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Cleopatra | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6461 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 1 of 4 12 May 2007 at 10:01am | IP Logged |
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I've been reading Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World and found a rather interesting quote from Plutarch's Antony about Cleopatra:
There was pleasure in the very sound of her voice. Like a many-stringed instrument, she turned her tongue easily to whatever dialect she would, and few indeed were the foreigners with whom she conversed through an interpreter, since she answered most of them in her own words, whether Ethiopian, Trogodyte, Hebrew, Arab, Syriac, Median or Parthian. The kings before her had not even had the patience to acquire Egyptian, and some had even been lacking in their Macedonian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6570 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 2 of 4 14 May 2007 at 3:37am | IP Logged |
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Cool. :)
That last sentence confuses me. Ancient Macedonian had more or less been replaced by Greek by Cleopatra's time; and if they simply mean Greek when they say 'Macedonian', I have to ask: what language would an Egyptian king who knew neither Egyptian nor Greek speak? I thought they all spoke Greek back then. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6461 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 3 of 4 14 May 2007 at 9:12am | IP Logged |
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As far as I can tell, it would be Greek.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 4 of 4 14 July 2008 at 9:05am | IP Logged |
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Her first language was almost certainly Greek. The Koine version of Greek was widespread at least as an L2 throughout the Mediterranean and some way into Asia during her lifetime, as a result of Alexander the Great's conquests. Maybe she knew all these languages but Greek was certainly widely known.
Very little of Macedonian has survived, and it is unclear whether it was a separate language or a dialect of Greek. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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