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Has Anyone heard of Hamiltonian System? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6278 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 9 of 27 20 April 2011 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hamilton did not consider his interlinear method to be a novelty - there were precedents,
both before and after the dawn of printing. en.wikipedia.org/wik i/File:Codex_Sangallensis_48_318.jpg A manuscript New Testament apparently produced at St Gallen in Switzerland in the 9th or 10th century. It is in Greek, with interlinear Latin translation of the Greek in smaller writing above the Greek text. Perhaps it was used by monks for instruction in the Greek language. Edited by William Camden on 20 April 2011 at 8:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5699 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 10 of 27 20 April 2011 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the link, dmaddock1. That one looks like it was more responsibly made. As far as I can tell, the original French text is completely accurate. My problem with this book is the rather "busy" interface on a page – scroll down on the page linked and click on "section 5" to jump right into it. Besides the original-language text with the English text right below it, there are also small superscript letters inserted in the original text, which I'm sure signify something that must have been explained at the beginning of the book, but which distract a bit from the reading. Also, there are extensive footnotes on each page, explaining difficulties of French grammar and vocabulary. Taken all together, it's a bit confusing to the eye. That's just a small pet peeve, though, and overall I really like the look of how this book is laid out. Maybe Locke's system is an improvement on Hamilton's. Despite my wariness of what I've seen so far, I'm still really enthusiastic about this inter-linear translation method! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5699 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 11 of 27 20 April 2011 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's a third name for the technique: The Talbot system, as demonstrated in this nice-looking book for French, French translation self-taught. So far I really like the layout of this one.
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5381 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 12 of 27 23 April 2011 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||
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This is very interesting. I have found the Hamiltonian version of the Gospel of John in Spanish. It is extremely old, but I will definitely use it. Unfortunately, I do not seem to be able to find any other literal interlinear translations in Spanish. Does anyone know where to find some?
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| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5453 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 13 of 27 23 April 2011 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Locke comes first - it's John Locke, the English philosopher. He put together a collection of fables translated from Aesop into Latin as a starter text for learning Latin. The plan was to read through them once to pick up vocabulary, then to memorize the main declensions and conjugations and read through them again paying attention to the grammar, then learn about syntax before reading through them a third time. As I understand it, the idea was that rather than the traditional approach, this would allow you to learn the language more naturally - by the time you mastered grammar and syntax it would be with reference to language that you already knew, just as a child doesn't learn grammar formally until he has been speaking for some years.
Hamilton, as I understand it, adapted the system. One of his changes was to use multiple texts in the learning process: Locke wanted you to have one corpus down pat. Hamilton thought more varied exposure would be more useful and interesting. If you read through the various introductions, you'll stumble across bits and pieces of a plan for which texts to read, in which order, and what to pay attention for in each, in order to master Latin and Greek for reading. Most of the books are available through Google books, archive.org or both. There's also a book of exercises to use while reading through Virgil. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5439 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 14 of 27 26 April 2011 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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FYI, I updated my first post with a directory of links to the books from these systems that I've found online. Best represented is Latin in Locke's System--the first 4 volumes in the recommended sequence are available. Other sequences have gaps. If you find any I didn't list, post them here and I'll update the list.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6709 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 15 of 27 27 April 2011 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I also use bilingual texts, and I have written about my reasons for doing so in my guide to language learning. Before I really became interested in this kind of study I did translations from for instance Modern Greek and Russian, and that may also function in the long run. However the advantage of having a literal translation (with or without errors) is that you can get immediate feedback on your attempts to understand a text, and often you can just note down new words for later memorization because the translation tells you all you need here and now.
However it is grave mistake to think that the use of translations can make the study of vocabulary and grammar superfluous - especially in languages with a lot of morphology. Some languages (like English and Bahasa) have a fairly flat, but long learning curve. Morphology-rich languages like Russian and Latin have a steeper curve, and even though bilingual texts are just as relevant here you soon discover that they don't give you enough information about the words - and (re)constructing complete morphological table on your own is silly when you can get them from books (this also includes the attempts to learn morphology implicitely through an insane amount of exposure). Grammars should not be seen as evil things that make language study more difficult - they are there to clear up doubts about the ways words are combined. Edited by Iversen on 01 June 2011 at 2:48pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5529 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 16 of 27 27 April 2011 at 6:19am | IP Logged | ||
Wow, I've been looking for a book like that for a while now. It definitely is 150 years old but that doesn't bother me. Thanks so much. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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