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Why learn a dead/artificial language? | ||
Tags: Dead Languages | Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| i_forget Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5196 days ago 35 posts - 38 votes Speaks: Greek*, English, Spanish | Message 33 of 70 12 April 2015 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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eyðimörk I fail to see how you can be good (let's not even talk about fluency) in
ancient Greek or Latin if you don't enjoy studying it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4520 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 34 of 70 13 April 2015 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Often these two points aren't mutually exclusive. Reading old literature in translation means you can only read the translators interpretation. Reading old literature in standardized original language means you can only read the editor's interpretation. Reading old literature in diplomatic standardization (=use eg. Latin alphabet instead of a photocopy of the original hand writing) means you can only read the editor's interpretation. Reading one manuscript (the original is often lost) means you can only read the transcriber's interpretation. The way to go is to read many manuscripts of the same text. Of course you would use an annotated compiled version if possible to help you out and point out the differences in the different manuscripts. You can also use translations to compare with and academic papers which explain the interpretation of certain expressions in context. Unfortunately all of this is not easy and you start somewhere at the top of the list and then move down, and yes, you can of course use the same texts over and over in order to come to a more detailed understanding. For some texts it's worth it. For others it isn't. But you can see that this is a lot of fun, right? :) Studying scripture (ie. Bible) is practically the same thing and some seem to swear on that. To each their own. edit: Learning a dead language doesn't mean you can't learn the modern successor too. It's not either - or, why not just learn both? Edited by daegga on 13 April 2015 at 1:14am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 35 of 70 13 April 2015 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Of course you are not bound to fail if you learn a language to read books in it and if
you start reading way before being fluent. Actually, that is what many children and teenagers did with the Harry Potter books in English less than a decade ago so that we wouldn't have to wait months for the translations. And some of us, like me, hated English and learned it just to use it, no enjoyment included. So, why should it be impossible with Ancient Greek or Latin for someone whose passion happens to be history, literature, mythology, philosophy and so on? One more point I remembered. Some of the dead languages can be considered a useful intelectual exercise. For exemple, I've heard it quite often that learning Latin is an exercise in logic. It is systematic, the grammar is quite demanding (surely more than that of its living descendants) and regular, the vocabulary is descriptive, rich and flexible and so on. Learning Latin is considered a good way to train analytical thinking, especially as it is still being taught mostly through the grammar- translation way. When it comes to Latin, teachers are still not shy to tell you it's gonna be hard work, which is the opposite of the approach to the living languages. I really liked Iversen's post, thanks for that. The differece between a dead language and a living language is often not that clear, I wholeheartedly agree. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 36 of 70 13 April 2015 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
You keep adding more and more variables. Well, okay, let's ignore those who are forced to learn Latin. Many more are in the same boat with lots of English learners worldwide. They just accept that this language is needed and they learn it. If this helps them with biology/medicine/etc, they won't complain. It's also rarely a choice between an old and modern version. First of all, Ancient Greek is a bit of an exception here, with having only one descendent. But if we attempt to replace Latin, Old Church Slavonic and Old Norse with modern equivalents, do we go for Italian, Bulgarian and Icelandic, the most direct descendents? Or do we include the option to study a more "useful" modern language, such as French/Spanish/Russian/Swedish? And where do we draw the line, anyway? Nobody writes like Dante anymore, and I'm finding my knowledge of Latin highly useful for reading him. Also, what do native speakers do? A Spaniard can already chat with an Italian, a Russian can chat with a Bulgarian. But they can't read the older form effortlessly. And often there's a stronger tradition associated with learning it - for cultural and religious reasons. There may well be less resources for the modern language (especially for Icelandic and Bulgarian). In particular, there are likely to be less resources focused on reading (and yes, some people learn modern languages just to read them!). For ancient languages, the resources don't really get outdated (apart from the source language itself); for modern ones they do. Those who prefer classes can also often find them more easily, perhaps even for free at some religious centre. Someone who speaks both Latin and Italian may find it easier to teach the former, with no pressure to get a C2 certificate and no competition with native speakers. The teaching of ancient languages is less commercialized and shiny; ironically, with no Rosetta Stone. Also, an old form is arguably more useful for learning the descendents later, at least if you also enjoy it. And honestly, the lack of opportunities to speak can be relieving. I loved not having to write about the global warming or generation gap in Latin, not acting out dialogues, not worrying at all about my pronunciation. Artificial languages also have this appeal of equality, with all or most speakers being non-native. There's no agonizing choice between the British and American spelling, between trusting living native speakers in case of an ambiguity. "Biologists have an advantage over anthropologists - they can kill the object of the study or have it killed". I won't deny that sometimes it has to do with xenophobia. People have very different associations with modern Greece, Egypt, India or even Italy (especially southern and Sicily), compared to the ancient civilizations. The bias also applies to Bulgaria, many don't even know where it is. Iceland is seen as a "small country where everyone speaks English anyway". Even if we ignore hypocritical bigots, the old and modern languages are simply studied by different kinds of people, or the same people having different reasons. It can also be a question of which form to study first, or which one to focus on (which may change with travel plans etc, or if you happen to be more fascinated by the old language). Let me also point out that the existence of living speakers doesn't automatically make a language more attractive. Plenty of monoglots are fine with staying so, and when choosing one to study people often dismiss millions of speakers, for example saying that Spanish is more useful than Portuguese (which is more useful than Finnish, and so on). Edited by Serpent on 13 April 2015 at 4:03am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 37 of 70 13 April 2015 at 4:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I studied Latin and French concomitantly at school and knowledge of both languages has
reinforced my skills in active French, and later in Romanian, Italian and other languages too. Part of the reason I adapt to learning Romance languages absurdly fast is because I have studied Latin, even though nowadays I don't ever use Latin anymore. (I can't speak it). As for global warming, I think it's an interesting topic worth writing about in Latin ;) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 38 of 70 13 April 2015 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I certainly do want to read about not only global warming, but also other things which have been mentioned (or not) in this thread. And it is a simple fact that most of the new research about these topics concerning these topics is published in living languages - with English as the dominant vehicle. So in spite of laudable attempts by Wikipedia and Ephemeridae and given my preference for popular science materials the bulk of my reading will inevitably be in living languages.
I even have to confess that I haven't read the writings of neither Euclid nor Newton in the original languages (Greek resp. English), and that when I have read in the original version of a historical text I have done so as much for sheer language training as for the concrete information contained in the texts. For instance I have read several Anglosaxon and Ancient Saxon and Old Norse annals to study grammatical constructions or simply to maintain my reading skills, but as pleasure reading they are definitely NOT very exciting, and if you want to grasp what really happened historically in the respective periods you will drown in details and miss out on the bird's eye perspective. At the very least such source texts should be read in parallel with modern works based on the original sources, but with more consideration for non-academic readers living now. I have the same attitude to archeology and paleontology - you won't find me kneedown in mud in a bog looking for pottery shards, but I'm very interested in history and paleontology, and I like visiting museums where I can study the collections and explanations provided by the professionals. But let them do the hard and boring field work first. However a lot of literature and a few non fictional works of yore were written in a more reader friendly way, and for them the situation is different. Here the information content is not the main point - the writing style is the reason for reading these things. Here I concur totally with those who prefer reading the original versions rather than translations - even when you aren't as competent a reader in those languages. Reading a translation is like visiting Las Vegas to see the pyramids or Venetian waterways - it is simply not the same thing. But literature is low on my personal agenda so while I have read heavyweights like Beowulf in Anglosaxon, La mort le Roi in Old French and De Bellis Punicis in Latin I have read far more articles in weird languages on Wikipedia, just for the fun of it. And there it doesn't matter whether the language is dead or alive or invented by someone as long as I can learn to read it without too much fuss and there are enough interesting articles in it. Edited by Iversen on 13 April 2015 at 11:17am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 39 of 70 13 April 2015 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That much is apparent. I'm out. Five pages of... i_forget: I don't see why others do this. others: This is why we do this. i_forget: Nuh-uh! Your experience are null and void. others: But these are our experiences. i_forget: Nuh-uh! ... is more than enough for me. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5206 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 40 of 70 13 April 2015 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This just seems like a question of "why do people have different interests from mine?". Personally I'd also much rather spend my time on learning living languages that I can speak with people than on dead ones, because my main motivations are for socialising and travel. However, that's just my own interests, and I can understand the reasons that people have given based on theirs.
Almost every time I meet an Italian or French person, they ask me to justify my reasons for learning their language when there are more useful languages out there. It's similar logic at the end of the day. I don't go around judging people for how they spend their spare time so I find it a bit unfair when people do it to me. For example, I have no interest in video games and to me they seem like a waste of time, but I appreciate that many people get enjoyment and stimulation from them. So when I meet a gamer, I don't immediately start questioning their motivations and telling them they should use their time more productively, in the way that people often do when they find out that I study their "useless" language. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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