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What do you like about dead languages? | ||
Tags: Dead Languages | Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 30 16 July 2012 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Dead languages aren't to everyone's taste, for all sorts of good reasons. There's
nobody to talk to (except in Latin and a few other liturgical languages), there are usually no movies—in fact, you're pretty much limited to literature, letters and religious texts. But there are compensations, too. My university Latin classes reached the point where we were translating lightly-edited Latin texts, and I learned two things that have stuck with me ever since: - No matter how many times I told myself otherwise, I used to suspect that people in the distant past were, well, unsophisticated bumpkins. But in fact, a Roman like Catullus was far more "modern" and cynical than 99% of people in the modern world. If you imagine a Louis CK stand-up comedy routine in verse, you won't be far off. (And this same Roman decadence and cynicism is the soil in which the early Christian faith flourished, which explains a whole lot about St. Augustine, for one.) - The political advice in emperor Trajan's letters was absolutely fascinating. He was opposed to organized fire brigades, because (1) he hated having any organized groups of citizens, and (2) he feared they would start burning stuff down to improve their job security. For a brief moment, translating Latin made a dead world feel real. For those of you who study dead languages, what have you found most rewarding? 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rykketid Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4833 days ago 88 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: French | Message 2 of 30 16 July 2012 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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A thing that I love about Latin is that it helps to understand a lot of words in many
languages (especially romance languages of course but not only). For example, I had no idea what procrastinare meant in Italian, but I knew that pro = forward and cras = tomorrow in Latin, therefore it was just sufficient to put two and two together to understand the meaning of that word. Another field where my (unluckily little) knowledge of Latin turned out to be quite useful was when I had to have my law exams at uni. Since Roman law is the forefather of our Modern judiciary system, a lot of expression are still in Latin especially in textbooks, for instance ex tunc, ex nunc, icto oculis, ne bis in idem, ad libitum etc etc Edited by Rykketid on 16 July 2012 at 5:03pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5009 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 30 16 July 2012 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Latin is still alive in some areas, not only the church. The medical terminology stands
on it, even though some languages changed the endings (like English). And there you can see the beauty. A long Czech (and not only Czech) expression becomes a one or two word Latin jewel. It is still a lingua franca, for exemple among the doctors. Sure, the English is the number one today, but it stands on Latin, it is everywhere. Ancient Greek is present in Latin or even by itself in the terminology. And it gave roots to so many words we use, whether in science, philosophy, the art. It is fun to see the connections and it is very healthy for our society to realize, at least from time to time, our roots. That is why I will surely return to Latin one day and why I may even try the Greek. And even if I don't, I will always like to meet it anywhere else. Ancient Egyptian is completely different. If I have the time one day, I would so love to try it because I was so amazed by the culture and history when I was a child. This language has a lot of popularity making advantages over other languages of that time and region. I wonder, do you know anyone who started to learn some ancient language because it looked cool in the Stargate series? :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 4 of 30 16 July 2012 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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All the centuries that have passed since their glory days have lent them a certain
gravitas. I like that. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4521 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 5 of 30 16 July 2012 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The nice thing about dead languages is that nobody expects you to be able to speak it.
If I tell someone that I studied (modern) Icelandic, they usually want me to say this and that in Icelandic. But I can't really speak it as I only studied it to improve my Old Norse reading and grammar skills. If I tell someone that I can read unnormalized Old Norwegian dialects, nobody asks questions other than "why?". With that I can cope ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 6 of 30 16 July 2012 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I love how Latin is such a clear example of how languages grow, spread and develop.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4870 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 7 of 30 16 July 2012 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
All true, but since the texts are so old, they've had to survive some serious quality filters. Most of what we've got from antiquity has had to survive what I think of as the "medieval filter." The work had to be good enough to get copied out by hand for centuries. So it's almost a guarantee of quality (perhaps not always, but more often than not).
For sure. Catullus is funny.
This really is one of my favorite parts about the classics. In some ways, Greek is more effective at this than Latin, but both can pull the trick. I also like the whole "first time" aspect. History? Herodotus did history first in the West, and in an entertaining way to boot. Old English, Latin and Greek are fun. If I were to go to Egypt, I'd love to work on some Egyptian. Sumerian might be too much for me. Knowing dead languages also allows me to gain a perspective that I otherwise couldn't get. I feel a continuity of humanity stretching over the centuries that I am a part of. I can touch artifacts of antiquity. I am connected to minds from the remote past. Does it get better than that? 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6659 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 8 of 30 17 July 2012 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I tend to scold a lot at the ancient Sumerians... "Okay, you spent centuries developing a writing system this bad to
write this totally non-interesting stuff in a multitude of copies, oh, why!" was something I thought when I read the tenth exactly the same looking building inscription embedded within a temple (they wrote on bricks, then used them). 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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