this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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Unfortunately we know what latin sounds like (though most of hollywood has only a vague concept), and nobody speaks ancient Egyptian of Akkadian.
From what I gather even reading either is a nightmare..
Yeah hieroglyphs don't record vowel sounds, so on many accounts we don't actually know how something was pronounced. There's good guesses made based on later phonetics, but there's unavoidably also stuff that's just forever lost. Latin is way easier because we can just use the church latin pronunciation that still survives, don't even need to go for the classical one. It's not like average people know the difference anyway
We also have latin rhymes and even pronunciation guides from many different times, because the romans ended up teaching latin to quite a few people for uhm... less ethical reasons.
But does it really matter if we don't kmow what they sound like. It's not like audience will know either.