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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dbh2ppa Diglot Groupie Costa Rica Joined 5690 days ago 44 posts - 74 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Japanese, Sign Language | Message 1 of 9 04 July 2009 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
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reading a thread about old English, i came up with these idea, i thought i'd run it by the polyglots (and aspiring polyglots) in the forum, to see if it makes any sense.
considering: *modern languages come from older languages, and very rarely is the limit well defined. once can usually see how the languages evolve by looking at the literature from different periods. *literature written in a language you know from, say, 100 or 200 years ago has some characteristics that are no longer used in the modern variants of the language, but that are easily understood and learned because of the context. what i'm proposing: *using literature as a means to progressively, step by step, learn old languages, until you get to the proto-language. for example, say you speak Spanish, then you start reading old Spanish texts, until you're used to the language, then go for older texts, and then older, and so on until you get to... literature written in latin. from there one need only reverse the process in order to learn Italian, portuguese and french. not only would this give an enjoyable way to learn new languages through literature, but it would also give you a deeper understanding of the languages, given that you see them "evolve" through time. this, of course, is not the most effective way to learn a specific language, but it would be efficient if one wishes to learn several related languages (as in Spanish+italian+french+portuguese or English+german+dutch+afrikaans+yiddish) the only problem i see with this is pronunciation, however, learning the pronunciation of a language once you can read it, i think, shouldn't be too hard, plus one could always refer to normal learning resources to fill that void. so, what do you all think, does it make any sense? can anyone give me a reason why this shouldn't work? Edited by dbh2ppa on 04 July 2009 at 2:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5863 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 9 04 July 2009 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
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Buenas. I can't say whether or not it would work. But it sounds much more time consuming than just going after
your target language directly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LtM Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5862 days ago 130 posts - 223 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 3 of 9 04 July 2009 at 4:54am | IP Logged |
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Hmm, could be a very interesting, but loooong process. I hope you're young... :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5653 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 9 04 July 2009 at 5:56am | IP Logged |
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This is a fascinating idea, and one well worth pondering. Even if all one gets is familiarity with one language during several phases or several related languages during their development (perhaps from a common source), it would be an interesting program.
There are some issues to consider, though. In many cases the developments through time are not well documented. There are also characteristics that arise and die out over time, so it would be necessary to learn much more--in some ways--than if you just learned the old language and the new as separate entities. I'll just mention one more. Travelling back in time can mean discontinuous leaps from one writing system to another, making it challenging to grasp the flow of things. This is definitely true with Persian, for example, moving from Old Persian to Middle Persian to Modern Persian, but not much of a problem for Latin or Ancient Greek and their later versions. Have fun! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7148 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 5 of 9 04 July 2009 at 6:27am | IP Logged |
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I have been fascinated by this idea for a long time. When I was in Germany I read through old documents in museums and could see where English, Dutch and German merged to a common beginning, or where they diverged from.
I have "The Story of our Language" by Alexander close to my bedside which I read every few years. You can tell how words must have been pronounced in the past by the spellings and also the reason for current spellings which don't seem to make much sense. I have also been interested in looking at the origin of Latin languages. I don't do it because it helps me learn languages (it would be a very inefficient method) but it does help make sense of variations of meanings. For me it is probably just curiosity. I like to know things. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7148 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 6 of 9 04 July 2009 at 6:33am | IP Logged |
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Reading the King James Bible gives insight into old English grammar and sentence construction if you also know German.
I wist not it was the high priest for I didn't know it was the high priest. If the sentence doesn't begin with the subject then subject and verb are reversed like most other Germanic languages but no longer in English. The word "let" had the opposite meaning. It meant to prevent or hinder. It is still used on passports and can be found in Shakespeare. I will kill the man who lets me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6150 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 7 of 9 04 July 2009 at 6:42am | IP Logged |
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The problem is that there is no direct continuum from many ancient languages to modern ones.
For Latin, you certainly get more traits of Vulgar Latin the later the date and depending on the author, but there is no literature written in the vernaculars until around the 10th century. There are no texts written in the colloquial language of the transition period from the fall of the Western Empire until the Oaths of Strasbourg; all that can be told about the language of the period is based on vulgarisms in Latin texts and a handful of inscriptions. The situation in Greek is even less linear, given the archaicizing tendencies of Greek literature in the later Hellenistic period which went on through the Byzantine Empire. Likewise for Sanskrit, AFAIK, where the Prakrits continued to develop into the various modern Indic languages while Sanskrit was based on the codified language of Panini. I think some development of the Prakrits can be traced through dramas though, where females and lower caste characters spoke solely in prakrit. The languages you could conceivably do this for are mostly the Germanic ones, though I'd hesitate to call them "ancient" since the earliest attested literature dates from well past antiquity. Possibly Chinese and Japanese as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbh2ppa Diglot Groupie Costa Rica Joined 5690 days ago 44 posts - 74 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Japanese, Sign Language | Message 8 of 9 04 July 2009 at 8:56pm | IP Logged |
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i am young, and will spend all my life learning languages, so time is not an issue. i had not considered the probable lack of literature from some points in the development of languages, i guess it would be necessary to check first whether enough texts are available for each period beforehand.
thanks for the answers ^^ 1 person has voted this message useful |
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