient ancestors by examining the differences and similarities of modern species.

[mihaelcarr]

I love that I now have another reference to the glottal stop, so cool 💕

[hapasiuhengalu]

AYEEE!!!!
I’m so glad to see you doing Polynesian languages! Chur! 🇹🇴🇹🇴🇹🇴

[mattkuhn]

A great practical summary of the comparative method! One note though - while in the example you gave we can safely assume "manu" was the word for bird in Proto-polynesian, it is possible that the word was actually something slightly different. For instance, the language may have had some kind of sound shift going on that was going to transform the word INTO manu, but by the time that shift finished Proto-polynesian had diversified into other languages. Therefore, it may be that the word was never actually "manu" in Proto-polynesian. For this reason, when we reconstruct forms like this that are unattested (e.g. we have no direct evidence of the word in the historical record), we would write them with an asterisk to indicate that. So for Tongan/Maori/Hawaiian the word is "manu, " but the reconstructed Proto-polynesian word would be written "*manu". Less of a correction and more an explanation for those who aren't familiar - if you see an asterisk next to a word a linguist is talking about, that means it's an unattested form. You'll see this most commonly when we talk about proto-languages, since those are all hypothetical "root" languages that we derive from other, attested languages.

[rezamahendra]

In Javanese, word for bird is similar, we call it "manuk"

[malenaboy]

As a linguistics graduate from Hawai’i, I loved you using our language. I also hope the otter is mahu irl.

[Systox]

The otter is back. Yep, it’s 3 am again

[TerrorofMechagoji]

I cannot get enough of this otter explaining language to me

[airshipswashbuckler]

I just now realized that the otter is not wearing a night cap but a fish as his hat! 😂

[HoneyedAnt]

This adorable lil otter is teaching me cool stuff!!

[FijianSouljah]

Have you looked into Aussie slang btw? Heaps of crazy stuff that’s been added from Polynesian languages also!

[ofnormality]

It's a similar situation with the Samoan language, in that the glottal stop is still used as well from what I understand.

[deasadayunacocade]

I just discovered this channel, and i suscribed bcuz i like otters

[mini_hek]

that's actually so cool, I never thought of that!

[kikoyworld]

That's so interesting that in Polynesian languages, the glottal stop is mostly used for missing letters or take out letters. In Austronesian languages, the glottal stop is used for full repetition, missing letters, or to differentiate a word that's spelled the same but have different meaning. 😮

[user..]

As a Hawaiian, your pronunciation of the ‘okina (‘) is great, most people can’t pronounce it

[cucummmber]

Comparative analysis is also used. If the word, or variation, exists in other related language groups, it can be assumed that the more common is likely from the ancestor language.
It’s also important to compare with other distantly related language groups too, to find what could be the ancestral word. I.e. Comparing multiple Austronesian languages to find possible/probable cognates among them.
E.g. Food in most Eastern and Western Polynesian dialects is either ‘mea kai’ or ‘mea ʻai’ (Māori of NZ use kai, which also means to eat). Mea means ‘thing’, therefore ‘mea kai/‘ai’ = eaten thing.
In some Melanesian and Micronesian dialects the word for food is ‘kai kai/kae kae’ or ‘kana, gana, ‘ana’. But the words ‘kaay, gai’ and variatoins means to ‘eat’ in many of their dialects, which is distinct from ‘food’.

In saying all of this, we don’t actually know what ancestral languages actually sounded like, but we can make some good calculated hypothetical guesses. And that’s fun😊