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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 |  | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7290 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 9 of 115 12 April 2005 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
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Seth, I think I know but I am not quite sure exactly what you mean by the pragmatics of second language acquisition, but actually that is not what this is all about--this is all about the art and science of becoming a polyglot. I am talking here about how to efficiently go about learning whole language families, not individual languages.
I certainly don't believe that everyone should of necessity learn Latin or any other language--that's the most effective way to deaden interest, not stimluate it. Latin and Old Norse aren't even for all polyglots--Barry Farber ignored them, and they are not on Ziad Fazah's list. These two are both what I call "conversational polyglots," whose main goal can be characterized as the desire to be able to speak with all people in their own tongues. You are right, Latin won't help a Swede learn Spanish any more or less than Italian would, so if your goal is to talk and you know that you only want to know two or three major languages, fine, forget the dusty tomes. If, however, you are thinking ten years down the line and you know that you want to know ten languages, and especially if you would like to know all or most of the languages in a single family, then the situation is quite different. Knowing the common ancestor is the link that ties them all together and the point of reference as to what makes them similar and different. I am speaking from direct experience here: I learned Latin and lots of historical older Germanic languages + French, German, and Spanish, and with that philological foundation, when I got to spend several years doing linguistic research in Europe, I found that all the other "dialects" from these families literally jumped on board. The experience I gained has also indubitably facilited my wider ranging exploration of the world of languages, but I certainly have to work much harder at anything that is not from these two families, whereas anything from them basically now just requires a bit of exposure. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7186 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 10 of 115 27 April 2005 at 2:33pm | IP Logged |
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The fame for Latin being that difficult is completely unfounded. It is the easiest language I've ever learnt, because it's so simply... logical. I'm quite sure that, if I had put more interest into it, I would have learnt it in one month
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| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7186 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 11 of 115 16 May 2005 at 3:08pm | IP Logged |
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I would like to bring out an issue that hasn't been commented in this thread: Ancient Indoeuropean. For those members who don't know what it is, I'll do a brief explanation.
Indoeuropean is an hypothetic language, reconstructed by experts by a process of linguistical comparison between languages of the Indoeuropean family. It is supposed to be the language from which all tongues from this family arose. So, when you realise this, you can see that many languages which seem completely different (say Swedish and Ancient Greek) are really much the same. This idea of all Indoeuropean languages going back to one only language is my principal motivation for studying languages. So, when last Christmas, I saw a book on Indoeuropean at my local library, I obviously borrowed it to read. It wasn't a "Learn Indoeuropean in 30 days" book, in fact in wasn't a book for learning Indoeuropean at all, but a book of Indoeuropean grammar. I read it all in two weeks, but I don't know how to say "Hello" or "What's for dinner?" in Indoeuropean. Yet I learnt very much about the grammar of Ancient Indoeuropean, and subsequently, of Indoeuropean languages. This Indoeuropean grammatical rules have been my most effective help in language learning since then. You've got a text you can't understand, apply these "magic" Indoeuropean rules and... ABRACADABRA, most of the meaning of the text comes to the surface. I just wanted to remind people about this language, and say that knowing the grammar of Indoeuropean (no need to learn the language) is a very good "secret weapon" for language learners. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| caroline Newbie United Kingdom Joined 7145 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* | Message 12 of 115 26 June 2005 at 6:14am | IP Logged |
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I am interested in Ardaschir's advocation of learning dead languages. I
have rather mixed feeling on this. I myself did my degree in Classics. At school I was attracted to Latin and Greek by the fact that they were taught very systematically: if you learnt every word and structure in the course, you would always be able to translate everything they threw at you. In comparison I hated French, because it always seemed too 'uncontrollable' and impossible to know everything. Of course this is precisely because it is a living langage (but when you are at school, you don't always see things from the most considered perspective). As I progressed in school from simplified or artifically created textbook texts to real Classical literature, the breadth of vocabulary and structures, increased. I definitely think the way Latin and Greek tend to be taught (ie passively, through reading and translating, rather than actively producing the language) doesn't help for fluent reading. The leap to instantaneous understanding doesn't happen - or at least didn't for me. When I later came back to French a few years ago, I was amazed by how easy I found reading it compared to the hours spent deciphering Classical texts at university with a dictionary in one hand and a grammar in the other. I am convinced that this is due not to the complexities of the Latin and Greek languages, but the fact that I never learned to speak or listen to them. There is also something, I find, incredibly demotivating about learning vocabulary that you know only has once occurance in the whole body of Classical literature. Although there is enormous pleasure and satisfaction to be got from reading the Iliad in the original, or Aristotle's Physics, or some of Tacitus' Histories, I must admit that since leaving university, I have not been tempted to pick up a single book in Latin or Greek (partly because I read most of the texts that interested me while at university), and thus my knowledge of these languages has all but disappeared. Now that I am learning my first modern inflected language (Polish) I am hoping that my understanding of concepts like case from my Latin and Greek days will be of some worth. However I can't help feeling that if I had spent as much time learning modern languages as I did ancient ones, it would have been much more useful now. It is much harder to keep up ancient languages, simply because the means of keeping them up is much more limited. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lola Groupie Joined 7186 days ago 63 posts - 65 votes | Message 13 of 115 26 June 2005 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
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There are a couple of suggestions for light introductions to Latin and Greek here. One of them is so 'light' that only takes a couple of hours to go through the lessons... for those who don't know what they are missing and are scared to find out ;-) I recommend it to everyone, even if just as a rainy Sunday past time.
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| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7290 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 14 of 115 27 June 2005 at 6:01pm | IP Logged |
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I moved the discussion of the critical period hypothesis to its own thread in the general discussion forum.
Let us not let this thread stray too far from my original contention, namely that a knowledge of ancestral "dead" languages such as Latin, Old Norse, or Sanskrit is an integral and essential ingredient of polyglottery. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patlajan Triglot Groupie United States Joined 7183 days ago 59 posts - 65 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Turkish Studies: German, Mandarin, French | Message 15 of 115 28 June 2005 at 11:37am | IP Logged |
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I argee with Ardaschir and lola that true ployglottery requires a strong knowledge of the forerunner languages ( a term I prefer to dead languages). A case in point, I have in front of me Seamus Heaney's Beowulf. This is the bilingual edition, with old English on one page and on the opposite the translation. Just a few hours with this work has given me insights into both German and English. I also find any time spent with Latin is time well spent. I would assume the same would be true for Greek - but my knowledge of Greek is very limited at this time. This interest may be greater for me as my focus is generally on the Indoeuropean languages and European history. Beowulf
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| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6924 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 16 of 115 08 July 2006 at 1:32am | IP Logged |
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Digging up a pretty old thread here... :)
I quite agree with Ardaschir that learning a 'dead' language has its advantages and does indeed give a good insight into the workings and vocabulary of our modern European languages. I'm quite tempted to add Latin and/or Ancient Greek to my repertoire in the near future due to my interest in classical mythology. My only worry is how long it might take to get anywhere with either of these languages. Ancient Greek has a new alphabet to memorise (although I doubt this would take more than a few days) and both have grammars that I am not familiar with. The thought of working with cases and 3 genders is a bit daunting but, of course, not impossible. Out of curiosity, which of the two is usually considered the easiest to learn? Going by first impressions, Latin would probably be the easiest one for me as I already have a background in Romance languages and there's no need to learn a new alphabet. On the other hand, Ancient Greek culture appeals to me more than the Roman Empire... Any thoughts or advice? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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