Re: History of constructed languages

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
>
>> [snip]
>> >> Even earlier, there is a fragment of made-up language in one of
>> >> Aristophane's comedies (I must look it out).
>> >
>> > The Birds.  Lots of utterances imitative of birdsong.  The Frogs: the
>> > famous
>> > Brek kek kek kek koax koax.
>>
>> No, no - these are essentially onomatopoeia. I was thinking of a sentence
>> a slave is supposed to utter in a non-Greek language. I thought it came in
>> the Archarnians, but I may have dis-remembered.
>
> Is it known it *is* made up, rather than a fragment, more-or-less distorted, of
> some actual non-Greek language?
I _do_ remember this. Hmm.  Let me look it up.

It was in Acharnians; Pseudartabas has the line:
"Jartaman exarx 'anapissona satra." (or: exarxan apissona?)

The English version at Perseus bears a footnote "Jargon,
no doubt meaningless in all languages."
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Aristoph.+Ach.+100

	*Muke!
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