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Is mastering descendents necessary? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Γρηγόρη Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4456 days ago 55 posts - 154 votes  Speaks: English*, Greek, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: German, French, Russian | Message 9 of 26 22 May 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For an example of what I am talking about, compare the present conjugation of a basic verb like "to have" in
Greek and Latin with that of their descendants. Ancient Greek >> Modern Greek ἔχω >> (same) ἔχεις >> (same) ἔχει >> (same) ἔχομεν >> ἔχουμε ἔχετε >> (same) ἔχουσι(ν) >> ἔχουν Latin >> Italian habeo >> ho habes >> hai habet >> ha habemus >> abbiamo habetis >> avete habent >> hanno While one can certainly see the relationship between the Latin and Italian, knowledge of Italian would not really help one learn the conjugation of the Latin verb. The changes are simply too great. In the case of the two Greeks, however, one who knows the modern conjugation need only learn very slight modifications to two of the forms in order to master the ancient conjugation. Or, for example, take the declension of a basic noun, like "human." Ancient Greek >> Modern Greek ὁ ἄνθρωπος >> (same) τοῦ ἀνθρώπου >> (same) τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ >> (Dative not used in Modern Greek, except in learned, usually stereotyped, phrases) τὸν ἄνροπον >> τὸν ἄνθρωπο (same, with the loss of final -ν) ἄνθρωπε >> (same) οἱ ἄνθρωποι >> (same) τῶν ἀνθρώπων >> (same) τοῖς ἀνθρώποις >> (again, Dative no longer used) τοὺς ἀνθρώπους >> (same) ἄνθρωποι >> (same) Latin >> Italian homo >> uomo hominis >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) homini >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) hominem >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) homine >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) homo >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) homines >> uomini hominum >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) hominibus >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) homines >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) hominibus >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) homines >> (nouns no longer inflected for case in Italian) Thus, the person who has learnt Modern Greek has already gained most of the Ancient Greek declension of ἄνθρωπος, whereas the person who has learnt Italian would basically be starting from scratch upon switching to Latin. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4245 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 10 of 26 22 May 2013 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's all very facile and full of bad information. Which is the problem as I've hinted
with classical languages in that everyone with the slightest bit of knowledge fancies himself an expert. Yes anthropos is the same, but many words are not. The loss of the dative case is no small manner either in how the language is constructed. Indeed the syntactical differences are immense. You mention exw in the present tense, how wonderful, have you compared the most common future tense constructions? Have you looked at any of the other tenses and moods? They're hardly that similar. Yes, again, the loss of an entire mood (optative) and the heavy alternation to the usage of one (ypotaktikh) is again, massive. This is just the morphology, it only takes a few seconds to likewise see the change in syntaxis where some of the most frequent anc Greek stylings are lost. If you don't immediately recognise the problem stuff you certainly don't know anc Greek beyond the upper beginner level I mentioned in my earlier post. You're basically glossing texts based on your knowledge of the modern language, certainly without any sense of an ear for it. I'm sorry, but your post is just full of insane amounts of misinformation. No, classical languages aren't only learnt passively since accurate reproduction of a variety of dialects and styles (syn and diachronically) is imperative for getting beyond the beginner stages and training us to date and work with texts. Nor is this the reason why the contemporary pronunciation is used in Greece! Its due to labour and cost (formerly ideological) reasons since every school child needs to learn the language. At university students are made fully aware of the differences, quite firmly actually, though few become linguists and no prominent native Greek philologist works in the country now. I am aware of an immense shift when going from modern Greek to whatever type of ancient Greek. So is every none beginner. Yes, Greek is closer to ancient Greek that Latin and Italian (erm..because its the same language plus some centuries?) but not to the extent you're glossing. Yes you can read ancient Greek texts like that but don't kid yourself that you're reading so much as inferring meaning. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 11 of 26 22 May 2013 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's the best way for Prof. Arguelles, but I wouldn't make the fallacy of applying it to everyone else who wants or is studying a language from Antiquity. Ogrim's point about deferring the ancient prize (e.g. Latin) by first going through a descendant (e.g. Italian) seems counterproductive if the ancient prize is what's been sought all along. Declining motivation in the learning the descendant is a real problem. On a similar note, extending Prof. Arguelles' thinking to the full runs into problems as Darklight1216 notes where someone who wants to learn French should first master Haitian Creole. A questionable approach. My teacher of Latin who was a native speaker of English had no useful active knowledge (let alone fluency) in any of the Romance languages although he seemed to know a smattering in each of them. In any case, this apparent shortcoming (in Arguelles' view, that is) didn't seem to hinder him from doing his job in making us plow through dense Roman texts or explaining the grammar or techniques used by the writers. I don't know how I missed the following bit.
Beware of accepting the idea that the living language's grammar/structure is intrinsically easier (after accounting for available learning material) to master than the antecedant. Bulgarian and Macedonian show no almost no trace of the declension of Old Church Slavonic or what's reconstructed for Proto-Slavonic but somehow have come to use more tenses and moods than the antecedents and other Slavonic languages. It's debatable at best whether languages "simplify" over time or not. Is degree of declension the be-all and end-all for determining "complexity" or "simplicity" in learning a language? See the following summary for a little more information on the subject. Edited by Chung on 23 May 2013 at 12:21am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 12 of 26 22 May 2013 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have experience only with Latin. Knowing a lot of French and little bit of Spanish helped me miraculously
with vocabulary but the grammar is very different and in some ways, it reminds me much more of German and Czech (use of prepositions is quite similar to German, syntax is quite as free as Czech, both have declinations and conjugations etc). Latin had influence on whole Europe, not just the romance part. And from what I have seen and read about, in some ways the Spanish grammar seems to be much closer than the Italian one. So, I had advantage for Latin but I didn't get to advanced level because the advantage is not that huge once you are learning the grammar or even trying to progress by working on the active skills. And there is a point where you need to take the leap as the modern languages cannot pave you all the way through. Latin is not a free bonus to them. The other way around, I have heard a few people speaking of their experience. Learning Latin first gave them a huge advantage for various modern european languages. So, while I fully respect prof Arguelles, I dare to say the best way is to learn directly what do you want to learn. At least as long as languages are your hobby and you need to fit them in limited amounts of time. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 13 of 26 22 May 2013 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wasn't Prof Arguelles speaking of aspiring polyglots? For them it indeed makes no sense to learn no French or Spanish but only Latin.
btw, before my first modern Romance language I learned Esperanto. This was cool =) Zamenhof was a doctor and there are a lot of Latin elements in Esperanto. so if anyone needs an excuse, go for it! this is like a lite version of learning a modern Romance language to enrich your Latin experience. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 14 of 26 23 May 2013 at 12:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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That's why I stopped learning Esperanto. I hoped to experience the advertised mix of romance, Germanic and
to lesser extent slavonic languages. And I got something that looked 90% or more romance. One could take it as the opposite of Latin. Something with connection to all the romance languages but after several rounds of dumb-it-down process.. That doesn't mean Esperanto is any bad, not at all. I actually like a lot about it, even though my desire to learn it abandoned me. As stated in many threads before, Esperanto might be the best gate to the realm of romance languages. If you want to learn both living and dead, than starting from the least complicated and making your way towards the awesomeness of Latin might be a great journey against the time. But what about the other old languages. We heard a bit about Greek (btw do all greek children learn Ancient Greek at school?), chinese (is classical chinese one language or did it already have such distinct dialects?) and old slavonic (which modern language is closest to it?). What about medieval french, old norse, ancient egyptian and so on? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4245 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 15 of 26 23 May 2013 at 2:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, it [anc Greek] is a part of the school system in Greece for a few years. All the
way to final exams if you take the literary track actually. It's something upon which opinion is quite divided. My friends who took the science tracks and work as engineers either actively dislike the idea of appreciate it in an abstract manner from a cultural perspective. I don't think the teaching manner is really efficient or accurate and has created a situation where everybody and his dog thinks he knows what he's talking about. There's a saying that you can find a philologist in every kiosk. Well I'm not sure what periptero would be in English actually, imagine a kiosk which is like a mini- supermarket/sells bus ticket on every corner. Anyway, sorry, moving on. I totes agree about Esperanto. Well I already have Latin, but even without...wasn't it Tolkien who said he couldn't put up with a language without its own tales and mythology? I feel the exact same. As for other languages: Well I'm sure in most cases knowing descendent languages is very helpful and anyway any serious query must be by its nature diachronic but I'm guessing the degree varies. Its less useful in the Romance languages than in, say, Greek. I've seen Sanskrit taught - the lively contextual manner wouldn't be possible without a host of derivations and similarities. Actually the Indic method for Sanskrit works precisely because they force proper phonology and register and context onto the kids so after a while the mind quickly anticipates sound and grammar changes and composition (the main aim in many temples where they want MORE hymns) comes easier. Its also very slow... Slavic: I have a Slavic friend, Croatian, who claims that Croatian is very close to Old Church Slavonic. He's also a linguist but with Latin and Romance though. I've also heard Bulgarian is very close so...I mean I suspect its a mixture of features spread across languages to varying degrees of closeness. Obviously with things like older/Norman French modern French is relatively close but they, again, spend a lot of time on things like phonology and semantics to get the poetry to work. The amazing thing about languages is that there's no real inherent sign/meaning you know? Its entirely possible to be a modern Greek speaker and with the minimal training read through Plato, or to be English and do the Atherton book and read through Beowulf and "understand" etc but there are going to be times where even though you think you understand something, you don't. You're basically inferring rather than reading. Its fine and amazing that we can do that. But there's a reason why specialist dictionaries are made, why people try to reconstruct ancient reading processes and so on. I mean take Latin, so many words demonstrate this. Urinor is a popular example. It looks transparent but it means to dive not to piss. Vagina likewise means opening in a sword sheath. Porcus can mean pig, or a wedge formation in war, or a vagina in colloquial slang. Basically cognate and daughter languages are important in the long run, in some cases vital. Certainly would barely be able to understand the earliest forms of Greek without making analogies with Sanskrit. But ancient languages require a lot of effort and because of that if you want them, if they're the goal, then start there. If you already know descendent languages, great! use them. In fact you phave to. But be cautious. There's no real easy way, but then by nature the literature you're reading isn't meant to be and, honestly, a lot of these languages heavily repay any effort tenfold. In some cases twenty or thirty. Just think of it as an ongoing process. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4302 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 16 of 26 23 May 2013 at 6:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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My question is what about languages that have changed script? I mean, Middle English seems almost foreign to the English of today. Old English is probably a foreign language and they both used the Latin alphabet. What about the languages where the current version uses a different writing system than its older version?
1 person has voted this message useful |
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