How do linguists go about translating a forgotten language? How does that work when there’s no one left to help?

Question

How do linguists go about translating a forgotten language? How does that work when there’s no one left to help?

In: 4

Answer 1

They need a text that was written in this forgotten language and a language that is known to us. A famous example is the [Rosetta Stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone), which contains the same text in Egyptian and Ancient Greek and which was the key to deciphering the Egyptian Hieroglyphs for modern scientists.