/lit/ - Literature

Has anyone in these threads ever decided to do something productive like reading the translation instead of wasting 5 years learning some extinct irrelevant language?

>>22654838
>do something productive
>decides to pose a question about a trivial hobby
not even saying you're point doesn't have some validity, but I don't see why anyone like you would care. people have different reasons for learning a dead language, some more earnest than others, but it's mostly a hobby at the end of the day (though some are involved professionally with the dead language(s) they study). what does it matter to you personally?

>>22654838
>do something productive
>decides to pose a question about a trivial hobby
not even saying your point doesn't have any validity, but I don't see why you would care. people have different reasons for learning a dead language, some more earnest than others, but it's mostly just a hobby at the end of the day (though some are involved professionally with the dead language(s) they study). what does it matter to you personally?

>>22654838
I find immense joy reading the new testament in greek

>>22654995
give us translation cucks some of your insights gleaned

>>22655074
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiousion

>>22654838
>He thinks that most stuff has been translated
And beyond that Reading the Iliad in the Greek actually got me to appreciate poetry.

>>22655265
our one shot. wtf was jerome's problem

>>22655402
It's a dis legomenon, so no one knew what it actually meant. Jerome recognized two good options, the traditional "daily" or the etymological "supersubstantial," which were equally likely, so he used one for Matthew and the other for Luke to guarantee that the actual correct answer was somewhere in the gospels.

I just encountered the archaic subjunctive of do, duas, in Plautus
Stumped me for a good five minutes ngl

Alright I fucks with this thread. What ancient languages does everyone know here? I personally took Greek and Latin in Uni, and taught myself Old English. Just finished up a masters thesis on (proto-)indo-european heroism, specifically comparing Achilles and Beowulf, if anyone has anything to say about any of that. Where my fellow comparativists at

Any of you guys ever write poetry or anything in the ancient languages? I've written a couple. This one is a kind of a cento that I wrote about myself for fun. It's a sapphic stanza, using the first line from the poetess, but then the next three are composed by myself in authentic lesbian dialect:

ΩΙΔΗ ΜΕΛΙΚI
φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν
ὂς ἄναξ Μέλιξ κάλαται καὶ ἄνδρων
ἠγέμων. κράτιστος, ἄριστος ὤνηρ,
εὖ μάκαρ ὤνηρ.

Let me know how you guys like it, and I'll post another one I composed in Old English in a second (although it will definitely be less authentic and good lol)

>>22655703
Old English poem about my vocabulary:

Min wordhord wid is mara maððum
þonne beagas bogene gyldede goldum.
Hit is heardra þonne brun bord
micel mece ond grim guþhelm.
Hit behealde ic eall ealdor min
healde hit æt heortan swa swa sunu min.

>>22655679
I know Greek and Classical Chinese. I began a masters in Classical Chinese Philology at a top Chinese university but got fucked over by COVID. I also know Latin and Hebrew but they don't interest me as much. I should get around to making a Classical Chinese guide for this thread.

>>22655778
That's pretty cool. Were you just interested in the philological aspects or were there particular authors that or genres that you wanted to explore in those languages?

>>22655796
Lyric poetry, mostly. I'm also a big reader of Provencal but I don't think that counts as a classical language.

>>22654754
Has anyone tried self-studying a Uni's Classics BA curriculum?
I'm considering reading through Oxford's Honors Mods particularly closely and writing for the older prompts, but idk if that's something more valuable than just reading through it normally.

Has nobody tried to make a good Anki deck for latin/greek?
Also what could be considered classical language besides these two? Classical Chinese has been mentioned, but for instance something like Old Norse?

>>22656782
I made a personal one for Athenaze and Morice's Attic stories. Was kind of a good exercise in of itself. In Italian though.
We've always been quite liberal so as long as it's not a modern language or some obscure ancient language with ~0 literature I guess we accept it. So Old Norse is certainly welcome.

>>22656782
My definition of a classical language only includes Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Classical Chinese. The main criterion is for the language to have played a central role in a living canon (Western, Islamic, Indian, Chinese...) as a language of poetry, philosophy, science and liturgy.

It can be broadened somewhat by removing considerations of time—Egyptian and Sumerian were classical languages in their own right, e.g.—or by lessening some of the other requirements: Hebrew has never been a great language of science, but its study is obviously relevant to /clg/.

It can be broadened further by focusing only on the centrality of a given language in its canon, which would make Old Norse e.g., the language of the Eddas, a classical language.

Lastly, if a language is pivotal to a given poetic tradition but is otherwise secondary to another, it is not a classical language. Hence Old English isn't a classical language because Latin was the language of liturgy, philosophy, and science in Anglo-Saxon society, as well as a major language of poetry. The same logic applies to Old French despite its key role in the tradition of chivalric romance. But a case can probably be made for Persian due to its pre-Islamic history and the split between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

Obviously though, the study of all these languages is relevant to /clg/ because we are actually philologists first and foremost.

>>22656782
So many people misusing Anki here and everywhere. Spaced repetition is most effective when you make your own notes for the same reason that studying for a class from someone else's notes is generally ineffective.
For my part, I tried Anki for awhile and found that it was neither as pleasurable as nor obviously more effective than lots and lots of reading and occasional post-it notes, so I stopped.

>>22656869
As above, I think reading notes are beneficial in their own rights. I'm not sure Anki on top of that justifies the timesink. That said, I am natively multilingual and have been adding more languages to that for my whole life. I'm not sure what works for other anons.

>>22656931
>My definition of a classical language only includes Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Classical Chinese
Now isn't that a little strict? I get that this has become a /lit/ meme, and not without good reason, but Hebrew and Aramaic, just for some spare examples, would have fit into nearly any historical definition of a classical language

>>22656782
Adding to this, because I really do mourn time lost on Anki:
Try messing around with Anki on your phone for a week, and then try using the same time for reading at your current level and taking active notes. See which makes you feel better. That is the method with which you are more likely to persist.

A couple days ago I said that Greek verbs were scary. They are no longer so scary.

>>22657104
That's progress! Congratulations, anon.

>>22657009
n.b my usage of Anki is basically as a quick review before going to bed, not the study or reading in itself

>>22657019
I do agree that Anki should not be overused, but I also think it can be an excellent tool to supplement your studies, especially if the language you're learning uses a different writing system, such as Chinese.
Personally, I use self-made decks for pretty much everything, but I only spend time on it when I can't do anything more efficient or enjoyable. For instance, sitting at work or doing chores, I just whip out my phone and do some reviews.

>>22656931
Way too strict a definition, and definitely biased towards your being able to read classical chinese. A better, and much broader definition, would be that a classical language is any language first written down. Perhaps if one were to be minded more towards orature, then it could be the most important era of stories/poems created and passed down. This would allow every culture to have their own, unique, classical form of language - which they obviously do.

>>22654838
Yes, I edged to anime for 5 hours yesterday

>>22657123
I learned Kanji as a child in Japanese school, so I can't say what would work for adults from direct experience. However, I've noticed that those I've known who have picked up sinographs as adults most successfully have tended to be exactly those people who relied heavily on furigana, interlinear pinyin, interlinear zhuyin fuhao, or short chunked texts of very few characters for a period. This at least is in agreement with my own ideas about language learning, and Victor H Mair's notes thereupon. Here again I'm not convinced that Anki is the obvious best method.

>>22656931
>Hence Old English isn't a classical language
Literally wrote a classics thesis that was heavily focused on Old English? Others have said this but also you don't include some obviously important semitic languages, instead opting for something way outside the Western cannon (Chinese - not a wrong choice either btw but def biased). This position of yours just seems a little untenable; specifically with old English, there was a lot (and much more lost) extant that suggests philosophy, religious studies, and science was being done. Search up Alfred the Great's education reforms, with specific effort being put into translation from Latin into vernacular. You're just plain wrong about Old English not qualifying for a classical language, misinformed probably due to a lack of research and a lot of guesswork.

>>22657288
Here are Victor Mair's notes on learning sinographs, by the way.
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=43981
I remember being in China and flirting with a British business student a bit. She would copy characters incessantly and was conversationally fluent in Mandarin, yet had never read a full page. This state seemed common among gwailo expats. The gwailoa in my department-that is, the philologists-were often exactly those who had previously spent ages gobbling up furigana'd manga or pinyin-annotated manhua.

>ἀπὸ δὲ παρθένοι κόμας
>ἔθεντο σύγγονοι νεκρῶν Σκαμάνδριον
>ἀμφὶ Φρύγιον οἶδμα.

Can anyone help me with the use of "ἀπὸ" here? It has to apply to "κόμας", right? Is it supposed to be something like "the maidens placed themselves away from their hair" to say that they cut their hair off? Or does "ἔθεντο" take "σύγγονοι" as its object (not sure if that's the technically correct way to say it but hopefully you know what I mean), saying they were made sisters of corpses? And then the prepositional phrase in the first line is just a weird idiomatic way of saying they were without their hair, not describing the actual action of cutting it off?

>>22657686
No, the preposition isn't taking an object, because it's actually being used as a prefix for the verb that's undergoing something called tmesis. Komas is the direct object of the full verb apethento, with parthenoi and it's appositive suggonoi nekrwn being the subjects. Amphi is taking both phrygion oidma and skamandrion as it's objects. My translation would look something like this: "and the maidens, the sisters of the dead, put aside their hair into/around the scamander, the phrygian stream."

>>22655703
interesting, I haven't touched any Aeolic myself but fairly comprehensible and I think I get the rhythm of the meter now

>>22652653
For those learning the modern languages I think the best thing is just reading a lot of text with pinyin/zhuyin/furigana. If you're going into Classical Chinese first, I'm not sure, I don't have any experience trying to learn Classical Chinese without already knowing a modern Sinosphere language.
>>22653676
No, modern English for eromenos is uke.
>>22653732
Like, memorize the whole thing word for word?

>>22654838
What about the stuff that hasn't been translated? Which is frankly quite a lot.

>>22655778
What textbook would you recommend to start with (for English speakers)?

All members of the Catholic clergy should be expected to be able to read, write, and converse in Latin. I assumed this was already the case but apparently these niggers just gave up at some point.

>>22656782
I think most of this list should be fine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_language

>>22657271
What do you mean by "any language first written down"?

>>22654838
>has to rely on translators
>can't read anything untranslated
have fun with your Emily Wilson

>>22656782
Anki is useless t b h

>>22658761
What exactly is so bad about Emily Wilson anyway? I'm out of the loop.

>>22658766

>>22658773
Well, their styles are certainly different, but they seem to have basically the same meaning? Or do you think one carries the style of the original better?

>>22658766
>Wy Emily B bad yo? I dunno
>>22658779
>Ayo dey diffa but dey da same, knawmsayin? O you fink sum nigga betta?

>>22658783
?????

>>22658783
This isn't even a good imitation of AAE.

>>22658779
Well yeah she gets the "meaning" across but she's translating poetry, not some scientific treatise. It's obviously dumbed down. And yeah I would say it's less accurate because she removes any nuance from the original i.e for πολύτροπον "man of many ways" (more accurate, πολυ + τροπος literally "many ways/means(ed)") -> "complicated"; "sacked" is more accurate than "wrecked" for ἔπερσεν, she also seems to just remove half of the bit that Lattimore translates as "many were they whose cities he saw whose minds he learned of"
An interlinear would look like:
πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
[and] of many men he saw cities and mind(s) he knew
but she just puts this whole line as "where he went and who he met" which is literally not what it says
I could keep going through every line but you get the idea.

>"BARBARIANS could be here" he thought, "I've never been on this side of the limes germanicus before. There could be BARBARIANS anywhere." The cool wind felt good beneath his lorica. "I HATE BARBARIANS." Sweet dates by way of Thebes revegetated his empty cart, making it plod along even as the cheap posca circulated through his powerful thick veins and washed away his (merited) fear of catamites after dark. "With a horse, you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.

>>22658743
So like any form of a language in its first written era. Like the early anglo saxon period, or the classical Latin/Greek eras. Idk if this is even a great definition but it feels somewhat more intuitive than what chinesebro was saying

>>22659189
But wouldn't that include languages that were first written down in 1985?

>>22659718
Why not? Do they not deserve a classical period? What should bar a language from having a period which is "classic" just because it is young or whatnot?

>>22658734
>should be expected to be able to read, write, and converse in Latin
>I assumed this was already the case
Likely became less the case in the 1700's, but the shift away from Latin took its most drastic jump from 1800 to 1900. It was definitely not a requirement after Vatican II though. Other than Reginald Foster, Basil Gildersleeve was probably the last person who was actually fluent enough in Latin to write an original composition or hold a conversation (without using Romance syntax and English loanwords like modern larpers). I know he wasn't a priest, but just speaking on Latin fluency in general.

>>22659945
I feel like if a language was first written down in 1985 then that form of it may be 'classical' in a few centuries or millennia but isn't now.

>>22655724
I tried reading it out loud, though I'm not sure if I fully understood it and may have made mistakes.
https://voca.ro/1dc5ffMRvCLM

>>22659189
I'm going to assume that chinesebro means me, since it feels like I'm responsible for nearly six out of ten chineseposts in these threads. That post wasn't me, and in fact I was one of the first to criticize it. Obviously there are languages that anyone would recognize as classical other than the big five. The most obvious example is Hebrew.
My definition of a classical language is simply any language with a tradition and/or some institutions of classical philological research. This implies that the language in question should be different enough from anything living as to nearly, if not completely, sever the link of intelligibility to those who haven't studied it. I think this is a fair definition for this threads specifically, since it isn't the business of people in 4chan, be they even academics themselves, to dictate to working philologists which languages are and aren't in their purview. The classics haven't fallen so far (as far as I'm aware) as to start treating, say, East Timor Portuguese as a classical language.

>>22660082
>This implies that the language in question should be different enough from anything living as to nearly, if not completely, sever the link of intelligibility to those who haven't studied it.
And of course I have to add a "usually" here for the case of Hebrew.

For my fellow Classical Chinese anons, I've been thinking about how one would go about representing 平仄 in a translation (or for that matter if one wanted to compose original poem in the style of the Chinese tradition). Ideas I've heard or thought of include:
>syllables ending in vowel or voiced consonant are 平 and ending with a voiceless consonant are 仄
>平仄 are rendered by long and short vowels respectively in stressed syllables (as in phonetically long and short, not the conventional English orthographical concept)
>平 syllables correspond to a trochee in English and 仄 to an iamb or vice versa
What do you think? What about in other languages?

>>22655679
Would you say learning Old English was worth it?

>>22660103
>syllables ending in vowel or voiced consonant are 平 and ending with a voiceless consonant are 仄
Interesting effect but wouldn't register as anything to most English speakers
>平仄 are rendered by long and short vowels respectively in stressed syllables (as in phonetically long and short, not the conventional English orthographical concept)
I too adore Robert Bridges but there's a reason why this is rare (see above)
>平 syllables correspond to a trochee in English and 仄 to an iamb or vice versa
More like it now.
平仄 itself is a reaction to exposure to Indic languages and with them Sanskrit meters. Before that, the Chinese themselves had no system for classification of their own tones. Perversely, then, using our own accentual-syllabic system to nativize it closes a sort of circle.

>>22660303
Ya bro old English is sick as fuck genuinely more beautiful than Greek and Latin imo by far. It's poetry has this listing flow due to the alliterative verse, and what I (...and Gillian overing) like to call interlace/weave structure. Plus it's manly as fuck and has lots of warrior imagery. It's just great and the more you get into the period the more you realize why it captured the mind of guta like Tolkien.

>>22660786
Lilting*

>>22660786
Also guys* holy fuck I can't type tonight lmao

Could we please have different Classical Chinese and Old English threads

>>22661088
Unfortunately, no
/clg/ is already slow as it is and often reaches page 10, even falls off the catalog sometimes.
Plus separating each language into individual threads/generals will attract unwanted attention from tranny jannies and lead to everything getting nuked.
Just have to endure half the thread being filled with ping pong chong bing. fortunately they are easy to ignore/word filter.

>>22661088
Classical Chinese belongs here regardless of your definition of a classical language, though.
Old English is more in a gray zone. I'm all for allowing Old English discussion here because it's interesting and I feel that this general is about philology above all else, but it wouldn't even be in the discussion if not for Anglocentrism.

>>22658718
>If you're going into Classical Chinese first, I'm not sure
I don't know exactly how Victor Mair runs his classes, but I do know they allow all students in with no prior language requirement, get right into texts, and focus on short texts early on. This makes me think that characters can probably be learned in chunks *along with* texts. Not sure though.

>>22661088
Why on earth would you want that?

>>22658819
I think this criticism displays an ignorance of what Wilson's intention is with this translation. We live in a world where Lattimore and Fagles already exist. They are really the gold standard for "accurate" translations into modern English, and there is no sense in trying to improve upon them on that axis. They also only get read by university students and pseuds, because they are no fun at all. Wilson's translation trades technical accuracy for readability at every juncture because the whole point is to make Homer accessible and beautiful to someone who does not give a shit whether Troy got "sacked" or "wrecked." The difference in nuance literally does not matter, because her readership *do not care* about the original on a word-by-word level. They want to read the story of the Odyssey in fluid, modern English verse.

For that purpose, Wilson has done an extremely good job of distilling the roundabout locutions of an ancient writer into straightforward English. She clearly knows what πολύτροπον means. She basically looks at Homer like an editor would and says, "what do you actually mean by that?" The answer "complicated" is a fine one for her purpose. She's not writing for budding scholars of Greek. She's writing for someone who wants to know what the text says, and cut the bullshit. There's nothing wrong with that.

>>22661202
>There's nothing wrong with that.
There's plenty.

>>22661231
NTA but you didn't get the point, then. You're not the intended audience.

me latina amo

>>22660323
Did they have to have formal linguistic acknowledgement of the tones to have tone-based meter? Lots of cultures with no philological tradition have poetic meter based on various phonological features.

>>22661107
>Just have to endure half the thread being filled with ping pong chong bing.
Classical Chinese is a classical language too, fuck off back to /pol/.

>>22661132
>but it wouldn't even be in the discussion if not for Anglocentrism.
Haven't we also had Old Norse discussions?

>>22661164
It would be interesting to learn more about how Classical Chinese and Chinese characters were traditionally taught. A friend once sent me a PDF of a book about that but I never got around to reading it.

>>22661202
Then she should have written it in prose. No one cares about verse who wouldn't prefer other translations. But of course you're being disingenuous and will never admit that a prose version would be more readable and accessible to those who '*do not care* about the original on a word-by-word level' and 'want to know what the text says, and cut the bullshit'. Constraining herself with verse is the 'bullshit'.
>They want to read the story of the Odyssey in fluid, modern English verse.
No one has said this who does not prefer other translations. I doubt that phrase has been uttered in the past 3 decades.
She made her translation for clout, stronk feminism laurels and to polish her resume. It serves no other purpose.
You also seemingly ignore that her translations are now required reading in universities all over the US. They are pushed onto the syllabus by professors of a similar ideological bent.
>they are no fun at all
Retard. You are responsible for the pathetic state of education and literacy. Go watch TV.

>>22661268
I never stated otherwise, and no, think I'll stay here. Cao ni, Wang Bang

>>22661326
>You will not post any of the following outside of /b/:
>Racism

>>22661273
I meant the discussion of what constitutes a classical language.

>>22661363
I'm not sure if I quite follow.

>>22661321
>Then she should have written it in prose.
Pretty sure that's her prerogative. She discusses her reasons for choosing iambic pentameter in the introduction, and her reasons are lucid and borne out by the quality of the work.

>No one has said this
I, me, an actual human with more than a passing interest in Classics, like reading her translations. There, it has now been said. As a work of English verse they stand head and shoulders above any Homeric translation since Pope. They are beautiful in and of themselves. To achieve that effect, she had to make some radical decisions about the way that Homer communicates his message, and how to make that at home in 21st century English.

>She made her translation for clout, stronk feminism laurels and to polish her resume. It serves no other purpose.
I don't at all care for the feminist marketing around the translations, but considering the level of work and thought she clearly put into them, "it serves no other purpose" is patently absurd. In fact, if all she wanted was clout she could have put out a prose translation with exact same marketing.

> You also seemingly ignore that her translations are now required reading in universities all over the US.
I neither know nor care how or why a foreign country's education system abuses a book that is, on its own merits and for its own purpose, very good.

>>22661450
>To achieve that effect, she had to make some radical decisions about the way that Homer communicates his message, and how to make that at home in 21st century English.
This is a general issue with translation. To translate is to transculturate. I've noticed that when fan-translating Japanese stuff there's often a fine line between rephrasing to sound natural in English and outright altering, because sometimes the answer to "how would an English-speaker say this in this context" is "they wouldn't".

>>22661326
>uses pinyin to transcribe modern standard mandarin in classics thread because he’s mad about culture beyond his understanding

WEW, 蠢哉斯人

>>22658773
lmao that's so lazy
>>22658779
First, you're removing most of the artistic value of the work, second the translation is wrong. Removing the actual words just to tell you the meaning (translators own, mind you) makes it pointless. You can't study that at all.

>>22661565
No English translation is "the actual words".

>>22661570
duh but you can at least try to get it as close as possible

>>22661576
What constitutes "as close as possible"? A word-for-word translation often doesn't replicate either the feel of the original (because the original feels natural and a word-for-word translation feels stilted) or the meaning (because if you just translate word-for-word without regard for cultural differences or implications the result is liable to be misunderstood).

>>22661584
The job of a translator is to translate something as close to the original meaning and context as possible. It does not need to be word for word or soley the meaning. You should obviously be trying to aim for both, which Wilson clearly wasn't doing.

>>22661593
Anonymous internet poster knows "the job of a translator" better than published translator, more news at 11

Seriously though, you should at least read the introduction to her Odyssey before you accuse her of not even thinking about what she was doing.

>>22661637
I am allowed to have opinions on things even if I haven't published something myself.

>>22661637
Appeal to authority and plebbit snark
you have made this general worse and will continue to do so
さすが

>>22661637
Using translations is for fags. If you wanna read something, just fucking read it how it's written and if you can't then learn not to be such a fucking illiterate

>>22661202
>making it "accessible"
Lattimore and especially Fagles are already super accessible. By "accessible" you just mean dumbed down. In what way is it beautiful? Seriously, I don't see any reason to defend it. Lattimore is just better in every regard. It's like reading cliff notes Shakespeare vs real Shakespeare.
I'm sure she knows what πολυτροπον means, which makes it even worse. She's supposedly some great scholar but her translation looks like something a first year Greek student would make while stumbling through the lexicon (actually it's probably worse).

>>22660323
Is Classical Chinese worth studying? I know Modern Chinese (both written and spoken Mandarin) but Classical Chinese has always seemed like a bit of a meme to me. Most people read it using modern pronunciation which just feels inauthentic to me, and the texts are so far-removed from my cultural and historical context and written in a way that I have to dedicate my life to Sinology to make sense of them.

At least with Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Arabic, we're pretty sure about what they actually sounded like. There's so much more phonological information missing from Chinese due to the writing system.

>>22661450
Why would she try to make it at home in 21st century English? Homeric Greek was already archaic when Homer was around. Making them talk like 21st century Tumblr users is not accurate to the original in any way.

Classical languages:
>Greek
>Latin
>Sanskrit
>C. Chinese
>Old French
>O. English
>O. Castilian
>O. Norse
>C. Arabic
>Old Church Slavonic
>Swahili
>C. Mayan
>Ottoman Turkish
>Biblical Hebrew
>O. Persian
>Tamil
>Akkadian
>Sumerian
>Egyptian
Any objections/additions?

>>22662622
Add Avestan, Middle Persian, Pali

>>22662622
old occitan

>>22662622
There's no point classifying them here, only Latin, Greek, and maybe Chinese matter. Nobody will ever learn something like Swahili or Akkadian here.

>>22662778
>Nobody will ever learn something like Swahili or Akkadian here
with all due respect, you don't know that. not saying it's likely that someone here will in the near future, but who knows.

>>22662778
There was an Akkadian anon a few months back.

im going to fail my greek test tomorrow guys. i despise JACT

>>22663052
>i despise JACT
why?

>>22663072
i think we're just been moving through it at too quick a pace, not enough time has been given to allow concepts to be drilled. the text is great, but it tends to just slam you with big chunks of grammar in what feels like a slightly arbitary way. really i'm just annoyed with myself for not keeping up a consistent study habit

>>22663052
I wouldn't worry too much. Know plenty of people who did well on tests but wouldn't be able to read a single sentence of Matthew without looking up every other word.

>>22662622
>Swahili
>Oldest document is from the 18th century

>>22663104
Lol @ age bias

>>22663082
>really i'm just annoyed with myself for not keeping up a consistent study habit
well then the best thing you can do is study/review as best as you can now before your test, try your best, and then work on your study habits. if you have the time, perhaps some supplemental reading would do you some good to better impress the grammar in your mind.

>>22662778
>>22662872
>>22662892
> There was an Akkadian anon a few months back.
He's still around, only on /int/ now, because trolls here, like the first Anon I'm replying to, were giving him shit for it. Good job.
Ethiopanon also shows up from time to time.
t. Classical Hebrew learner

>>22663147
Thanks, yeah, I’m going to try to do that. Saying paradigms out loud to myself as I pace up and down my kitchen

>>22661280
Traditionally taught in the West or in China? My understanding is that there was hardly ever a unified tradition in the West outside of Jesuits. Even the well-known early "translators" of Chinese texts into European language were often just rephrasing a Chinese assistant's exegeses.
As for the Chinese educational tradition, 詩云
>漆黑茅柴屋半間,豬窩牛圈浴鍋連,
>牧童八九縱橫坐,天地玄黃喊一年。
I'd like to read that book though. Please post the title if you remember it.

I've never read Emily Wilson and never will. I really don't care. Reading Homer in Greek and reading him in any translation are near totally unrelated activities.

resources for chinese?

>>22663619
In the FAQ. I keep saying I'll make an infographic too. What would you like to see on an infographic?

>>22663632
There's really only three or four serious English textbooks, right? Van Norden is clearly the easiest, but after that it seems whatever.
So maybe an infographic about native texts, by difficulty? Would be useful to have for all languages, not just Chinese, and much harder to come by.
Say, for Latin, start off with De Bello Gallico. Moar? Go to De Bello Civili. Too hard? Take a detour to Eutropius. After easy prose like that you can split off to poetry.

>>22662504
>I know Modern Chinese (both written and spoken Mandarin)
Definitely study Classical then. Your Chinese friends and colleagues all have if they're worth talking to.
>Classical Chinese has always seemed like a bit of a meme to me. Most people read it using modern pronunciation which just feels inauthentic to me
That's because it's a living, well-sustained tradition of the sort that Westerners have by and large thrown away. It's "awkward" and certainly not Mandarin, and that's the point.
>and the texts are so far-removed from my cultural and historical context and written in a way that I have to dedicate my life to Sinology to make sense of them.
Define make sense. This is arguably true of early Greek texts as well. Just as with that tradition, there are texts worth changing your life for in there.

>>22663588
>Reading Homer in Greek and reading him in any translation are near totally unrelated activities.
I don't know all the languages out there, but I would be willing to bet that there's really no language quite like ancient Greek (yes, even modern Greek). that coupled with the nature of poetry makes something like Homer a very singular piece of literature that you can only better appreciate if you have a solid understanding of the language and the techniques employed in the art. I'm not being a snob about it, as for some people there is no, and there shouldn't have to be any, need to go that far with it; but it's a simple fact that a translation of such a work is necessarily doomed to be lacking in some manner or other.

>>22663792
Right. Just spitballing here, but here are some texts I've thought of.
>韓非子/Han Feizi
Chinese Machiavelli but in fact much subtler and a millennium and a half earlier. Often used as a beginner text in Western college courses for its overall excellence and reasonable difficulty (somewhere between Eutropius and Caesar.)
>唐詩三百首 (300 Tang Poems)
Not at all a definitive collection, but contains some of the greatest poetry ever written. Most of it is very easy, and most decently cultured Chinese people will know them all by the age of eight or so. The mnemonic properties of rhymed syllabic verse make it a suitable beginner text. The downside is that beginners will lose a lot of their subtlety, but then so will the Chinese toddlers hearing them recited for the first time.
>孔子論語 and 孟子 (Analects and Mencius)
Confucian Chinese is as distinctive as Christian Greek. Obligatory for any cultural understanding. Just like the Greek NT, very easy on the surface level, and bound up in such a deep textual tradition that reading cover to cover hardly qualifies as scratching the surface. I want to call 朱熹's commentary obligatory, but realistically the majority of Western CC students have (unfortunately) gotten away without reading it.
>古文觀止 (Gu-wen Guan-zhi)
A traditional CC reader in use from the Qing dynasty up until now. Almost entirely prose. A good divide between history and essays. Reading this will make you almost as cultured as a precocious Chinese middle schooler.

>>22663792
For fun, here are the CC texts that Chinese middle schoolers and high schoolers (respectively) are expected to be familiar enough with to reference and quote ex tempore. The website itself is in mutilated simplified characters, but the texts are all easy enough to find elsewhere. Would that we had such a minimum degree of culture in the West.
https://so.gushiwen.cn/wenyan/chuwen.aspx
https://so.gushiwen.cn/wenyan/gaowen.aspx

>>22663917
Also omitting the three character classic and thousand character classic because they are mind-numbing. If any westerner has had success learning anything from them, I'd love to hear about it.

>>22662119
There are several hundred languages with some literature in them. No one can learn to read several hundred languages.

>>22663981
yup, and not knowing every single one of them makes you a fag. you don't wanna be a fag anon, do you?

>>22662504
It's definitely worth learning. Also we know more about how Middle Chinese (which was spoken when a lot of the great poetry was written) sounded than Old Chinese.

>>22663996
It's impossible to learn a language if you're above 25.

>>22662778
At the very least Arabic and Sanskrit are relevant- those put together are the five great classical languages of the world, historically.

>>22664004
that's based on what exactly?

>>22663565
Well, I meant in China, but also in the rest of the Sinosphere. As for the book I can't recall it, but I'll ask my friend at next convenience.

>>22664016
brain plasticity

>>22663914
I agree that you can't fully translate Homer, but I think that's true of all poetry, not anything special about Ancient Greek in particular.

>>22663946
I don't think they're so mind-numbing. Honestly I appreciate the Thousand-Character Classic as a work of composition.

>>22663792
>There's really only three or four serious English textbooks, right?
The differences are vast.
Fuller and Rouzer are suitable for self-study. Van Norden is suitable for those with no background whatsoever. Shadick is amazing for a class setting and has the widest and hardest collection of texts but I know no autodidacts who have used it.
After Fuller, Rouzer, or Shadick, most texts should be at least approachable. After Van Norden, maybe Confucius and Tang poems will be.

>>22663996
Then I don't think there's a single non-fag on Earth, and hasn't been since the days of Sumer when there was only literature in one or two languages anyway.

>>22664044
So do I, but I would despise it if I had to learn a language and writing system from it. And sanzi is a schoolyard rhyme.

>>22664032
It's harder, not impossible. My dad started learning a language in his 60s and while he'll probably never be mistaken for a native, he can at least get by in it.

>>22664032
what about it and where did you learn about it? cus I've heard both positive and negative things about brain plasticity in terms of learning things as an adult.

>>22664049
What about Brandt? It's old, but we're talking about a dead language so it's not like it's changed, and I started learning from it.
>>22664054
Well, I didn't encounter it until I already had some degree of familiarity with the writing system and language, so I might not be the best judge.

>>22664058
Not to be harsh, but I think anon there is repeating a truism. I learned Modern Greek and Egyptian Arabic well after 25 and can get by in both.

>>22664064
Shadick is effectively Brandt with abridged texts and superior notes. Think JACT Reading Greek vs a random collection of low-level Greek texts.

>>22664058
The brain "solidifies" and it becomes harder to form neural pathways. Saying impossible was an exaggeration but learning new things gets incomparably more difficult as you age.

>>22664092
Aren't there ways to increase neuroplasticity?

>>22663565
It's A history of reading in late Imperial Chian, 1000-1800 by Li Yu.

>>22664238
Thanks. I'll check it out.
Generalized rec for the thread is Orality and Literacy by Walter J Ong. I think we'd have fewer misconceptions if we all read it.

I mean I think this thread is clearly a philology thread I think we can survive being a bit broader. It's better at any rate than endless latin textbook debate by latinlets.

>>22664701
Lmfao so true. Also the best Latin textbook for self study or classrooms is Latin and Intensive Course by Moreland and Fleischer. The corresponding Greek textbook (cant remember authors) is also the best I've encountered for ancient Greek.

I'm trying to get started, can you guys recommend me a video on pronunciation for ancient Greek? I don't wanna start wrong

>>22664743
Honestly I did pretty okay with Wheelock and Shelmardine, although actually taking the languages in university really helps.

>>22664993
Honestly I'd probably go for bald man Luke Ranieri who probably has a lot of speaking videos. Otherwise I'd suggest being flexible with pronunciation so that you can adapt it later.

>>22663855
>>22663999
Thank you for the responses. You're probably right. I'm missing out on a lot not studying it (I've studied the basics but that's it).

I'm a little busy with other languages right now but I'll reconsider my stance towards it.

This is not meant to be smarmy and smug, but really why would you learn Latin for the Vulgate? I understand learning Greek or Hebrew (or Aramaic but no one ever mentions that here lel) but why learn a classical language to read a work in translation anyway? I just struggle to understand the thinking behind it.

I finally understand the first chapter of Athenaze,
wagami bros

>>22655265
How did David Bentley Hart translate this?

>>22657300
Studied Mandarin in a Confucius Institute in college and can confirm the lack of reading

The general teaching approach is to prioritize conversation so you're not totally fucked when you get to China. Problem is you basically have to rote learn characters to be able to read anything so you just end up grinding that until you start to hate the language

When I return home to Ireland I think I'd like to study Old Irish

Had anyone studied it here? My (modern) Irish used to be pretty good but I never got into Old

>>22665644
Vulgate inspired everyone in the West for well over a thousand years. It is the founding document of almost all medieval philosophy and theology. It isn't some random translation for a few speakers in some corner of the globe.

>>22665740
To trick to Chinese characters is mnemonics, I like to invent my own peculiar to my liking, makes it easy to memorize, if shit is funny you'll remember

>>22654754
How long would it take for someone starting from nearly zero to be able to read the lives of Plutarch in latin?
I'm debating learning Latin for it or just reading a translation, I doubt I'd be losing much.

>>22665782
And by nearly zero I mean that I speak a Romance language, but have no experience in Latin.

>>22665783
Lol speaking a roman language actually subtracts from Latin skill imo. You'll rely too much on your modern principles and not enough on actually learning Latin. 3 years minimum, four if you're a true retard. If you were starting with no romance language at all, then 2 years min.

T. Former university Latin and Greek t.a. and current Latin tutor (also it's anglosaxonbro what up)

>>22665794
Thanks.
I will be reading a translation.

>>22665798
No prob. You're a bitch for not rising up to the challenge tho lol

>>22665782
>Plutarch
>in Latin

>>22665801
not them, but if you don't have a deeper affinity for the language and/or want to understand the literature as well as possible you're just wasting your time. unless you otherwise have to for whatever reason, the only impetus would be a pretentious one.

>>22665644
> (or Aramaic but no one ever mentions that here lel)
We had one Anon in the past, but the people learning Aramaic are a subset of the people who learned Hebrew to a high level, and we have few Hebrew learners here in the first place.

>>22665836
For some reason people tend to think Plutarch wrote in Latin
But maybe he doesn't, there are translations of him into Latin

>>22665746
so hard they couldn't even figure out whether it was I.E or not

Any major differences to watch out for between Latin and Greek grammar? I've just started LLPSI but I want to just memorize the paradigms and go through the Novum Testamentum alongside my daily Καινή Διαθήκη for extra reading. Anything really big that could trip me up? Or should I more or less be fine figuring it out from Greek?

>>22666253
Just use an actual fucking textbook for Christs sake

have to take four foreign language credits for my psych BA.

already had a couple of semesters in HS of Greek and Latin. Should I just continue in those, or try out Hebrew (I am antisemitic and do not want to, just don't want to be bored imo)

>>22664681
Oh? What do you think are the major misconceptions?

>τοὐεντεῦθεν διετέλει κυνηγετῶν καὶ τοὺς φίλους ἑστιῶν....
loled at the assonance of ἑστιῶν with ἐσθίων

>>22665768
Perhaps, but it's still a translation, still another layer of the telephone game away from the original.

>>22666364
if you don't have any major interest in either, just do Latin. there are 10x as many English cognates and the verb system is a bit simpler. just do what's easier.

>>22665794
I don't think this is true. Knowing Spanish definitely helped me. It was sometimes misleading, but more helpful than not.

>>22666406
Lol have you ever taught? You're using yourself as an example but you could easily be an outlier. In fact you probably aren't an outlier, and are just shit at Latin. But prove me wrong, pls.

>>22666415
I'd rather use Classical Chinese as an example, because I was making okay progress in Latin for a while, I just kinda... fell off it. (I have a problem with that.) But I did know a Sinosphere language before starting CC, so it's a decent comparison.

>>22666253
much of the heavy work in Latin in terms of cases done by the ablative case, no articles, somewhat freer word order imho broadly speaking, easier verb system albeit the subjunctive given the lack of the optative albeit it means less forms to memorize makes things perhaps not as clear as Greek's subjunctive+optative system, idk this is what came to mind

>>22666253
>Anything big that could trip me up?
I genuinely don't mean to be rude, but if you're using a grammar, presumably you will find all of that stuff out. also, I'm of the belief that, if you want to improve your natural ability to understand (i.e. your reading and/or listening ability), you should go into a work or reading from a grammar and first try to make as much sense out of it as you can just with your knowledge. again, if you're reading text from a grammar, presumably they will eventually point out the syntax. it's sometimes better to struggle with the grammar than to just rely on explanations immediately.

>>22666310
I used an "actual textbook" for Greek and barely learned anything until I started reading a ton.
>>22666459
Ty

>>22666753
>I used an "actual textbook"
that being? and how exactly did you use it?

>>22666780
Went through the chapters, translated the exercises, memorized the paradigms, vocabulary and grammar rules as assigned by our teacher. Then in class we were called on to give and explain our translations and we were randomly quizzed on paradigms.

>>22666798
>Went through the chapters
of which textbook?

>>22666812
Greek: An Intensive Course

>>22666753
I mean if you want reference just grab Smyth and just read it.

>>22666815
Guess you're just a retard. Imagine not being able to learn from a book designed to teach. I also guarantee that your "reading" level is super low, given the way you practice. But this is 4chan, so you'll deny it and call me a fag. At least I know Greek and Latin though.

>>22666415
How would it not be helpful? I've only tried reading a little bit of Latin but it was much easier to get started on than Greek for the simple reason that I was familiar with Romance languages and many of the roots were familiar. I'm sure there are some differences that can be deceptive but at least in terms of the grunt work of learning vocab it's a major help.

>>22666969
So you didn't read my prior post. The reason it isn't helpful is because you won't learn Latin, you'll just learn some stupid bastardized version influenced by whatever romance language you know. Fun fact - that exact thing happened in the medieval period. Sometimes the intuitive thing is incorrect - search up the Monty Hall problem if you don't believe me.

>>22666977
My dubs simply confirm I'm right.

>We've returned to getting angry at people for reading in their target language instead of exclusively doing grammar drills for months before even touching a text

>>22666977
I can certainly see why it's worth warning the learner against overconfidence and careless assumptions in this case, I just think you are significantly overreaching by saying it's more of a detriment than an advantage. People who are being taught by a tutor probably often don't really care about the language in the same way as self-taught learners, so they're more liable to take shortcuts. I think this would apply to the middle ages too, when Latin was a functional language for the Church and efficient communication would've been prioritized in many cases over strict correctness. Someone who actually consistently reads Latin texts for pleasure will be fully capable of catching the little differences and switching their brain to that different mode, they just have to be aware of it.

>>22665740
Nor is the Confucius Institute approach incorrect in all cases. Chinese writing is a difficult problem, and functional illiteracy might well be a valid solution for the business student, the tech drone, the expat wastrel. For the philologist, though, a different approach is of course needed.

>>22665778
Mnemonics are very effective for building short term memory and ineffective for building long term memory. You do not want to rely on mnemonics while staring down a page of Chinese text. Just wait til you find out how fast the average Chinese reader goes too: yes, even in Classical.
That's why I'm curious about the Mair approach. Have you tried anything like it?

>>22665801
I am just absolutely disspassionate about languages. The same amount of interest, passion, and enthudiasm the average person might have for the department of agriculture.
I wouldn't say I'm even bad at them.

>>22665737
"Epiousion." "Give us today the epiousion bread."

>>22667122
Okay. That's your choice.

>>22667122
>he's not an agriculture enjoyer
Pathetic. Grim. Filtered.

>>22665794
You're making the assumption that speakers of a Romance language have to rely on their prior language skills to master Latin. As a native French speaker, I can tell you that it's not the case since Latin grammar is extremely alien to us. There's very little to fall back on beyond some cognates that are virtually nowhere to be found in verse because the requirements of metre lead to a more recondite vocabulary. What really helped me when learning Latin is that I already knew three languages. I think knowing more languages is never a disadvantage when it comes to learning another.
Also, your snark about medievals doesn't seem relevant considering they were abiding by a standard, which was certainly somewhat divergent from Golden Age Latin, but wasn't limited to authors from Romance-speaking backgrounds. If you think modern Romance speakers are incapable of conforming to the current standard of Latin composition because they're naturally lazy and will fall back on Romance syntax (ego vado ad mercatum pro emere panem et caseum :D), then I think it says more about you than anything. Don't think I didn't see you implying that the Spanish guy likely can't speak Latin. Smug little redditors like you urgently need an ego check.

>>22667177
Keikaku-tier translation

>>22667050
john defrancis's chinese textbook series, he separates the spoken from the written language with the argument that language is primarily spoken and once you understand that the writing will be easier to understand.

>>22667525
I'm aware of that. Honestly, as a native but reluctant Japanese speaker, and a literate one too, I can have no idea what it's like for adults to learn this writing system from scratch. Not pleasant, I assume, but doable.

>>22665871
I have been doing classical Syriac (a type of Aramaic) on and off since the start of this year. I can sight read most texts now, so I would say I have made really good progress. I still obviously need a dictionary sometimes, and for some phrases and idioms I need to see the translation or something. I don't know any Hebrew at all, can't read the letters or anything like that. But the vocabulary for most Syriac texts is relatively biblical, thus not super diverse. It's been fun and I'm working on translating some stuff right now. Just wanted to brag about my progress a little bit :)

I would really recommend it to anyone who knows some Semitic language, because the hardest part is understanding syntax in them.

Hello to Ugaritanon if you're lurking

>>22667542
> I don't know any Hebrew at all, can't read the letters or anything like that.
Huh, interesting, wouldn't have thought that's common, other than for ethnic Assyrians.
> Just wanted to brag about my progress a little bit :)
That's definitely cool.
Do you happen to know whether there's a good recording of the Peshitta (or substantial portions of it) available somewhere? Best I can find are snippets like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqqq2-5Z6rQ
(I don't know any Syriac yet, so I'm unable to comment on the quality of the guy's pronunciation.)

>>22667431
Lmfao you got so triggered prob cuz you're some romance language retard who doesn't actually Latin and needs to defend his honour on 4chan. Keep the (You)s coming my friend, and while you're at it try reading a textbook for once

>“In order to acquire quickly the Greek vocabulary, I procured a modern Greek translation of Paul et Virginie, and read it through, comparing every word with its equivalent in the French original. When I had finished this task I knew at least one half the Greek words the book contained; and after repeating the operation I knew them all, Of nearly so, without having lost a single minute by being obliged to use a dictionary. Of the Greek grammar I learned only the declensions and the verbs, and never lost my precious time in studying its rules; for as I saw that boys, after being troubled and tormented for eight years and more in school with the tedious rules of grammar, can nevertheless none of them write a letter in ancient Greek without making hundreds of atrocious blunders, I thought the method pursued by the schoolmasters must be altogether wrong. I learned ancient Greek I would have learned a living language.”
Why aren't we doing this?

>>22667571
NTA, but I agree. Your tone is intolerably smug and hints at some bizarre belief that you alone know "real" Latin. What's more is that you make it sound as if choice of textbook and native language mean everything when they are in fact irrelevant in comparison to diligence. You are far too proud of insignificant things and badly need an ego check.

Why do you keep replying to him?
> cuz
should be immediate grounds for banning someone from this board anyway.

>>22667576
Speak for yourself. The exact method described here became second nature to me by the time I was sixteen and already working on my fourth language. What grammartranslation posters often miss in these threads is that their method is nigh useless to experienced language learners.

>>22667585
sez and coz and cuz are Pynchons. I'll take it and I'll take just about any break from the pseudo-William F. Buckley posturing tone of this board. howdey doodey

>>22667581
I obviously don't think that, I wasn't self taught for Latin lol. I took it in uni and won a few awards for it. Not so insignificant, but I suppose folks here think so because most couldn't even get into uni. Anyways, all of you should just pick up a textbook and read. Just try. Try to go cover to cover. I'm sure none of you who are getting all riled up will, but here's to hoping lmao

>>22667615
That's good for you if that's true. Don't assume thingz about others either.

>>22667615
The idea that you're the only person who has ever picked up a textbook ITT is laughable. Just what hole did you crawl out of?

>>22667623
It's not assumption when I've taught and seen it happen for years at the university level. Then it's a pattern. Every single time the kids come and they think they're hot shit because they get 90 on the first two tests and then they end up failing out of the course by mid-year. Like it fucking enrages me is the thing, although it's prob just because I'm directly involved. Online it's a hilarious and true meme. Why do you think everyone is getting so mad?

>>22667662
Your mom's pussy - shits huge, and funny enough I found your old copy of Wheelocks Latin there!

>>22667669
Imagine coming to a philology thread to troll. It's a shame Latin is still a relatively popular discipline, perforce allowing actual room temp IQ retards to pick it up. You really don't see that in the much more civil Greek, Chinese and Hebrew discussions ITT. But hey, keep being an obnoxious redditor.

>>22667691
Lmfao I know tons of ancient and modern languages, and I learned all of them just to shit all over angry plebs like yourself - hmu when you've written a thesis and won tens of thousands of dollars in grants and scholarships home boy. Leck mich am arsch, und 'ne gute Nacht füer dich. Vade cum Deo, (too lazy to type in Greek) su kinaidos

>>22667704
Hope you're having fun.

Why does this particular general ebb and flow so much? This thread is a dumpster fire, completely worthless like the one before it, yet a couple threads ago it was good. This pattern repeats throughout the year. Why such a disparity in quality of threads? I see plenty of other generals on various boards and they don't have this problem. Is it the subjects discussed? The type of people attracted to them? Quality posters get frustrated/bored and move on?

>>22667725
latinists

>>22667725
This could just as well be a statement about the website as a whole.

>>22667725
Because classical language people are super easily triggered, so when a decent troll comes around they all take the bait like piranhas. Btw, read a textbook.

>>22667725
I think the problem is that the discipline is arcane enough to be "prestigious" and attract pretentious narcissists, but no one in their real lives actually cares or acknowledges it beyond the initial "woah that's so crazy that you know that stuff". So they come here to assert dominance and talk about that one time when teacher gave them a shiny gold star (I honestly can't believe he actually posted that and I feel silly for trying to have a civil conversation with him earlier).

Meta-posting is a bad habit too though tbf.

>>22667725
What is particularly bad about this thread compared to the good ones? All you say is vague meta takes but nothing concrete. It's kind of pointless like this.

>>22667838
This guy clearly has read a textbook

So which classical language is the easiest to learn? Or more like, how much time would it take? Something like Latin or Old English shouldn't be too difficult and may take around 1000 hours, while Greek seems to be a much bigger challenge. And Chinese is impossible. But I'm saying this without ever having studied either, I'm just curious what smarter people think.

>>22661202
>They also only get read by university students and pseuds, because they are no fun at all.
You're joking, right?

>>22668080
>I'm just curious what smarter people think
I don't know that I would call myself smart, but I have been learning Latin and Greek for a few years and have read a decent number of authentic works altogether, so take this as you will. that said -
>how much time would it take?
I really don't think we can quantify this; or rather, I haven't seen any detailed research on the subject.
>So which classical language is the easiest to learn?
not trying to be rude, but what does that even mean "to learn" here?
>Something like Latin or Old English shouldn't be too difficult and may take around 1000 hours
based on what? again, just genuinely curious; you could very well know things I don't about this. there are different bodies that have set out to do this, but the FSI created a ranking list of different modern langauges and broke them into different groups depending on how long it took U.S. diplomats to reach a general level of proficiency as defined by the ILR scale (namely speaking and reading level 3). that is better than nothing, but as I understand it, it does not take into account the different language backgrounds of individuals and the additional/different modes of studying they might use - it's just an average. obviously things would become even more complicated when you're dealing with something like a dead language with less literature that can greatly change in vernacular and register from author to author. you could be very comfortable with Ovid, say, and then get to Lucretius and get very frustrated. not to mention that the ease of learning a classical language greatly depends on your linguistic background. there are some people who ask how long it takes because they are more or less impatient - I was on the same boat, so no hate - but they do have a genuine, deeper interest in the language(s) they're concerned about. there are others, however, who are more interested in being able to say that they "know a classical langauge" as want to do as little as possible to achieve that goal. if you're the latter, I would say don't start. if the former, the time shouldn't matter.

>>22668080
Old English is pretty easy, and a lot of fun. Hardest part is vocab, but Barney's Wordhord is a good fix for that.

>>22667281
I meant the bureaucratic organization.
>>22665836
Yeah, I'm fucking dumb.
How long would it take to be able to read the Greek original?

Have you guys read any of those Latin "novellae"? If so, what do you think about them?

It was just a beginner-tier question I phrased poorly. Thanks for the response, anon.
By difficulty, I was referring to the languages' approximate FSI rankings assessed by people who have some experience in studying them. I was going to establish a rough objective for myself, because if I don't have some sort of a goal/deadline, I tend to perpetually procrastinate tasks due to being a lazy retard. However, if I know what something takes, and document my path, I can be quite efficient.
I'm aware that it's not exactly quantifiable, but I do hold a genuine interest in these languages (especially in Latin and Greek, but I could list several more.) But my interest is rather new, as language learning itself is a fairly new hobby of mine I mean, I was 24 when I started learning English and 26 when I started learning Japanese, prior to that I was completely monolingual
So the purpose of my question isn't really to find which one to learn, but which one to start with.

>>22668371
>I was referring to the languages' approximate FSI rankings assessed by people who have some experience in studying them
>I was 24 when I started learning English
what is/are your native language(s)? again, the rate is largely going to depend on your native langauge(s). but also your study methods are important too. I believe I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but one person's "year" could entail 30 minutes a day or 2+ hours a day, and a lot of people imho study with somewhat inefficient methods. so you have to take their answer to the question with a grain of salt. I cannot speak for every native language, but certainly if your native language(s) is/are more related to Latin than Greek (like Englsih and the Romance language are), then with the same methods it is going to be easier for you to learn Latin; and vice versa with Greek. Latin has a slightly simpler verbal system and an additional declension case - though honestly this could be seen as a simplification of sorts, at least in the sense that it's more explicit the role the noun/adjective/participle is playing. all that said, while there are other noticeable differences (like Greek articles), they are fairly similar. unless you are a Greek yourself and/or know modern Greek, Latin will probably be easier for you to learn.
as I said in my last post as well "learning Latin", "learning ancient Greek", "learning Old English" or whatever other language you might be interested in can and does mean different things to different people. what exactly are your goals? do you just want to read some Plato with relatively minimal use of a dictionary? do you want a relatively broad ability in the langauge? in just prose? just poetry? both? I'm sure there are others to pose, but if you want a more quality answer to your question (however lacking in quality/definitiveness the answer has), I would think these are the sort of questions that need to be answered.

>>22668455
>what is/are your native language(s)?
Hungarian, so I'd assume it's rather irrelevant.
I know that my results will largely depend on the methods I choose and the effort I put in, that's why I mentioned the number of hours instead of years. My goal would be something like being able to comfortably read; that's what I'm mainly interested in, but admittedly, it was more of a silly question to understand other anons' perception regarding the difficulty of the languages in general than a serious inquiry.
Anyway, I should've just lurked more.

>>22665794
>Lol speaking a roman language actually subtracts from Latin skill
Cope more, Anglo retard. You will never, ever hope to achieve the proficiency and deep understanding of Latin an educated Romance speaker is able to achieve. Not to mention your laughable attemps at pronouncing it...

>>22668541
>Not to mention your laughable attemps at pronouncing it...
fuck you, spic. watch this: arr-mah wee-room-kway kah-no troy-eye kwee pree-moose ah-bore-ihs

>>22668555
Cope, the Barbarian accent is ingrained in your tongues since ancestral times.

>>22668568
sweaty, I was making fun of the pronunciation. ime most people have a butchered approximation to the reconstructed pronunciation, but it is ultimately a reconstruction at the end of the day. outside of poetry recitation there's no other reason to try that hard with pronunication than to be conceited homosexual.

>>22668587
>outside of poetry recitation there's no other reason to try that hard with pronunication than to be conceited homosexual.
I should qualify by saying that some people are simply interested in pronunciation and so they naturally put more effort into it, and others try hard simply because they think that they should but are not self-centered fags about it.

>>22668587
>he doesn't recite random latin passages in front of the mirror while larping as cicero debating in the senate or as caesar about to conquer gallia

>>22668541
>>22668568
My ancestors raped and destroyed yours, and now no romance speakers can learn Latin. Oh no! :'(

>>22668608
i like to imagine i'm an autistic poor gallic farmer boy with shit latin who has to explain all about his land to a hot callypigian roman noblewoman tourist
>G-gallia est omnis diviso uh divisa in partes tres

>>22669045
for me it's the steatopygous sicilian woman

>>22668555
I thought this was the correct pronunciation

>>22668243
Plutarch doesn't seem that hard to me, having studied for about a year. Only difficulty is he has a large vocabulary.
I'm able to read the Anabasis and Cyropaedia having to look up maybe like 2-4 words per Oxford page and occasionally getting confused by a weird conditional or idiom, so that could give you a measure.

>>22664004
im 26 and for 3 weeks now i started the 15k russian anki deck. Im at 550 cards in and i can already understand the titles of russian songs i used to listen and parse through some basic conversational texts.I bet by doing 20 cards a day in 6 months i'll be able to read any young adult schlock i want. In 2 years maybe even Dost Stop making excuses for yourself anon

>>22670175
You're the mofo in the poetry thread who was saying doth and dost, lmfao I see you homie

>>22670175
No I'm retarded you were referring to Dostoevsky lmao

>>22670402
kek , nope that wasnt me anon

How close are Modern and Biblical Hebrew? Is it like Modern and Ancient GreeK?

>>22670717
they're as close as I am to being a nazi without actually being one. no I will not elaborate.

>>22668555
οὐραίτιγγ ῥικονστράκτεδ προνουνσιἠσιον ἲν Ἒγγλισ ὀρθὀγραφη ὶζ νὸτ ἀζ μάτζ ὂφ ἂν ὧν ἂζ ἲου θίνκ.

>>22670717
Much closer; however the tense system is completely different as Biblical Hebrew lacks tense and instead has a Chinese-like system of perfective and imperfective aspect. In certain Prophets and Talmudic Hebrew, this develops into the Indo European-like tense system we see in the modern language today.
If you're asking whether you can use a Modern Hebrew course to begin to read the Bible, the answer is yes. However, you will need to be aware of this very large grammatical difference.

>>22654838
monolinguals unironically think like this

>>22669537
So it took you a year or so? Thanks.

>>22670777
Trips confirms. This guy reads his textbook.

>>22670857
You'll take longer if you're the same romance language anon asking before. Romance language anons are retarded at /clg/, this is simply a fact

Thinking of playing around with Brandt's Literary Chinese to see if I can manage anything like Pharr formatting, plus interlinear Pinyin. I think Zhuyin looks much better with Chinese text but I'll resist imposing that preference. Worthwhile, potentially?

I no longer want to do this.
Thanks for taking care of me these last few weeks.

wouldn't it be cool if in /clg/ we called each other "quirite" instead of "anon"?

>>22672244
the first question you want to ask is: what declension is 'quiris'?

>>22670825
So Modern Hebrew is if you took a white person and forced them to speak a semitic language and they came up with a pidgin? Man that sounds so fake and gay. No wonder they named their country Israel over Judea.

>>22672252
no idea, brotherman. I just like the word

>>22654838
im fucked in the head
i really like translations
i listen to a British performance of the Oresteia on loop when im out and about

>>22672266
protip: the vocative would not be 'quirite'. I'll leave you to figure out the why

why do we use the lower case if it did not exist at the time
the upper case is more legible especially with all these shitty small print blotched up editions
>nb4 uhhhh but they did not have spaces between words either!!!! or punctuation!!!

>>22672292
just a guess, but we're not Romans, so lower case/a mix of the two is more natural to read for us.

>>22672284
well, since I have not studied Latin, I couldn't figure out this puzzle by myself. I thus put my trust in this declension chart that I have found.

We should call ourselves Retiarii instead because that's all you fuckers are

>>22672323
>that nigga who brings a trident and a net to conquer Carthage

>>22670882
Fuck you.

>>22672522
Lol you can get mad or you can get busy reading a good textbook. Or you can stay a retarded romance anon. Illa vis in manibus tuis est.

>>22672292
read a book on Latin Palaeography
Short story - developments in scripts tend to stem from cursive

anonus rogabit unde suspicer eum virum mollem.
una lavamur: aspicit nihil sursum,
sed spectat oculis devorantibus draucos
nec otiosis mentulas videt labris.

>>22673019
You know that anon is short for anonymous, which can more accurately be rendered into Latin as anonymus, right? Anonus sounds retarded, like you

>>22668336
I read pugio bruti and I feel like it was a waste of time. Graded readers about something relevant to the literature you plan to read, like mythology or history, are better imo

>>22673273
>Anonus sounds retarded
Since he was talking about you Anonus sounds adequate.

>>22672254
Why on earth would they call it Judea? It’s an idealistic attempt at returning to a semi-mythical golden age, not to an era of fragmentation and gradual decline.

>>22673473
>Duh, my poor latinitas is fine because really it's just an additional insult to some guy on 4chan!
>NO IM NOT STUPID YOU ARE!! :(

>>22673794
Israel and Judea were never one state. Israel was always pagan and worshipped Canaanite Gods, after they got btfo'd by
https://youtu.be/YgiyWGyJcIc
Judea took in Israelite refugees and made up stories saying they wuz israeli kangs because it's in the nature of the Jew to be prefidious and lie through their teeth.

>>22673852
Well, the implication of the post was that they did it out of mere historical ignorance. Obviously they weren’t going to backtrack on their entire mythical pseudo-history right at their moment of triumph.

Can someone give me a QRD on the Greek Alexander Romance? Where can I find a copy? Seems to be a majorly influential work but I can't find any edition.

>>22670857
yes about a year. Just make sure you're dedicated and spend like 1/2 hour (ideally 1-2 hours) minimum every day on it.

>>22673946
>I'm gonna learn a language by practicing for a half an hour a day!
>I don't need to learn grammar first, I'll just pretend to read and pat myself on the back after!
>Time to go brag on 4chin about my "progress!"
This is why none of you have made it in higher education. None of you will ever earn any kind of funding. None of you will every know Greek, Latin, or any other /clg/. Especially romancebros lmfao - keep hating though, I love the (You)s

>>22673981
I'm not the romance guy and I did learn grammar. And I said 30 mins MINIMUM, i.e if you have a really busy day. Ideally you should spend at least 1-2 hours. At least respond to the right person if you're trying to annoy people.

>>22673998
>G-golly, my day is so busy! I'll just "study" for a half hour.
Wake up early, work out, and study. Get home from work, study, play vidya, and sleep at a good time. Simple as - if you can't, kys and don't shit up my classical languages

>>22674020
>he works
if you aren't living the σχολαῖος life you're ngmi

>>22655679
>Just finished up a masters thesis on (proto-)indo-european heroism, specifically comparing Achilles and Beowulf, if anyone has anything to say about any of that
no doubt it will be retarded slop like all stuff on the supposed fictional indo-european mythology. maybe try asking yourself why they had a smithing god or why at the time the story of achilles was sung, odin and thor were not worshiped in northern europe

>>22674597
Yet you can only study for half an hour?

>>22674620
So I found the south Indian who seethes at the indo-aryan invasion theory

>>22674888
And fucking trips confirms God damn the oracle is with me

>>22674883
I study at least two hours every day, just giving advice because I know not everyone is so fortunate

>>22674916
If you're living the scholaeus life and only studying 2 hours a day, you're ngmi

>>22667530
Have you studied kanbun? Would you recommend it for those who have a decent grasp of Japanese but are not native speakers or would say they should just learn Classical Chinese directly?

>>22667576
Some people are. I also have a friend who used to learn languages by just diving into real text with a dictionary and grammar at hand, but now he's refined his methods a little. (He's also already highly multilingual.)

Why do Latin types shit up the thread every time? Why does everyone else just get along and discuss languages? Is it that Latin gets all the smart private school types?

>>22667704
Wouldn't it be kinaide, because it's vocative?

>>22674958
Actually ya, ty man. You clearly read the textbook.

>>22668541
Do most Romance speakers pronounce it that much better? The Romance languages also have pretty different phonology than Classical Latin.

>>22674956
imperiose mindset

>>22674956
>Why are all these people on 4chan such retards??
>I'm certainly not a retard. I'm a smart guy who just wants everyone to get along on 4chan!

>>22668587
I think there's something to be said for pronouncing it in its own phonology in order to give it more of a mental separation from other languages.

>>22669348
It's the closest approximation in English phonology of the correct pronunciation, which isn't quite the same thing.

>>22671483
What's Pharr formatting?

>>22674956
I suspect it's just a single poster who keeps derailing the thread, which would explain why sometimes the thread is fine and sometimes it is a dumpster fire.
Naturally, trolling works best when posting about the language that most people in this thread are learning.
Not that I'm not disappointed that people keep responding to him.

>>22675000
and trips confirms

>>22672254
To my understanding, many of the changes were already underway by the time Hebrew died out as a native language, though some were of course from the influence of the first generation of revivers' native languages.

>>22673936
To my understanding it's not really a single text, there's a bunch of Alexander Romances.

>>22674999
Handheld texts.

>>22673463
Can you recommend one?

>>22660077
>https://voca.ro/1dc5ffMRvCLM
Not sure if troll or not, but I'll treat it like it isn't since quad dubs. Basically, it was a good effort but you were reading it a bit too much like modern English. You clearly have started to grasp the different pronunciation of some letters (like c in ic) but you need to work on vowels and making sure to pronounce EVERY letter written. That means pronouncing the w in "swa" and not just retaining the modern English pronunciation "so." Good effort, keep at it, and if you need book reccs I'd go for Mitchell and Robinson's OE Guide along with A Concise Anglo-Saxon dictionary and Barney's wordhord

>>22660077
actually upon second listen you fucked up the pronunciation of "ic" and just said "I." You need a fair deal of work.

>>22675182
>>22675188
>Basically, it was a good effort but you were reading it a bit too much like modern English.
I'm doing that on purpose. I prefer to read Old English in modern English pronunciation, much as the Chinese read Classical Chinese in modern Chinese pronunciation. For example, at the time Confucius lived, the phrase
>學而時習之
would have been pronounced something like
>*m-kˤruk nə [d]ə s-Gʷəp tə
but a speaker of standard Chinese today would read it as
>xué ér shí xí zhī
Plenty of other languages' speakers also take the same approach with older stages of their own language, and in English we regularly extend it as far back as Shakespeare and sometimes Chaucer; why not extend it further?

>>22675205
Because you're just misreading at that point. The reason why chinese people and greek people can tend to get away with that is because of (I'm assuming for chinese) the relative lack of change in orthography and spelling between ancient and modern languages. Even italians speaking latin out loud can get away with this to a certain extent, although ecclesiastical pronunciation isn't my personal fave. But this is just wrong, really wrong, because the orthographic conventions and the pronunciation are so radically different. Like you're omitting too much imo. But you do whatever you need to get into Anglo-Saxon, so long as you actually care about stuff like grammar and good study habits, because we need more dedicated and intelligent people who want to actually learn in this field.

>>22675225
i don't know if this post explains my distaste very well but I hope so lol

>>22675225
>Because you're just misreading at that point.
That would imply I'm doing it out of ignorance. I'm doing this very intentionally and for well-considered reasons. I find it very hard to make a reconstructed pronunciation feel at all natural, frankly.
>The reason why chinese people and greek people can tend to get away with that is because of (I'm assuming for chinese) the relative lack of change in orthography and spelling between ancient and modern languages.
Even aside from the modern character simplifications, Confucius was from a time when not only did the shapes of the character components look different, but the character compositions hadn't been standardized either, so many of the characters would have been different in the original manuscripts Confucius' disciples wrote down, even if you give the graphemes their modern shapes. The text I typed is an orthographic modernization; the character forms now used in Hong Kong and Taiwan are more or less those the Qin standardized, but Confucius didn't know them. Plus, hwa saegs ic don't want to write Modern Aenglisc in Eald Aenglisc basod orthography?
>But this is just wrong, really wrong, because the orthographic conventions and the pronunciation are so radically different.
Orthographic conventions are, well, conventional. There is no objective right or wrong. I want to start my own convention.

>>22675258
NTA but the Greek and Chinese traditions are alive and dominated by the past. The latter can even boast of being effectively unbroken. The same just isn't true of English: Homer and Confucius both cast a larger shadow over Anglophone life than Beowulf.

>>22675311
Didn't finish the thought, but it's clear enough. Greeks and Chinese can indeed get away with what we can't.

NOVUM
>>22675327
>>22675327
>>22675327