17 matches
The Rosetta Stone - Triple Cypher
The Rosetta Stone is an Ancient Egyptian artifact which provided the key to understanding hieroglyphic writing.
It is a black basalt fragment of a stela (a free-standing stone inscribed with Egyptian governmental or religious records) discovered in...
January / February 2013
Languages in Peril - The Rhaeto-Romance Trio
Even languages of the popular Romance family are in danger of becoming extinct, so we are going to look at Ladin, Friulian and Romansh, which are three closely related ones.
Most people know of the popular Romance languages like Latin, Spanish, French,...
March / April 2013
The Voynich Script - Cryptic Codex
The exact starting place and time of this story are not completely known, so we will begin in Frascati, near Rome, in 1912. There was the Villa Mondragone. It was built in 1573, and served as a temporary residence for nobles and popes for a few centuries...
May / June 2013
Languages in Peril - The Polish Connection
The Slavonic branch of the Indo-European languages have a number of well known languages, such as Polish and Russian. However, there are a few languages in that group that have struggled with being recognized as more than just dialects. Now, they even...
May / June 2013
The Phaistos Disc - Puzzle of Crete
Ancient Crete has been a source of a few language puzzles. In the palace of Knossos, three different writing systems were discovered, in the forms of a hieroglyphic script, Linear A, and Linear B (see Parrot Time issue two for Linear A - Lost Minoan)....
July / August 2013
Languages in Peril - The Salish Tragedy
Many native people around the world find themselves either left in almost total isolation or suppressed, with their younger generations joining a larger, modern world. When this happens, the language and culture of their people suffer and all too often...
July / August 2013
Rongorongo - Island Chants
Easter Island, located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, has two ancient mysteries related to it. The more famous of these are the huge statues, called Moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people and are located all over the island.
The second...
September / October 2013
Languages in Peril - The Island Invasion
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages and are spoken on the island nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Most of these languages belong to smaller groups of indigenous people who have suffered from European...
September / October 2013
Liber Linteus - Mummified Language
Ancient artifacts are usually made of something durable, like stone, clay or preserved wood, to help them survive the centuries. One, however, is made of cloth, and is actually a book. The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis (Latin for Linen Book of Zagreb) is...
November / December 2013
Languages in Peril - The Chibchan Family
Among the countries of South America, there was once a tribe of indians called the Chibchas. The lived in the high valleys surrounding the modern cities of Bogotá and Tunja in Colombia, having a population of over five hundred thousand. There they thrived...
November / December 2013
Languages in Peril - The Romanian Relatives
One of the less explored branches of the Indo-European languages is the Eastern Romance one, sometimes referred to as the Vlach languages. They developed in southeastern Europe from the local variant of Vulgar Latin.
The Roman Empire dominated this...
January / February 2014
Languages in Peril - Keeping Up With The Kartvelians
The Kartvelian language branch is a small one, with only an estimated 5 million speakers of its languages worldwide, and most people have probably never heard of it. The dominant language of it is Georgian, and even that language is not commonly talked...
March / April 2014
Rohonc Codex - Hungarian Enigma
The Voynich Manuscript, a booklet full of hand drawn images and undeciphered text, is probably the most famous of strange language documents, but it is not the only one. The Rohonc Codex is another work that has defied translation for centuries, despite...
May / June 2014
Languages in Peril - Decline of the Gallo-Italics
The Gallo-Italic languages make up the majority of northern Italian languages. They are Emilian-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Lombard, and Piedmontese. Sadly, they are all endangered, with the population of their speakers in decline.
Emiliano-Romagnolo
Linguistic...
July / August 2014
Languages in Peril - The Tribes of the Tamil-Kannada
In southern India is an area called the Nilgiri Hills, or the Blue Mountains. It lies in the Tamil Nadu region, at a junction of Karnataka and Kerala and is home to many indigenous tribes which have been there for thousands of years. Now, some of them...
March / April 2015
