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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 |  | |
| Tjerk Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6791 days ago 54 posts - 59 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Swedish | Message 33 of 115 20 July 2006 at 3:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes there are two approaches both with advantages and disadvantages.
Studying only living related languages will give you a conversational advantage. You'll understand more people and more dialects. Including dead languages will give you a philosophical and historical surplus. You'll better understand historical texts and literature. Since Ardashirs main use of his languages was reading literature and Sinfonia is more a conversational polyglot their choices are obvious and justified. I guess it's a choice everyone has to make for him self. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6778 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 34 of 115 20 July 2006 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Absolutely. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6778 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 35 of 115 20 July 2006 at 10:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, it's about prioritising, really. Learning just ONE language requires a huge investment of time, and the same goes for an ancient or dead language -- the latter offering though a less obvious 'return' on the investment in the 'real' world. Those hoping to impress friends with their multilingualism might also consider that most people don't seem to want to count a dead language as a 'real' one, so that could be a reason to learn modern Icelandic, Russian and French rather than Old Norse, Church Slavonic or Latin :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sigiloso Heptaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 6813 days ago 87 posts - 103 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, PortugueseC1, Galician, French, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Russian, Greek | Message 36 of 115 20 July 2006 at 10:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Sinfonia, so good having you and your opposite position here. I apologize for my preceding impertinent post; it is just a trick to elicit vigorous replies.
This is exactly what I used to think some months ago. What a pity Ardaschir is gone, it would be an utterly interesting debate. Now the two positions are clearly stated and every polyglot is alone to make his/her choice! However, I see theres a difference; Ardaschir"s is based on experience, say exploring Indic languages when already have studied Sanskrit years ago, while yours is a mere supposition, since you don't have a solid knowledge on them and haven't organized your knowledge of living ones around them, so you don't have direct experience, a "seeing is believing". You have as all of us the usual "learn Spanish, Italian comes easy". Seems as you organize your knowledge more in a linear fashion than in circles. So I will stick to the other line, but is good to see I was not so silly after all before. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6737 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 37 of 115 20 July 2006 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It has been a long discussion, but it has focussed more on what to do with some ancient language once you master it than how to get there. In my humble opinion there is one big problem with the way you learn dead languages, namely that you are presented with a corpus of texts - partly very difficult texts - which you are supposed to master. For instance in Latin you spend your time analyzing strange grammatic phenomena in Cicero, but never learns how to ask for directions in the street. Well no, somebody might say, that's because you will never ever need to ask for directions in Latin. But the point is: rumbling with phrases in your head that you MIGHT use some day is the best way to keep the language alive in your head. And most Latin students never get that active relation to the language, and therefore they forget it (or degrade it to some puzzle solving activity that cannot be done in real time).
Apart from that I do think the study of ancient languages is worthwhile,- but only when you have learned enough of the descendants to be able to see the relationships. And let me reveal a secret: it is not the subtle points of rethorics that have survived into the descendants. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6778 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 38 of 115 20 July 2006 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks; and don't worry, definitely no offence taken!
That's neither here nor there. What Ardaschir said is *logically daft*! Let me take you through it again...note the highlighted bit...He said: "a knowledge of ancestral "dead" languages such as Latin, Old Norse, or Sanskrit is **an integral and essential ingredient of polyglottery**". Now, if that were true, then I, as a multilingual (and who knows, possibly a more successful one than Ardaschir), must have a knowledge of one or more of these ancient languages -- yet I don't! So, are you implying I don't exist?! LOL
All I've said was that Ardaschir's claim is patently nonsensical. If you want to reject that, then we must be in parallel universes, or something... In any case, in some meaningful sense, a language like Italian IS Latin, Bengali IS Sanskrit, Icelandic IS Old Norse...transformed by the centuries. There's at least as much value in studying modern Sardinian, modern Nepali, modern North Frisian etc for insights into other related or neighbouring living languages as there is in studying diachronically. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jason Diglot Newbie India Joined 6748 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Hindi, EnglishC2 Studies: Italian | Message 39 of 115 21 July 2006 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't see the point of learning a dead language as being essential to polyglottery. From a personal point of view I'd rather learn a living language. Also I'm not exactly convinced with the exploring Indic languages after learning Sanskrit statement. The advantage that you'd get in learning say Bengali after Sanskrit will be close to the same you get after learning Hindi.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sigiloso Heptaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 6813 days ago 87 posts - 103 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, PortugueseC1, Galician, French, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Russian, Greek | Message 40 of 115 21 July 2006 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
As I said, the positions are now perfectly clear. I wish other experienced polyglots come round here some day and share their views in this matter.
Right on the money! I could't agree more. The damn method learn a declension/do some translation/proceed to real ancient text is a killer for most. They did it for two millenia I know but...Fortunately I think in English there are materials with a different approach. I read modern latinist associations work for a complete update of vocabulary to the needs of modern world, and there's a number of magazines with Latin with comics etc, as a normally living language, I cannot recall the names now but they do exist. Maybe we are all but a bunch of mourners...
What do you mean exactly? Sinfonia: Maybe we could open a thread in Specific Languages, but, do you speak, or know, Sardinian?; I see you mention it with respect; I know it is a bit of classical pronunciation survivor, and you say it could help understand Cicero as an example of your "reverse" view. Have you got materials? Do you know if its situation is improving in the island? What I don't take is your Aragonese. Come on, let's be serious. I know Caito is interested for ancestry reasons, but no speakers, no culture, no standard, no materials; it is in the category "could have existed", (yes I admit, it is a kind of existence). Are you by any chance believing in the existence of these supposed languages from the Ethnologue? What a phenomenon! Everybody quotes Ethnologue; as someone from the British Council said, it is just the hobby compilation of a retired psychologist...It depicts a world of inmense linguistic diversity... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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