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Ancient Greek, Sanskrit and some Hittite | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| aljosa Diglot Newbie Slovenia Joined 6197 days ago 14 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Slovenian*, English Studies: German, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek | Message 1 of 15 11 December 2007 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, here begins my journey with three extremely classy dead languages.
Let me clarify in the beginning why I have decided to keep this journal. First of all, actually being able to track my progress will surely keep me incredibly motivated. Then, there is the panopticon argument - if everyone can see how (un)successful I am, the ubiquitous fear of ridicule, carefully implanted in me by our lovely society, will undoubtedly greatly increase my willingness to study. (Don't think I think you are evil, I don't; but I'm sure you know what I mean.:) The materials I will be using? Teach Yourself Ancient Greek A Greek reader and grammar, both in Slovene, printed by our University (the reader is structured into 90 chapters; the first 45 chapters encompass app. 900 words) Resources from this site: http://www.textkit.com/greek_grammar.php (mostly the Greek Prose Composition Titles, when and if I am up to them; I think everything else is already taken care of) Prometheus Bound (when I'm at an advanced level) The Odyssey (Oh YEEEEEEEEEES!) Hareios Poter kai he tou philosophou lithos (when I can actually understand any of it) Teach Yourself Sanskrit (our official course book at the university) The course from this site: http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/tutor.php (it does involve some nasty Sanskrit-is-the-first-and-best-language-of-all and religious propaganda, but it's incredibly difficult to find any materials for spoken Sanskrit and this is better than nothing) For Hittite? Don't really know yet (explained below). The reason why I am studying so many things at once is pretty clear - exams. An exam in Greek is lurking by the corner and I'd like to get the institutionalized part of my language learning out of the way as soon as possible. I would like to point out, though, that I have always been in love with Greek and that I have developed a strange affection for Sanskrit (and Avestan, but never mind that:). The deadlines presented below do NOT coincide with exams, though, so don't take me for a does-everything-last-minute student. My foundation in all of the languages? I have learned the first 100 words in the dictionary of that Greek reader (just alpha words so far, I'm affraid - from abébaios to hámas) and today I have finished the first chapter of TY. I incredibly enjoyed being able to actually read a text in Greek. Other than that, I know nothing. I have attended a Sanskrit course last year, but we mostly grammatically dissected the texts, so I wasn't really interested. I passed easily with a humble knowledge of about 200 words, but have a good command of the grammar up to the seventh chapter (out of fourteen) in the TY book. As for Hittite - zero. Nada. Zip. Null. My goals? For the moment, my focus is on Ancient Greek and Sanskrit. As far as I understand, my classmates at Hittite (I don't go to that course, because it is, frankly, too dull) are taught about 5-10 words per week and the grammar is really simple at this point, so I'll probably learn what they want me to know and pass the exam. I'm not really interested in Hittite and fortunately passing won't take any effort. As for Greek and Sanskrit - I will not be content with a mere passive understanding. I want to write poetry in them (at some point), have conversations in them (with some of my geekier classmates), read them as fluently as I read English and eventually possibly even dream in them. I will thus try to take a very active approach. Now, the abscence of spoken material is not encouraging, but I'll find myself a native speaker of an Indian language for Sanskrit (mostly for the aspirates and the retroflexes) and I'll just use the reconstructed Greek pronunciation to the best of my abilities (including the pitch accent and the vowel lengths). Trying the pitch accent has so far only made my throat hurt, but I think it will pass once I get used to it. Now, for the most important part (at least for me) - my short-term plans. I will try to finish by the 31st of December the first nine chapters of TY Ancient Greek and at least the first fifteen chapters of our Greek reader (that shouldn't be too difficult, if I actually manage the TY). I will read aloud at least one page of HP or Prometheus per day just for the sake of my pronunciation. Next to that, I'll translate some extremely basic phrases into Greek, so I could, theoretically, ask Socrates how he's doing, where he's from and what his name is. That should cover the Greeks. If this proves to be too much, I'll extend the deadline to January 15th. With Sanskrit, my plans are not so far-fetched. Seeing I already know most of the basic grammar, I'll just do my best to finish the vocabulary in the first seven chapters of the TY by January 15th. I will also (finally) do my best to be able to read devanagari much faster than I do now. That will also include writing, of course. About the conversational skills - same as with Greek. I won't work on Sanskrit as hard as with Greek, since my exam this year is really a joke (write a report on athematic presents and don't bother understanding anything at all? *sigh*), whereas the Greek stuff is actually difficult (and interesting!). The ultimate plan is that my first lines in the next year will be a long quote of something Greek, something I will actually understand. I will try to update this thread once every three to four days, but I can't make any promises. I will never be over a week, though. Well, I've said it all. Now you be my judges. If anyone actually felt bored enough to have read ... this. Aljoša (or is it Alexios?) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6237 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 2 of 15 11 December 2007 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sanskrit Lessons: http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/BDLM/en/index.htm
http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/BDLM/front.htm (main page in case the above link does not work.) (They also have Pali and Tibetan) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aljosa Diglot Newbie Slovenia Joined 6197 days ago 14 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Slovenian*, English Studies: German, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 15 07 January 2008 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, here I am. I will post replies once a week? I will actually work hard? Huh. It is my sad duty to report I have failed miserably. More than miserably, actually.
I have finished the first three, maybe four chapters of TY Ancient Greek. Only passively, though. While it is great that I can read the texts pretty fluently now (well, it would be strange any other way - I did read them many, many times), the words don't flow naturally. What I mean is - I can read the texts and understand them, but checking my progress by covering a column of the word list I am forced to conclude I do not know most of the words out of context at all. Whether this is good or not, I can not say (any feedback will be greatly appreciated, though). Reading through the texts many times, always looking at the notes, is certainly a fun approach, but not knowing the words pains me. Deeply. The fact that I'm learning to recognise grammar patterns automatically can't be bad, but I am forced to ask myself if that is sensible, seeing the Greek exam will be mostly grammar oriented. But the biggest problem I have is, uh-huh, the pronunciation. It is incredibly frustrating. I can't seem to get lost of the stress accent. I do the pitch variations and I think I'm getting better at it, but I pronounce every stressed syllable both with a stress and pitch accent. Needless to say, this disrupts the vowel lengths incredibly. I'm having particular trouble with the epsilon sound, because that vowel appears only in stressed syllables in Slovene. While I have determined I am more of a visual type (I always know which of the e's is there), I can't help mispronouncing them all the time. Stressing (but not pitching) the epsilon is awful. Thus, the vowel quantities are pretty arbitrary at the moment. I would appreciate any help with this matter, because I'm running out of ideas. I transcribed a poem by Sappho into notes, using the musical fifth to denote the accent, trying to capture the lengths too, but when I tried shadowing (so to say) the music sample, it sounded awful. Just an hour ago, I tried singing the prose passages in the book - when I used the vowels only, it was fine, but all the consonants ruined the rhythm; I've read Ancient Greek was a mora timed language, which makes more sense now, but I have no idea how to get around to it. After much practice I was able to sing my way through a fancy proverb (The dead don't bite.). That was when I realized I'm not speaking but rather singing. I doubt the Greeks sang; and my own pitch accent in other languages doesn't sound like singing. Bwah. Sorry for this ramble, but I feel incredibly stupid and incompetent today. :) As for Sanskrit, well, I refreshed it a bit and I listened to the Bhagavad Gita quite a lot. My devanagari is far from fluent at the moment, but I think I'll manage in the future. I think I'll try (just for fun) the listening-reading approach with the Gita. The whole audio is incredibly slow, but I'll see how it goes. I could try some Vedas, but the whole hymn-chanting stuff just isn't what I'm interested in. Hindu philosophy in the Gita appeals to me more. As a side note - I experimented for the first time with shadowing and quickly gave up. I tried to shadow a Sanskrit podcast, but the quality was terrible and the voices were just too fast for me. I will try shadowing the Gita, though I will have to eventually lose that chanting element of it. :) That pretty much covers it for now. In the future I will refrain from having deadlines, as they seem to be rather counter-productive. I'll be more systematic, for sure (new year resolutions and that), and I'll just try to make it more fun. To tell the truth, I'm really looking forward to the next chapter of the TY - I think I'm in love with the passage about the Egyptians and their crocodiles. I will do my very best to learn it by heart. And I won't worry about the pronunciation so much. I can always improve it when I'm more experienced and comfortable in the language. Oh, right. I'd like to know what you think about learning paragraphs of original Greek by heart as a learning tool. I think it might be fine way to keep both grammar and vocabulary, not to mention I'll be able to show off all the time. :) Any comments will be greatly appreciated. And I promise I will update this log more often. I can get so lazy at times. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6646 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 4 of 15 08 January 2008 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
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If you had had the same easy access to lots of native speech as a person who studies living languages then the intonation patterns (including long/short vowels) would probably have entered your mind more or less automatically. But unless you can find podcasts of the whole of the Iliad or whole vedas in one go you are unlikely to have the same kind of hourlong passive exposure to your chosen languages as for instance somebody who studies Dhimotiki. With Hittite I'm almost certain that the number of long podcasts is negligeable.
Learning poems by heart - and refining your rendering again and again until it is just perfect - may be a way out of this problem, because then at least you will have something to listen to, namely yourself. And the refining of the same poems over and over again may also in the end take care of the pronunciation problem with certain sounds because you don't have to worry about what the text means, - you already know it and therefore you can concentrate on the sounds. It will also be easier to remember new words from word lists and texts if their pronunciation just comes naturally. Maybe you should try to focuse more on words that you have already met. I know that it sound paradoxally because everyone wants to add to their vocabulary, but having a few thousand words deeply engrained in your mind will make it easier to add to the collection later. And skipping Hittite for now certainly would be a wise decision. Learning Ancient Greek and Sanskrit at the same time is bad enough, but adding a third dead language is a receipe for disaster. Edited by Iversen on 08 January 2008 at 1:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| raufoss50 Newbie United States Joined 6135 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 15 13 January 2008 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Iversen on avoiding Hittite, although I understand your interest. You may prefer to read a nice thorough book on the language of the Hittites as you study your other languages. Something to rest the mind, so to speak. I found a Google Book from 1898 that might be of interest. It seems quaint, but also loaded with information. Take a look if you'd like:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bK_77xEah3YC&printsec=front cover&dq=Hittite&lr=&as_brr=1 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6561 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 6 of 15 14 January 2008 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Aljosa,
At least you tried. Probably the best thing you can do is get a good visual/audio program for Modern Greek and then use that to work your way into Ancient Greek. That way, you can get some experience speaking Greek and then the Ancient stuff, which is harder, will flow more naturally than if you only learn how to read. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aljosa Diglot Newbie Slovenia Joined 6197 days ago 14 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Slovenian*, English Studies: German, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek | Message 7 of 15 14 January 2008 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, hello again.
This week brought success. That makes me feel good in a very peculiar way. While I hardly progressed in the TY (in fact, I'm still finishing chapter 4), I have studied daily (except for Sunday when I felt terrible) and I revised the previous chapters a lot. Now I know pretty much all of the words in the first two lessons actively and when I think of the proverbs in the book I can translate them into Greek in my head. The pronunciation problem is also disappearing. While whole sentences still pose a problem if I'm not focused enough, the pronunciation of individual words seems to be flowing more naturally. In fact I've noticed I sometimes don't recognise words when I see them written unless I pronounce them silently in my head. I hope the problem will in time disappear altogether. Unfortunately I have an exam (English Verb - arguably the most difficult subject I have this year) in two days and I won't be able to do much Greek till then. I feel guilty because I've spent and hour and a half today, but I think I can live with it. I've also been experimenting with different techniques of vocabulary acquisition. Flash cards are useful, but the preparation is tedious and it takes me a long time to review them. I also tried your method, Iversen, and I found it incredibly handy. I had about 90% retention and it kept me motivated all the way through. I am having some concentration problems, it seems, as it takes me quite some time to finish all the words, but I'll try dividing the time spent studying into smaller chunks. The only problem I have now is the grammar. I enjoy studying vocabulary (and reading texts), but the nominal morphology is getting on my nerves. I don't know how to get around to it, because I grow bored very soon. I tried using flashcards with all the forms, but it didn't help much. Perhaps I'll resort to copying the charts many, many times until I know them by heart. Chapter four with all the prepositions (which change meaning when a different case follow) is very hard to read if I just try to figure out the grammar from context - that did work in previous units. If anyone has any ideas on this, I'd really appreciate it. In the mean time, I'll try to find more advice in older threads. To put Greek aside, I've finally decided to postpone my Sanskrit studies until I am more familiar with Greek. The Greek exam is a must this year, the Sanskrit exam will be incredibly easy and I'll start with Hittite very soon. I agree that three dead languages at the same time are a very bad idea, so I'll shift my priorities for now. I must say, I'm growing increasingly enthusiastic about Greek. I can barely wait for the time I catch up with my classmates somewhere by the end of this year (this, again, is a must) - I will make a spectacular return to classes only to dazzle everyone with my incredible knowledge and the ability to quote whole pages of Homer and the ability to hold conversations lasting many hours on all ... uh, I got carried away a bit. :D I appreciate all your support, of course. Most certainly I shall keep you posted on my progress. Aljoša P.S. I haven't yet had the time to really look at the book, but I certainly will once the English Verb is done with. Thank you. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6646 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 8 of 15 15 January 2008 at 6:45am | IP Logged | ||
Happy to hear that. As for the morphology I have another method, which I have used on other somewhat morphology-rich languages like Icelandic, Modern Greek and Russian. I don't know much about old Greek except that it is much worse than Modern Greek, but the same method might be useful. It is a two step process: first you try to find the logic behind the endings, next you decide which presentation is the best and make some tables on cardboard for easy reference. Take two or three grammars and study the differences in how they organize their tables, - which forms are put in which order? Are there parallel systems that should be very visible? For instance in Modern Greek verbs the endings of the present and the subjective/future are the same, but attached respectively to the ‘present’ stem and the aorist, and the imperfect and the aorist have the same endings, but again attached to each of the two stems (at least in the active). However there are very different endings for verbs with the stress on the the ending and those with the stress on the stem, so that they effectively define separate sets of tables. And of course active and passive are also different. So the logic would be to start with the biggest group, those with the stress on the stem. Keep those forms together that have the same endings (present and subjective/future), then the active forms that correspond to these two: imperfect and aorist, then the same forms once again but in passive, and finally the whole thing once again for the verbs with stress on the ending. Are there tables that are based on very few words? They don’t belong in a general case system, but should be learnt as exceptions. Don’t let them spoil your analysis. In this way you get a clear and simple system… oh no, things are never clear and simple in Old Greek. But at least you can try to simplify the system, even if it means that you have to cut some corners. The tables – in your preferred setup - should be written on pieces of cardboard that you can have within sight when you work on Old Greek, and if you see a form that you can’t immediately identify you look at the tables. Both constructing the system and looking up problem cases will help you to remember the endings, and contrary to the traditional methods you will also learn to see the whole system as a structure in space, which is one of the traditional tricks that memory artists swear to. Of course the irregular words should be written in strict accordance with the regular tables, but kept separate from the regular ones. I have used the verbs rather than the substantives and adjectives to exemplify the method because they are more complicated (at least in Modern Greek), but the method is the same. In my experience this active way of working with morphology is much more effective that just memorizing the tables from one book or gathering single forms while you are reading your texts. By the way: I didn't know that Harry Potter and that stone had been translated into Old Greek, - but why not? It would be more problematic to translate it into Latin, which is the language of magic formulas. Saying a formula would then just be like adding one more drop of water to the ocean. Edited by Iversen on 16 January 2008 at 7:48am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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