Ever try to Learn a Dead Language? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Ever try to Learn a Dead Language?
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

23 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

solocricket
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Message 17 of 23

17 June 2015 at 1:08pm | IP Logged

I'm quite interested in several dead languages. I'm learning Latin somewhat passively
through the textbook Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. Once my Latin is at a
decent reading level, I'd like to go for Ancient Greek. I love [English] entymology, and
I think I'd be pretty swell at it with both Latin and Greek. In addition, I have an
interest in Old English/Anglo-Saxon, and I'd like to study that more intensively in the
future.

One of the reasons dead languages are somewhat fun for me is that there's no pressure to
talk or find language exchange partners like there is with living languages-- but that
just makes me a crazy introvert :D It's also just fun to learn something that's been
learned and studied for millennia.

Edited by solocricket on 17 June 2015 at 1:10pm
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Serpent
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Message 18 of 23

17 June 2015 at 7:17pm | IP Logged

solocricket wrote:

One of the reasons dead languages are somewhat fun for me is that there's no pressure to talk or find language exchange partners like there is with living languages-- but that just makes me a crazy introvert :D

That makes you a perfectly normal introvert ;)
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solocricket
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Message 19 of 23

17 June 2015 at 8:50pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

solocricket wrote:

That makes you a perfectly normal introvert ;)

Phew! Back to my Underground Cave of Ancient Languages then!
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Jeffers
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Message 20 of 23

18 June 2015 at 8:34pm | IP Logged

vonPeterhof wrote:

Luso wrote:

Of course, being the classical language of India, it's not as "dead" as it seems: as we use Greek and Latin to come up with concepts like "television" (that one being both Greek and Latin), in India they use a Sanskrit-based word (in this case, दूरदर्शनम्).

Not to mention the fact that Sanskrit has an active revivalist community which has supposedly produced thousands of proficient and/or native speakers. Unfortunately I'm having trouble accessing the most commonly cited source for that claim (the top search result).

Edit: The link is working for me now, but the figures it shows are bizarre - according to Indian census data between 1981 and 1991 the number of native speakers of Sanskrit jumped from 6,106 to 49,736 people, but by 2001 it dropped to 14,135 people.

I was also surprised by the number change for Sanskrit, but notice that the number reported is "Persons who returned the language as their mother tongue" [emphasis mine]. Perhaps they tightened the definition of "mother tongue"? Regarding the name for television, they use the Hindi form दूरदर्शन (Doordarshan), not the Sanskrit form दूरदर्शनम् (Doordarshanam), but actually most people use the English.

Assimil Sanskrit mentions the fact that two villages have officially switched to Sanskrit as their public language, but they then say that in one of them it's only spoken by the Brahmins. There are supposedly other successful Sanskrit experiments in India as well as those two. What is interesting is what will happen when people speak a "dead" language in their daily language.

Back to the original post: I've really enjoyed Ancient Greek over the years, and it has helped me learn other European languages. It's fun to read Plato, Aristophanes and the Bible in the languages people used when they read them thousands of years ago. It makes you feel somehow closer to them. I started Sanskrit in the last couple of months, and have really enjoyed it as well. Similar to solocricket's post above, the fact that I will never feel under pressure to produce the language at a moment's notice makes learning it simply a matter of enjoyment for me.

Edited by Jeffers on 18 June 2015 at 8:39pm
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vonPeterhof
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Message 21 of 23

18 June 2015 at 9:23pm | IP Logged

Jeffers wrote:

Either that, or the moods among the self-reported native speakers changed. I find it unlikely that who are exposed to Sanskrit since birth would be growing up with it as their only language. It's also likely that many members of the movement who hadn't mastered Sanskrit as children would still identify it as their "mother tongue" not by a strict linguistic definition, but a more emotional one, the same way people in immigrant communities identify with heritage languages, or how Tolkien supposedly identified with the West Midlands dialect of Middle English. It could be that the movement peaked in the early 1990s and then gradually lost lots of members, who would move on to identify with other languages.
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DaisyMaisy
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Message 22 of 23

19 June 2015 at 7:32am | IP Logged

Interesting about the Maya languages, thanks for that information! I don't know why I pictured Maya as a single language, unchanged for a thousand years. :) Now I'm interested in how Spanish (and other languages I imagine)have influenced Maya....more interesting things to learn...
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BlaBla
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Message 23 of 23

12 July 2015 at 7:39pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

I did five years of Latin in high school and found it very rewarding.

Same here but back then I didn't find it that entertaining, mostly due to a somewhat strange teacher and my utter disinterest in history. 35 years later I'm more than glad I've had it though.

Edited by BlaBla on 12 July 2015 at 7:41pm

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