Photo: Antoan Pepelanov, Radio Prague International
What did languages that disappeared centuries, or even thousands of years ago, actually sound like? That is the question linguists at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague are trying to answer. In the Voices of Dead Languages project, they have reconstructed how several ancient languages may have been spoken, including Old English, the language of the epic poem Beowulf. To bring these voices closer to modern audiences, the team also used artificial intelligence to generate faces for the speakers presenting the reconstructed languages.
I spoke with Jan Bičovský, a historical linguist at Charles University and one of the project’s initiators, and began by asking him what gave him the idea to start the project The Voices of Dead Languages.
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Author: Ruth Fraňková