What Did Dialogue Sound Like Back Then?

We will never know how Handel's music sounded when conducted by Handel himself. Similarly we will never know how the soldiers in both armies talked to each other on the day before the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Or, what two senators sounded like as they walked together through Rome in 44 BCE; or indeed, what Latin sounded like in any regions of the Roman Empire. Same is true for the Picts, who halted the Roman invasion into what became Scotland. Same is true for Troy. What did Helen sound like when she spoke to Paris?

And going back ... and back ... and back ... into the little 'history' we really have. Buddha. And back ...

What if ... Well ...

"By the 19th century, linguists knew that all modern Indo-European languages descended from a single tongue. Called Proto-Indo-European, or PIE, it was spoken by a people who lived from roughly 4500 to 2500 B.C., and left no written texts. The question became, what did PIE sound like?"

There are two brief recordings of Proto-Indo-European, just published. Reconstructed by Dr. Andrew Bird, and for all to listen to at Archaeology magazine.

Here is one, a fable called 'The Sheep and the Horses' -

Both this fable and one called 'King and God' are described and can be heard at Archeaology magazine.

We write and read stories set 'back then' - before we have recordings. I write stories in the English language - it's what I know. I make my characters, 'back then', talk in a kindaEnglish. I do some technical stuff around dialogue. Change the names of concepts that we know and use. Introduce new psychological concepts. Play with spelling. Make dialogue more like the way we speak - breaks and repitations and non-semantic sounds and pauses ... and so on. It is still basically English. I can declare that the psychology, the very mind, of my characters is radically different. Which I believe to be both true and inevitable. I try and change the music of the language and dialogue in my stories so that it does not sound like what I hear around me in everyday life; so that it expresses more of what I believe minds were like 'back' then' in my stories.

And then the same is true for music that 'they' played 'back then'. What did the music of those who built Stonehenge sound like? I would love, just love, to hear it. Of course, for telling stories it only matters that we get to a sense of it imaginally, a sense that we can tell into the fabric of our story.

I'm writing a story about Stonehenge right now. And I am listening, amongst others, to Meredith Monk. She makes music with voices that is not of our everyday here-and-now time. And then I take off imaginally from herThere.

Namaste! I bw to and honor the Light within you!