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The Bible and Language Learning | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| Recht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5736 days ago 241 posts - 270 votes  Speaks: English*, GermanB1 | Message 2 of 84 23 April 2009 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am Christian and have read, although inconsistently, the Bible online in German. It's a pretty good method and I should do it when I get more time. Edited by Recht on 23 April 2009 at 10:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5700 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 4 of 84 23 April 2009 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm an atheist, but that wouldn't necessarily stop me from using the bible for language learning (the most widely translated book in the world I think?) if only I thought it would be relevant to contemporary language. Isn't the style of language used in the bible rather dated? I can't imagine that phrases such as "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass" and the like, are particularly useful in the acquisition of living languages.
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| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6684 days ago 417 posts - 427 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 5 of 84 23 April 2009 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What I coincidence! I was thinking about opening a similar thread about religious texts and language learning.
I myself am a firmly believing Christian. Also I didn't have it instilled into me from childhood as my parents aren't religious and my father hates religion of any kind. I chose the path by myself. Right now I am reading Revelation. I am reading a section in English and in Japanese in parallel. Contrary to what Dark Sunshine has speculated, my English version seems to sound more modern than the Japanese counterpart. However, none of them sound old-fashioned with the exception of a few points. In concrete I recall the use of かの instead of この. Just a more old-fashioned way of saying "this". I noticed that some of the language used in the Japanese version seems more simple than the English counterpart. I am convinced that reading and taking to heart the content of this book will make me a better person so long as I carry its philosophy into practice, so this book is one that I will see myself reading many times. And why not in various languages? The first being Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5700 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 6 of 84 23 April 2009 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You're right to say I was speculating, and I am open to being corrected. My point is that as a language learner, I would only have sufficient knowledge to judge the style of the text written in English- so no matter how contemporary a translation I had in English, I would have no way of knowing how outdated the vocabulary or style of the version written in my target language is- unless of course I was already very advanced.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 84 23 April 2009 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that you can find the Bible in different versions in many languages, including some that are almost modern in style. But do you really want that? Even though I'm an atheist like Dark-Sunshine I prefer the style of the older editions (insofar I can get them), - for English that would be the King James edition rather than some new and watered-down version. It is pretty clear that you shouldn't walk around and speak like a chapter of the Revelation, so you definitely shouldn't base all your language learning on that book. But if you want to produce bilingual texts yourself then the Bible is a good choice because it is found in practically every single language on this planet.
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| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6057 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 8 of 84 23 April 2009 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I‘m a Christian and indeed, the Bible is a great way to learn languages, especially if you really know it in your native (or other) language. In my case, I have been studying it daily for 26 years, and have memorized quite a bit of it so I can read it in the languages I speak and very easily guess at any words I do not know. It’s a great way to build vocabulary very quickly.
I recommend this site as a way to quickly access on-line versions of the Bible in many languages: http://www.biblegateway.com/
The German equivalent to the KJV is The Luther Bible published in 1534. Martin Luther translated from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts into cotemporary German, taking pains to ensure that the resulting translation was easily comprehensible to the common folk. This Bible was very popular and largely shaped the evolution of modern Hochdeutsch.. By the way, this is an excellent site for Bible discussions in German: Nikodemus TV
The Bible was written between 1400 B.C. and 90 A.D., and thus, it does in fact contain some discussions of ancient customs and history that would not be too helpful vis-à-vis the acquisition of contemporary common language. For example, there are descriptions of the Tabernacle and Temple Services and genealogies that are very difficult to read even in one’s native language (e.g., Leviticus, 1 Chronicles) However, the vast majority of the Bible uses very common language which is highly relevant to contemporary language learning. In fact, the Bible was the major textbook used to teach reading in the U.S. until the 20th century. I would recommend you start with Mark which contains no genealogies, then read the other Gospels (Matthew, Luke, John) which give an account of the life of Jesus and then move on to Acts which is an historical account of what happened after Jesus’ death. Edited by JW on 23 April 2009 at 11:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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