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The Bible and Language Learning | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| jbbar Senior Member Belgium Joined 5791 days ago 192 posts - 210 votes  Speaks: English | Message 41 of 84 24 April 2009 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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By the way, I could imagine that other religious texts like the Quran might be useful as well for language learning. There are quite a lot of translations in other languages around for this text. Has anyone used it for language learning purposes? Or any other religious texts?
jbbar 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6430 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 42 of 84 25 April 2009 at 2:13am | IP Logged | |||||
I haven't. If I were to use a religious text for language learning, there are a few languages that have quite specific texts, such as Sanskrit and Arabic, which would be useful to the process. However, for sheer number of translations (especially into languages with very few speakers), nothing rivals the Bible. There are enough people who feel driven to try to translate it into every language on Earth, that there are at least partial translations into thousands of languages and dialects. The other religions with similar numbers of speakers have different attitudes towards translating their sacred texts. So, if I ever decide I really, really want to get a feel for a dialect of Sudanese, I might well do it via the Bible. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Britomartis Groupie United States Joined 5800 days ago 67 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 43 of 84 25 April 2009 at 3:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, I'm a Christian too.
My former Spanish tutor had a side by side Spanish-English Bible that we did use a little bit, but I don't own one myself. Because Christianity is so widespread, there are many texts and websites in multiple languages. I was pretty pleased to find out that one such website had variations in many languages; I read the Spanish version from time to time now. Most of the articles appear to be same, but I haven't yet made sure of this. If anyone is interested, this is the link: http://www.everystudent.com/menus/intl.html 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jbbar Senior Member Belgium Joined 5791 days ago 192 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English | Message 44 of 84 25 April 2009 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, the Bible must be the most translated book on the face of the earth. Here's a project which, among other things, maps the availability of a Bible translation for virtually any ethnic group you can think of. Slightly off-topic, but if any of you've always dreamed of hearing exotic languages like Zapotec dialects, Sudanese Arabic or Sindhi, the website of the Jesus Film project site has them all! :) jbbar Edited by jbbar on 25 April 2009 at 2:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6656 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 45 of 84 25 April 2009 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
I find such methods incredibly boring. A good language course has texts that are adapted to the culture of the language, e.g. the Assimil series.
Again, I'd find it boring to reread the same text over and over again, so it wouldn't be effective for me. ANY text contains grammatical structures and vocabulary. I think it's preferable to work with original texts rather than translations, because they contain REAL language reflecting how people think and express themselves in that language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5852 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 46 of 84 25 April 2009 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that holy doctrines such as the Bible, Koran, Torah, etc in their original, untranslated forms would be
somewhat interesting to me. Many translations over many years have most likely caused big changes, so I'd rather not read those. On the other hand, if I was one of those who reads one of these documents daily anyhow, it might be an efficient use of my time to read a translation in my L2, rather than my L1. But because I'm not even slightly religious, these docs don't interest me beyond other books. In fact, I suspect I'd rather read a good novel. And re-reading the same book over and over, no matter how interesting, would get old really fast for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6131 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 47 of 84 25 April 2009 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks a lot; Sindhi was actually a language I was looking for! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6002 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 48 of 84 26 April 2009 at 12:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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I tell thee most solemnly, that whatever thou thinkest of the content of the Bible, on a language level it is a perfect study of Translationese*, and not of any other language.
* Particulary within the catholic tradition, where everything for a while had to go via the Latin "Vulgate" Bible. Double translation...? Yuck. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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