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What are the oldest books for learning? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4532 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 9 of 15 18 February 2015 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
According to the link above he studied quite a few of these (semi-)formally. I wonder what sorts of written resources, if any, he used. 1 person has 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 10 of 15 18 February 2015 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The use of wordlists predates the invention of proper books by thousands of years - the Sumerians compiled such lists at least 4000 years ago, and when the Akkadians took over the writing system they needed such lists even more than the Sumerians themselves. But books, defined as rectangular paper or parchment sheets laid on top of each other and bound and/or glued together at one side, came later. However the oldest preserved book was somewhat older than I thought - it could be a 2500 years old book with 6 pages and etruscan letters (!), according to this source. And whatever it told the reader - provided that it is genuine and in Etruscan (which makes me suspicious) - it was probably not about grammar. The first grammar I know of in a real book is an Icelandic grammar, and it dates back to the 11. century, but it is unlikely to be the first in its genre. Roman, Greek or Hebrew scrolls don't count as books in my book - not even if they contained grammars or dictionaries. I don't know what Panini wrote on - maybe palm leaves. If they where put on top of each other and bound/nailed/glued together I would accept that as a book. Edited by Iversen on 19 February 2015 at 9:28am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4664 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 11 of 15 18 February 2015 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Why would scrolls not count? Is it not information "compiled in written form"? Why does it have to be multiple pages attached to each other in some way? Isn't a scroll just one long page? 6 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 12 of 15 19 February 2015 at 1:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, that must've been an early form of the printed book vs ebook debate. Edited by Serpent on 19 February 2015 at 2:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 13 of 15 19 February 2015 at 2:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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If scrolls, papyrus and banana leaves are ok, why not a stone? Why not the most well known parallel text in the world- the original Rosetta Stone from Egypt?
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| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 14 of 15 19 February 2015 at 4:37am | IP Logged | |||||
I KNEW this would eventually be mentioned. :-) Throughout written history, every time a person or people came into contact with another group of people and needed to communicate, some sort of dictionary and/or rudimentary grammar of sorts has been recorded. When fur traders started trading with the Ojibwe and many Ojibwe were converting to Christianity, there was nothing in written form in the language, but it didn't take long for Frederic Baraga to compile an Ojibwe prayer book in the 1830s, and ended up compiling a dictionary and grammar in the 1850s. R. == 1 person has 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 15 of 15 19 February 2015 at 9:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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The question is whether a book is defined as a storage for knowledge in any physical (or virtual) shape, or whether it is seen as a certain kind of object. I have stated what my definition of a book is, and there scrolls and menhirs don't pass the test. But as you could see in my message above, I expressly wrote that IF you define a book like a pile of sheets on top of each other and some kinding of binding at one side, then the cuneiform tablets of the sumerians, the scrolls from the Dead Sea find and wall paintings in the Egyptian pyramids from the 6. dynasty and onwards wouldn't be books, whereas heaps of bound palmsheets might be the oldest language learning tool in bookform, provided that Panini or his unattested forerunners used that format.
But it is equally clear that the word "book" also is used about utterances in a reasonably fixed form with a beginning and an end and some kind of individual identity. And that's also a legitimate definition - we just have to be clear about which definition we use. Is Wikipedia then a book? I dunno - but Encyclopedia Britannico on paper would be a book, and then it would be a reasonable assumption that something similar in a virtual medium would too, if just it has that specific individuality about it which makes you see it as one single monolitic work. Having several authors isn't a problem, but is there a limit upwards? What about series of lawbooks, one from each year? Is a magazine also a book, and why not? I faintly remember that Dickens published his writings dropwise in a magazine - when did they become 'books'?. However that's not the the end of the complications. A book may even be part of another book, as demonstrated by the so called books inside the Bible (which in itself as a whole is a book) - like Genesis or the book of Habakuk. With this looser definition a 'book' may even have existed in any physical or virtual form - like my ebook, which never has been printed or read by anybody but myself, but definitely is a didactic tool. In that case the Sumerian tablets with lists of words are probably the oldest 'books' for language learning. I still think the Sumerians would be good candidates for the first kind of didactic writings about language, but according to Wikipedia there were writing in Ancient Egyptian as far back as 3300 BC - the question is only whether they were truly didactic, and I doubt that that was the case. Messages given for information to other humans or as messages to the gods were not really meant to be didactic tools, even though any written testimony in a human language conceivably might be used for that purpose. But the Sumerian wordlists definitely were didactic tools, so they would in my opinion still be the first 'books' specifically for language learning. Edited by Iversen on 19 February 2015 at 4:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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