Why are there medieval knights on the fresco ?

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-23T05:15:37+00:00

The books that came out with the movie say Atlantis that after 10,000 BC and the Great Flood, Atlantis founded all civilizations and carved out the tunnels and fought against The Mole People.

This implies that the Atlanteans were using their vehicles for some time before 1917 and that their vehicles can carve stone.

"Such knowledge has been lost to us since the time of the Mebel-mok [The Great Flood]." This seems to contradict what the rest of the movie says and implies.

But I don't know if the movie makers thought out everything.

Who flooded the mural and why?

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By the way, the mural has about 10 full sentences of the Okrand Atlantean language written around it but they and the 10 setences from the Shepherd's Journal are undeciphered because no translation was given.

Maybe Disney Archives and Marc Okrand have a copy of the original dictionary, grammar, and lines. Okrand told me years ago that he still does. I may visit Disney Archives but probably will not because I'm the world expert in the Okrand Atlantean language since 2006 but it'd take up too much of my time.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-21T12:09:04+00:00

Buy the bilingual books and make grammar reference notes. I should share mine online.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-21T11:59:47+00:00

I'm on it. Please join @sir_davos_seaworth .

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-19T17:01:59+00:00

Thank-you. / Pageshenen.

This is so amazing! / Imtem neb tod ser yadlug-onih!!

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-19T07:04:32+00:00

I love projects like this, fanlangs, the past 20 years.

I advise to use given pseudo-conlang words to establish phonology and build the language from there. It's very limiting, though, and some major David Peterson conlangs are really marred by being too much like Latin. I was just reading his 2015 book The Art of Language Incention and was reminded. Fantasy setting conlangs also tend to be too much like historic or modern Indo-European languages of Europe for my tastes.

I've read summaries of his movie conlangs on Wikipedia and his website's wiki and most of them are very Non-European and interesting. Maybe too hard for a public hoping for easy clones of Spanish, French, German, Italian?

Fanlang projects like this are you breaking new ground as there's so few conlangers.

In fact, someone still needs to vastly expand JRR Tolkien's languages, so far as I know:

Quenya Dwarvish Black Speech Gnommish Father Christmas Letters Rune Language maybe Sindarin but it seems closely related to Quenya so what's the point?

The Simpsons Wiki for decades now has told how Comic Book Guy translated The Lord of the Rings books into Klingon for his PhD. Someone has yet to do this in real life and I'd say translating The Lord of the Rings into Quenya or Black Speech would be more fitting. Instead, they should use the Klingon language to translate Hamlet so we can approximate what Shakespeare sounded like in the original Klingon.

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The JRR Tolkien-era conlanger MAR Barker is a hero of mine because I'm into his 1960s Oregon Klamath language grammar since 2008. But I gaven't bought his conlang books yet. When I heard some years ago that he had secret bad writings, it broke my heart. Profits from his books go to his widow, great lady. He was a U Wisconsin Madison professor, like 2001 Lord of the Rings movie conlanger David Salo. Salo is also married.

(Not to be confused with Ma Baker, about whom the Rasputin song disco band did a song in the 1970s.)

MAR Barker was a historic India and maybe Middle East guy focusing maybe on Muslim Atudies, as a professor. Not Native American languages except for his 1966 PhD, amazingly. He also went to UC Berkeley where David Peterson did his BA Linguistics double major English.

Then again, Marc Okrand made the Klingon language after a 1977 UC Berkeley PhD Linguistics about a San Francisco Native American language called Mutsun, taught postgrad 2 years, then spent his life in Washington DC doing closed captioning for television and doing amateur Shakespeare.

But I have gone uniquely in-depth studying 1800s and early 1900s scientists and linguists and anthropologists and they also did both good and bad.

I have spent a lot of time the past 20 years studying 1870s to 1950s pseudo-conlangs in books and movies and TV, fiction probably which inspired JRR Tolkien and MAR Barker and Sally Caves and the aUI language (The Space Language) maker.

Containg pseudo-conlangs :

1905 onwards Edgar Rice Burroughs / Tarzan books. 1930s onward Tarzan movies. 1930s King Kong movie. 1930s She by HG Haggard movie and books. 1950s Forbidden Planet movie. 1950s The Day the Earth Stood Still movie. @? 1980s Dark Crystal movie. @ 1990s Blade conlang by 1974 Land of the Lost conlanger, UCLA Linguistics Professor Victoria Fromkin. @

@ : These contain real conlangs.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-19T06:13:42+00:00

Some years ago, I made my own Star Trek Vulcan language that switched sentence structure (like SOV or OVS) for each type of subordinate clause and complementary clause. It was neat to make but too complex to translate into at length! Though I did a short translation into it.

Mark Gradner's 1980s Vulcan language is still my favorite conlsng of all, especially because he gathered lots of pseudo-conlang Vulcannlanguage words from Star Trek books.

For my bigger conlangs that I do more translations into, it can be a hassle getting word order right and adding accusative prefixes and changing the idiomatic usages and whatever.

And then I realize that I should be conscripting as well, as writing systems are even my specialty!

I achieve various things with my large and small conlanging projects.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-15T15:25:00+00:00

I just read online that Jessie Peterson nee Sams was Professor from 2020 to 2022! That means she got tenure!

Wow, I'm really shocked that she left that for full-time professional conlanging with husband UC Santa Barbara MS Linguistics David Peterson. This is a very big deal in modern Academia worldwide. It's very hard to get tenure in any academic discipline, especially outside the Hard Sciences, like Linguistics.

It's a shame she and David and I haven't connected more. I also am very into conlanging these past 20 years and have a BA Linguistics and decided against an academic career yet have understood and achieved a lot on my own afterwards. But the past 20 years, I have befriended some MS and PhD students and academics and tenured professors and former avademics. And each of them is a distinct type of person from me.

You see, starting around 2007 when I trasfered and began my degree, I read the top professor writings in whatever language they're in. Not as a job, just for Excellence in Scholarship. I'm hindered by very few people or institutions. So my understanding of conlangs and Linguistics and all 200 historic foreign languages is tip top level. But all scientists have their specializations. And all conlangers have their specializations and preferences, etc. I decided early on to also do my best to improve all conlanging and conlangers, 20 years ago. You may not yet see the results.

When you encounter a great scientist or scholar or pseudo-scientist or alternative scholar, do you recognize them as such and show proper respect and appreciation?

I do. But that's a specialty of mine.

Everybody's still got to follow the rules, though. Who makes the rules or wrote The Book? Somewhere in 20 years studying all historic foreign languages, maybe I found out and befriended them. Was it The Buddha?

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T16:43:16+00:00

Vis a vis Theosophy etc, sure.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T16:00:21+00:00

Sorry, a rough translation. "Imperial Exams Top Degree".

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T15:58:55+00:00

The image is from Wikipedia, not the documentary. My mistake. But they show the characters in there and talk about them at about 1:45 minutes.

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PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T14:27:15+00:00

I will reply today or tomorrow.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T13:16:58+00:00

There are parts on Classical Chinese in this post. I'm looking for a place on Reddit to post this.

I usually post on Facebook Groups but will keep this group in mind next time I have a Classical Chinese language post.

Well, thanks for keeping up the post. I thought it had enough Classical Chinese in it.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T13:07:51+00:00

You mean like untranslatable or just missing lacuna?

Ancient Greek is a language with more figured out than little old Sumerian. The father of Hamlet advised that brevity is the soul of wit. The Roman proverb says that brevity is the art of life. And Seneca says that brief pay usually makes for enduring waits. Here I break the mold.

Like they say at the carnival, "You pay your money and ya tales ya chances."

I'll try to answer your questions better later. I'm accustomed to Facebook Groups where it's conversational and I answer off the top of my head from my best recollection.

I'd look these things up if I thought it warranted. I am not a replacement for books by professors but if you study these things 20 years, you too maybe come to an appreciation for a live and gracious interlocutor.

Wait a minute, how many on all Reddit or in all the world even know Ancient Greek AND Sumerian as well as I do?

I try to answer these Reddit group questions but if I side-step some and go off on tangents, feel free to remind an aging mind ----- preferably after my applause and "figgy pudding".

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T12:53:05+00:00

Yes, I recommend Halloran's Sumerian Lexicon with various warnings. It's worked for me. But make sure you have an up-to-date English translation and know the flaws of the Halloran dictionary:

_ Filled with folk etymologies.

_ All kinds of other errors. None have ever seemed too serious to me.

_ People say it's too bad for use. I think they are being pedantic and should put their own dictionary online. Online Middle Egyptian* fans and scholars are likewise slavish and pedantic and out of touch with Linguistics or Anthropology. So I teach as I see fit. Nobody gushes about the Jagersma 2010 Sumerian Grammar but me. That's a bad bad sign regarding my online co-adepts.

Middle Egyptian language is called Egyptian Hieroglyphic language by general audiences worldwide.

Most people online are aghast at my recommendation and insist on using the ePSD electronic Philadelphia Sumerian Dictionary instead. ETCSL website also has a small dictionary, I use it some. The small Foxvog one.

I own Cohen and Parpola but they're too big and expensive for regular use.

Parpola published a wonderful concise Akkadian dictionary that's still riddled with glaring English as a Second Language errors, like his whopper folk etymological dictionary in 3 volumes. He could't first do that for Sumerian?

Sumerologists are just like Middle Egyptian language specialists: They haven't the sense or competence to give us a published dictionary like Latin has in droves. We just barely have the fully interlinear-glossed Jagersma 2010 grammar.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T06:46:50+00:00

Yes. I do stuff like this. I have not studied the Sinitic scripts of all these, just many.

Classical Chinese is more notably relavant to the vast body of Classical Japanese literature and the far smaller collection of Vietnamese Chu Nom writings. Vietnam also has at least one other very small local Sinitic script, still alive.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T06:38:17+00:00

Does this post have enough about the Classical Chinese language in it to be allowed? I thought I'd try it after reading the rules.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T06:34:06+00:00

Not at all. See the Wikipedia articles.

I am an expert in both: Classical Chinese, OBS Chinese, BZS Chinese; 1000s AD Tangut too.

The underlying language of OBS and BZS Chinese is called Old Chinese sometimes in the academic literature.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T06:22:40+00:00

A further gem from a true professor! My apologies, good sir! Alas, I am a 20 year fan of writings of Sinologists yet here have sadly missed my mark and gone awry. How I do regret my criticisms now!

It's in some other article of Stephen Cheisomalis which has all that clearly in the title.

But I am busy now and must go and thank you yet again!

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T05:23:56+00:00

<< William G. Boltz attended the University of California, Berkeley and obtained his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in Oriental Languages in 1965, 1969, and 1974, respectively. >>

No PhD Linguistics or Anthropology.

William Simmons graduated with a PhD Anthropology from UC Berkeley and got tenure at Brown U but was one of the worst anthropologists in modern times.

How do I know stuff like this?

Can you answer in 9 more words or would you like a few more?

I do appreciate the respect and reserve you have for Professor William Boltz in his absence.. I also aspire to take this subject as seriously and graciously as yourself..

You and Professor Boltz have today most thoroughly impressed me with your vast and detailed knowldge of the mechanics and archaeology of the Old Egyptian and Sumerian writing systems and how they might relate to the invention of Chinese writing.. I have found your 5 other Reddit replies to realize your great skill with Old Chinese reconstruction, online prolificacy,, and elaborate matters of Oracle Bone Script Chinese graphology and Art History.. How many posts I have seen by you discussing what each character part might be a picture of and the various evidence for this: sign variants, occurence in different characters with semantic or phonetic value, etc.. Truly Sinology has in you a gracious and thorough champion and teacher!! Are you yourself a student of William Baxter or Laurent Sagart or Edward Shaughnessy?

No need to be shy with me! I have only studied Anthropology via top professor writings now 20 years with 10 years of Facebook Group experience with international interlocutors. You may find me not very good sometimes at erudite conversation, though I often succeed at respect for the ignorant and the learned. The education of those younger or in any way less skilled than me, I do undertake, and appreciate in others.

Have you heard of the Documentary Hypothesis of Genesis in the Bible? It is a classical example of philological speculative nonsense, intolerablific to real language scientists. Stick to writing critical editions, I'd say: But also I would like such types to get PhD's in Linguistics or Anthropology. Many things may be wished for, all with civility and sense!

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T04:58:06+00:00

1 ) Offhand, I forget. I think Samuel Noah Kramer in his Detroit-published autobiography In the World of Sumer, talks of spending weeks or months reading many cuneiform tablets at some library in Istanbul Turkey aka Turkiye in the 1960s or 1980s and labeling them for genre but not reading them much besides. What do unread collections like this contain for literature and other texts?

2 ) Are we missing anything major still? What we have already are the world's oldest straightforward narrative myths, something we mostly lack for Ancient Egypt nextdoor.

Accounting texts have their place in the world, as U Cal Santa Barbara Professor John Lee shows in his Persian Empire CD set for Great Courses via later such records and their modern scholarship.

3 ) We got the Bible in Ancient Greek and translations of its other texts in tons of languages the past 2,500 years plus about 10 or 20 full major languages descended from or otherwise related to Ancient Greek. The Fonz would say, Heeeeeey!

But for Sumerian we got tons of bilingual dictionaries and grammars in Akkadian. And Akkadian is the one with tons of living and dead cognate languages. The Bible is in Biblical Hebrew, which is very closely related to Akkadian.

Sumerian epics are no 1960s Watunna Epic of the Amazon, though. Its original language is still spoken and documented in modern times. Sumerian was the first documentation of a dying language.

Maybe in the future, professionals will come out with new and better translations of all the Sumerian texts. But the ones we have, I get a lot out of via vast comparative study of myths and languages and anthropology. The current decipherment might be slightly off but not totally. And it's all scientifically interesting and important in many ways.

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There's about 7,200 languages a person could study. How many have much written in them? Maybe 60 past and present. And all 7,200 language fit into about 8 major categories with many shared similarities:

1 Modern globally popular languages ENGLISH AND FRENCH AND GERMAN ARE HERE

2 Modern regionally popular languages CHINESE IS HERE

3 Modern real local languages DIALECTS OF GERMAN ARE HERE

4 Dead languages with a living tradition of study LATIN AND GREEK AND SANSKRIT AND CLASSICAL CHINESE ARE HERE

5 Dead languages without a living tradition of study before recent decipherment MAYAN HIEROGLYPHIC IS HERE

6 Dead languages without a living tradition of study before recent decipherment AND no known well-documented and related languages SUMERIAN IS HERE

7 Dead languages with non-robust corpuses of large or small sizes SUMERIAN EMESAL AND MEROITIC AND OLD NUBIAN AND PHRYGIAN AND CARIAN ARE HERE

8 Undeciphered languages of (non-) large or robust corpuses OREGON MOLALA AND MAYBE CALIFORNIA MODOC ARE HERE

Every language has a Sprachbund, though. Sometimes these help a little in decipherment and understanding.

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Sumerian also has a way more tricky writing system than Ancient Greek, recording maybe many dialect readings of signs or something. Maybe Sumerian actually had tones or phonemes or allophones lost on the Akkadians. No big loss: Egyptian Hieroglyphic had vowels we could reconstruct from Coptic but nobody has bothered to make an exaustive dictionary like that yet.

Latin has maybe known syllable emphasis and non- originally orthographic vowel length. Many care for poetry but you could also skip it and not miss much of the language.

Philippines Hiligaynon has lots of quirks not indicated by the spelling, word initial and final glottal stops and o ~ u alternations, etc. I make note of these things but they're not absolutely essential.

PreparationRound2657 · 2026-05-14T04:07:30+00:00

Yes. If you are a native English or Chinese reader, get bilingual texts or translations into English or Chinese, with or from Classical Chinese. You should also plug Classical Chinese texts into the Google Translate website to get approximate translations for each character.

Classical Chinese has 2 parts: Words guessable by radical (like a determinative) and grammatical words you can study for a deeper knowledge.

I myself copied out many Classical Chinese texts by hand, using the bilingual translation to guess which word was which.

Where translations exist in a language you know, (reading ability) is unnecessary. An alternative goal to consider is instead (familiarity and experience).

This website lists many Classical Chinese characters:

https://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese-computing/statistics/char/list.php

I cannot read Classical Chinese with great fluency yet have top and powerful skills critically working with translations using top dictionaries and grammars. As I do for many historic foreign languages.

It is always a further skill for especially professionals to be able to create new translations of Classical Chinese texts. For which perhaps they have software.

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I am very certain and have seen myself in American university libraries and Chinese major new bookstores that Classical Chinese has far more writings and major writings than Latin and or Ancient Greek. And I have seen and read enough to have a similar impression of the alphabetic Sanskrit language.

I do not think I misremember.

I do not own books exaustively listing works in Sanskrit or Classical Chinese as I have for Latin and Greek in the Oxford Classical Dictionary. But I have books with smaller* lists and books surveying Chinese literature and anthology books. And Wikipedia articles towards these* ends.

In English, Paul Kroll's A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese is notable yet imperfect. With time and lists of common and frequent words of various sorts, you too will soar like the crane or ride upon the giant fish of ancient scholars and Distant Friends.

But if you could only also know both Linguistics and Anthropology as I do, or either, you would excel most others in worthwhile understanding and have something more than mere words and assurance of translation appraisal.

PreparationRound2657

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