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Dead Language or Constructed Language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6498 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 25 of 52 13 October 2010 at 10:21am | IP Logged |
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Most of the dead (or undead) language are so badly attested that you only can study them as passive languages ... unless you supplement them with elements that effectively make them partly constructed languages.
Even Latin - a language with countless genuine texts and tons of teaching materials - can only be used actively to speak about modern days if you add some terminology for electronics, modern machines, modern science and modern institutions. This is not a problem for me personally, and speakers of Latin have always done so - classical Latin from imperial Rome used a plethora of Greek loanwords (because they suddenly discovered that a smackering of culture might be fun), and christians writing in Latin more or less reinvented the language. But it means that you don't treat it as a dead language, but as some kind of meccano set. In other words: you have effectively revived it (even in the absence of true native speakers). The poll asks us to nominate just ONE language, dead or constructed, but you don't have to go very far down the list of dead languages to find something that has less literature and less dictionaries/grammars and less community spirit and therefore also less entertainment value than Esperanto .. or even Klingon. Edited by Iversen on 13 October 2010 at 10:25am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5351 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 26 of 52 13 October 2010 at 11:13am | IP Logged |
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I'd rather go for a dead (or undead lol) language than a constructed language too. I'd find it hard to choose just one though.
I find Ancient Egyptian, for example, quite fascinating, and am looking forward to improving my French sometime down the road, just to be able to use Assimil's new L’Égyptien hiéroglyphique. I've also got Lingua Latina and some resources in Ancient Greek waiting patiently in the aisles. In addition to being able to read all those wonderful classics in the original and learn more about their compelling cultures, I believe they'll give me further insight into the mindset of ancient peoples to help me interpret their stories in the present. Furthermore, a knowledge of languages like Latin and Ancient Greek would really go some way to helping me understand the roots of my own language better, as well as enabling me to quickly grasp the meaning of new words in many target languages I'm currently studying or would like to learn. Edited by Teango on 13 October 2010 at 11:20am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5144 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 27 of 52 13 October 2010 at 1:07pm | IP Logged |
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I'll go for a constructed language - Elvish cuz I'm a fan of the Lord of the Rings. Or the Avatar language, can't remember the name of it.
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| ThisIsGina Groupie United Kingdom languageblogbygina.w Joined 5113 days ago 56 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, Greek, German, French | Message 28 of 52 13 October 2010 at 3:16pm | IP Logged |
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Constructed, because I want to learn Esperanto.
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| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5076 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 29 of 52 13 October 2010 at 5:06pm | IP Logged |
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I'd go with constructed first because I would rather learn Elvish before any dead language, but then again, I would rather learn the Quenya variety as opposed to Sindarin, so really, I'd be learning a constructed dead language. Then it would be all dead languages from there. Old Norse and Old English in particular come to mind. Maybe Sindaring Elvish eventually or Black Speech for some more constructed fun. But Quenya would certainly be the first constructed or dead language I would learn. Plus it does dip from both categories so that's a bit of a bonus.
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| Tyr Senior Member Sweden Joined 5577 days ago 316 posts - 384 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 30 of 52 13 October 2010 at 7:15pm | IP Logged |
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Would be rather useful to learn latin.
Conlangs...not so much. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5488 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 31 of 52 13 October 2010 at 10:20pm | IP Logged |
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You don't NEED a university course to learn Esperanto (the only one worth learning, in my very humble and personal opinion)! It's way too easy to bother spending an entire semester of intense university-level study on it. (Although if someone DID feel the need to do this, I would bow before the resulting awesomeness of his/her Esperanto skills at the end of the semester.)
I would definitely use the resources and support of a university course to tackle something hard like Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, or maybe even a really early form of German, and then just use lernu.net in my free time to learn Esperanto. Best of both worlds! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6265 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 32 of 52 13 October 2010 at 10:37pm | IP Logged |
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Hmm, with that many votes for dead languages, mostly specifying Latin, I should mention
that I put a free 47-lesson course online at http://www.learnlangs.com/latin - horrible layout and not-so-great lessons though, since I wrote it when I was 16 or so; it got me started on course-writing and nowadays I'm even doing consulting for companies designing language courses. I'm also teaching another online Latin class for beginners starting next week. Edited by Sprachprofi on 13 October 2010 at 10:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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