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The Mezzofanti table of languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| flatlandllama Diglot Newbie United States Joined 7092 days ago 35 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Vietnamese Studies: Khmer | Message 9 of 41 19 December 2005 at 7:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can answer your questions about Cochinchinese and Tonquinese. Its very simple...During the time when Vietnam(present day) was a colony of the French, the French had it split in three sections. The North was called Tonkin(ie\. Tonkinese or Tonquinese) the Middle was called Annam(also the old chinese name for Vietnam), and the South was called Cochinchina...Although its all one language, the dialects are sometimes almost unintelligible if one has never had exposure to it...It also depends on the speed of the speaker( different people with different dialects are someties harder for me to understand despite having heard their accent before) Generally speaking they are intelligible. They have always had one writing system at one given point in time so having asked around, I would guess that saying that he could read both languages meant he could read Han(chinese) characters and Nom(Chinese characters adapted for use for pure vietnamese)...having said that, the Han characters also use the same characters as what the chinese use(way back in the day though...the viets used ancient chinese\...not the simplified version) as well as chinese grammar for writing so then the Han characters are basically the same as knowing old chinese...I think there is only a small difference\...i havent learned much in the way of Han characters and i dont know chinese so i couldnt say how close they are but my teachers have all made that same point that theyre very similar.
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| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6864 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes  2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 10 of 41 12 February 2006 at 7:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Vilas, I can assure you there's a huge difference between ancient and modern Greek.
I've been learning ancient Greek for almost 7 years now and I can read most Greek texts quite easily (except for poetry and the more difficult stuff). I also can translate Dutch sentences into ancient Greek (if they don't talk about modern things like cars and computers of course). But I don't understand modern Greek and I can't write a sentence in it. Reading modern Greek is still very difficult for me. The pronunciation is totally different and so is the vocabulary because modern Greek has a lot of words with Turkish origins and because most old words got a new meaning. Even the grammar changed a lot. The conjugations are totally different. I'm planning to start learning modern Greek next year. I think it will be lots easier for me than for people who never learnt any ancient Greek but I do know that it will take me many years to become fluent. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7155 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 11 of 41 13 February 2006 at 2:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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I studied Ancient Greek for two years at high school and, even if I don't get 15% of the meaning of the sentence, I don't find them so different.
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| Linas Octoglot Senior Member Lithuania Joined 6915 days ago 253 posts - 279 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Lithuanian*, Russian, Latvian, French, English, German, Spanish, Polish Studies: Slovenian, Greek, Hungarian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese | Message 12 of 41 13 February 2006 at 4:03am | IP Logged | |||||
However, Greeks when they read ancient Greek texts pronounce them exactly as they pronounce the Modern Greek Eg. Philos men o Platwn, philtatH de H aleitheia would be pronounced filoz men o platon, filtaty dhe y alithya Obviously, Greek texts were pronounced completely differently V century before common era, but there is no way to know exactly how it was pronounced, only approximative reconstructions. And I cannot immagine how you can pronounce ancient greek texts today, except in the modern way? You cannot resurrect an Athenian of V century and hear his pronunciation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6864 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 13 of 41 13 February 2006 at 6:35am | IP Logged | |||||
the way the Greeks pronounce ancient texts is awful. I learnt quite a lot about Greek phonetics and I don't agree with you. Your sentence would, in ancient Greek, very probably have sounded like this: "Phílos men oo Platoòn, philtátè de hè alètheia". The èta (pronounced like the French è, later like a long e) only switched from è to i in later times, like the upsilon (pronounced like the French u), the oi (pronounced like oi) and the ei (pronounced originally like a long e, later like ei). This process is called itacism. It's also important to know that in ancient Greek the rough breathing mark (which is nowadays almost never written in modern greek) was pronounced like the h in English. Also think about the bèta, which is pronounced like an english b in ancient Greek. (Another thing is the accentuation, I don't know whether you know anything about ancient Greek accents but they were intonation accents, something like the intonations of modern Chinese, not stress accents like in modern greek). I'm sorry but is clear you don't know much about this topic (which is in fact quite normal if you only studied ancient Greek for 2 years). Scientifists can reconstruct the sound of ancient Greek vowels and their evolution quite accurately. It is very important to take care of the right sounds if you learn ancient Greek. Otherwise the metre wouldn't make sense at all. It's also useful if you want to study the evolution of the Greek language. It is absolute nonsense to say that modern Greek doesn't differ from ancient Greek. Modern Greek differs as much from ancient Greek as Italian, Spanish or French from Latin. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linas Octoglot Senior Member Lithuania Joined 6915 days ago 253 posts - 279 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Lithuanian*, Russian, Latvian, French, English, German, Spanish, Polish Studies: Slovenian, Greek, Hungarian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese | Message 14 of 41 13 February 2006 at 6:55am | IP Logged | |||||
I know about the the reconstructed prononciation of the ancient Greek, yet the problem with all that is, that we still do not know how these sounds were articulated, what was rhythm of speech and so on. Eg. from the pronuciation of the word "crypta" in the modern Italian like "grotta" we could infer that it was pronounced something like "grupta" in the ancient Greek. However in my mind it is simpler to pronounce it "kripta" like modern Greeks should do. "oi" indeed probably was pronounced like French "u" this philoi > philu > phili, while the "ph" was pronounced not like f, since romans authors claim that Greeks were unable to pronounce the Latin "f" but how it was pronounced exactly? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6869 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 15 of 41 13 February 2006 at 8:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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"Lettish" should be the language that is now known as "Latvian". I think it's still called lettish in German.
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| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6864 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 16 of 41 13 February 2006 at 10:00am | IP Logged | |||||
we're quite sure about the upsilon-sound, indeed. (in Latin the upsilon y (almost exclusively used for greek loanwords) is also pronounced "u", which most people forget!) For us the i-sound indeeds sounds more naturally. I think this is because most Greek words came to us after the u-sound switched to i. Thus we say "labyrinth" with the y pronounced as an i. (So I think you like to say "kripta" because you know words like cryptogram and so on). but the kappa was always voiceless - in cases of assimilation the Greek wrote the voiced gamma. So it sounds quite bizarre to me to pronounce the kappa in κρύπτα as a gamma. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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