/lit/ - Literature

Why the fuck would you waste your time doing something like learn Babylonian? Are you obscenely wealthy?

>>13280343
>I was thinking about learning babylonian

>>13280343
>I was thinking about learning babylonian and learning how to write in cunieform
literally why?

>>13280349
>Thinking only in terms of utility when considering what to persue
I wouldn't want to live your life

>>13280361
>Why?
Why bother doing anything? Because I want to.

That sounds like a noble goal but it'll be tough. I don't know those old languages but I know that learning them is more complicated than a language like Latin, because "learning the language" in this context means learning it to the degree that scholars have reconstructed it, which often means you need to be familiar with different reconstruction schools, and those are further embedded in the historical and philological scholarship. So if you're going to learn a really ancient language I would just say be prepared for a general education in Babylonian/ancient Near Eastern culture and history too. Maybe I'm wrong about all this though? If I'm right, the best place to start might be with learning that historical/cultural shit, doing lectures and reading books etc.

Right off the bat, as I'm sure you know, knowing/being a German will help you tremendously because all the best philological work of the past centuries was pioneered by the Germans and most remains in German.

Again I don't know this field specifically but if I were trying to do that, I'd start looking into what textbooks and grammars are used by real university courses teaching it. These may be of varying quality, for example if it's a very elaborately reconstructed and specialized language you may be dealing with more grammars than textbooks, since it's simply assumed that you will be learning this from an expert in a classroom environment. Maybe google "Akkadian syllabus"? This is one of the first links and looks really helpful:
http://isaw.nyu.edu/library/blog/getting-started-with-sumerian

But lots of other things come up too:
https://www.academia.edu/6581037/Elementary_Akkadian_Syllabus_for_MA_course_
https://moodle2.brandeis.edu/syllabus/default/171NEJS-200B-1_1484268371.pdf
https://moodle2.brandeis.edu/syllabus/public/1d8def257ad782952d5541ef62f34b61.pdf
etc. From these you might helpfully learn what the magisterial or at least standard textbooks and grammars are, again. Then look into the relative strengths of each.

You're in a long tradition of self-teachers of languages like these. There are too many great stories to list of all the great scholars, whose biographies begin with "He basically just taught himself Akkadian/Sanskrit/etc. in a big library when he was 21 because he was bored," despite being born in eras where they didn't have 500 textbooks to choose from but simply had a big, comprehensive grammar and some actual fucking texts, and they just STARTED. So remember, no matter how much textbooks make you think there is a "right" way to learn something, at the end of the day, there's a grammar text telling you how the grammar works, and there are real texts.

You might look into some of these scholars for inspiration. I just finished reading Language Thought and Reality, a Benjamin Whorf anthology, but the book begins with an introductory bio that talks about how he basically just taught himself Aztec and Mayan for fun in a library, again, just doing the actual work.

>>13280367
My nigga

>>13280343
what is there to read in babylonian?

>>13280419
>I would just say be prepared for a general education in Babylonian/ancient Near Eastern culture and history too
I was considering that and was just starting to read some books concerning the topic, for the whole culutural and historical aspect interests me quite a lot.

>Right off the bat, as I'm sure you know, knowing/being a German will help you tremendously because all the best philological work of the past centuries was pioneered by the Germans and most remains in German
Yeah I already had a few german books in mind which I've heared are excellent.

>I'd start looking into what textbooks and grammars are used by real university courses teaching it.
I've heared they use the german ones that I had already in mind.

>From these you might helpfully learn what the magisterial or at least standard textbooks and grammars are, again. Then look into the relative strengths of each.
Thank you, I will look into them.

>You're in a long tradition of self-teachers of languages like these. There are too many great stories to list of all the great scholars, whose biographies begin with "He basically just taught himself Akkadian/Sanskrit/etc. in a big library when he was 21 because he was bored,"
Yeah, that seems that seems to be the case I suppose.

>at the end of the day, there's a grammar text telling you how the grammar works, and there are real texts.
I will keep that in mind.

>You might look into these scholars for inspiration
Yeah, I will do that.

Thank you for the helpful post.

>>13280498
the epic of gilgamesch, enuma elish and other works of fiction, there is also a bunch non fiction material.

I always wanted to learn persian or middle persian but alas I am low IQ.

>>13280556
I don't see how you couldn't learn it as long as you keep at it. Just don't see the language as something which is far from you and try to see it as a part of you like you (possibly) do for english.

learning an extinct bronze age language doesn't sound like a very casual task. i'd assume you need some graduate level textbooks and several years

>>13280343
just learn Latin bro

cunnyform

>>13280556
Persian is insanely easy to learn. Probably the easiest indo-european language apart from english.

>>13280343
The only real tip for learning any language is : have motivation and actual reasons to learn it. If you have both, then you will eventually reach fluency.

>>13280343
just audit an ancient languages course at a university with professors that study babylonian like cambridge or something. retards like you who need spoonfeeding in that age of the internet are the trolls we don't need

>>13283339
https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/about-us/mesopotamia/mesopotamia-studies

here's some more spoon-feeding for the widdle baby

>>13280367
I just don't understand why, of all languages, you would pick that one.

>>13280349
Why learn any language when everything worthy gets translated into English and all the intelligent people worth knowing also speak English, am I right?

>>13283523
>not knowing that the greatest works of philology are available exclusively in German
Pleb