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Dead Languages & Polyglottery | ||
Tags: Sanskrit | Polyglottery | Romance Languages | Dead Languages | Alexander Arguelles | Greek | Latin | Reading | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| vista Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 6396 days ago 38 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Basque | Message 97 of 115 23 August 2007 at 9:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In addition to Latin and Ancient Greek that come to mind right away, there's also classical versions of lots of languages that are important; Hebrew and Chinese to name a couple. Classical Chinese (wenyanwen), is extremely difficult and can only be read by a few. It includes the writings of Confucius and others. Knowing Chinese does not mean you can read or even try to read classical texts. It's kind of like Latin for Asia I guess.
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| quendidil Diglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 6313 days ago 126 posts - 142 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 98 of 115 04 September 2007 at 11:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I beg to differ, Classical Chinese can be read (albeit haltingly) by most Chinese with up to high school education, even without explicit instruction in the language. True, the grammar and pronunciation have changed a great deal over these thousands of years but the virtue of the characters allow anyone familiar with them to comprehend Wenyanwen. Even in Japan, there are classical chinese texts with markings, called kanbun, to allow native Japanese to read them.
Anyway, I personally would much rather learn many of the older classical 'harder' languages than modern languages. Hearing that classical languages are more 'difficult' merely makes me more interested in learning them. As Latin is not taught in schools here, I've learnt quite a bit of it myself, from help at textkit.com and Lingua Latina. Even with that little bit of latin, I find a great deal of Italian very comprehensible, and browsing through a French grammar book, I am frankly not at all impressed by the so-called inherent 'logic' of French. It seems fairly irregular to me, more so than Latin, and can be easily picked up if you know Latin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6651 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 99 of 115 04 September 2007 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Eventually, I'd like to spend some time with a "dead" language to see how I'd do without any real guidance towards how it sounds. I've heard that people speak Latin in various ways, since there's no way to tell.
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6769 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 100 of 115 05 September 2007 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Many Southeast Asian and Indic languages have a wealth of classical literature, in some cases spanning millennia. Kannada, Javanese, and (obviously) Sanskrit come to mind.
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| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 101 of 115 22 September 2007 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I studied a bit of classical Chinese pretty early on in my studies of Chinese. Let's just say it builds character.
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| Sulpicius Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6028 days ago 89 posts - 91 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 102 of 115 07 October 2008 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There is something wrong if one is able to supposedly read Caesar or Ovid in three months... Regardless of their romance language base since none of the romance languages have retained the degree of the case system... the analytical nature has also faded from its descendants. It takes years to be able to read Cicero without butcheringly translating word for word or jumping around in a sentence. The syntax takes time... I strongly doubt anyone claiming to read Cicero in 6 months, (most classes in college are at least two semesters) can seriously comprehend him as he was meant to be comprehended. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5900 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 103 of 115 07 October 2008 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I was set on learning Latin until I browsed what books are available in that language. Maybe I haven't looked in the proper places, but it seems you can't obtain original-language editions of any of the great works composed in Latin from the Renaissance onwards. Spinoza, Bacon, Newton, Vives, Erasmus... I can't find *any* of their books in Latin. This of course is a colossal disappointment. And even the Roman classics are problematic. Each work is spread out into four, five or eight books, increasing cost and precious shelf-space exponentially.
I'd really love to learn Latin one day. It is at the heart of our languages. And it simply is beautiful. But I won't do so if I'll end up reading the Ethica ordine geometrica demonstrata in English or Spanish nonetheless. Other classical languages worth studying would be Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew. And of course, Greek. I would greatly appreciate further input regarding whether or not classical Mandarin is intelligible to current speakers of the language. Can one learn modern Mandarin and read Confucius moderately fluently? Thanks in advance! Edited by JuanM on 07 October 2008 at 2:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 104 of 115 07 October 2008 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's possible; I've seen some. The downside was that they actually were centuries-old prints; I didn't get any as they seemed to average 400 bucks. On the free side, there's always Project Gutenberg's collection of Latin books. For more modern reprints, amazon and abebooks both seem to provide Descartes "Meditationes de prima philosophia" in Latin - and it was the first book I looked for, chosen at random.
Seconded.
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