Incredible video shows what ancient languages actually sounded like

If you're ever planning on travelling through time there's probably a few things you'd want to prepare for before making your trip.

However, even if such a machine could be made, there's all sorts of dangers involved - including the possibility that you'd never make it back to your own timeline.

Whether that's because you created an alternative timeline with your first journey and now can never find your way home or because some mishap befalls you along the way is a mystery.

Obviously you'd need a machine that also travels through space as well, because if you merely travelled through time the movement of planets would likely leave you trapped in space.

Alain Guilleux/Alamy Stock Photo

Of course, once you actually get there plenty more hurdles to overcome present themselves, not least that you'd likely have no idea how to communicate with anyone.

While it would be undeniably cool to visit the pyramids of Ancient Egypt back when they were much newer or to get a front row seat to Caesar's assassination, the language barrier would be pretty difficult to overcome.

You'd be a weirdo in strange clothing whom nobody could understand, and even if you went forwards in time just try keeping up with the slang.

While you might not know what they were saying, it would still be quite the experience to hear ancient people's speak their own languages in their own accents with the pronunciations we wouldn't know.

In the footage above, we've got what could be pretty close estimations for what ancient languages would have sounded like when spoken by those who would have used them every day.

From what we can hear Ancient Egyptian is certainly a striking language, while there's plenty enough of modern speech to recognise in how the Romans spoke.

David Stansbury/Smithsonian National Postal Museum

Of course without the aid of an actual time machine we can never be completely certain exactly how ancient civilisations really sounded.

What we can do is approximate and estimate based on what we know, and understand that there would be no one nailed down tone people would speak in.

Think of how many people around the world speak a language like English and how many accents that comes in.

Nonetheless, experts are able to work out a lot by comparing ancient languages to ones which have succeeded it like Italian, French and Spanish being descended from Latin.

The more researchers learn about a language the more educated the guess they can make about what it sounded like.

Topics: Science, Weird, History

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker