Ancient languages & literature

[Anonymous No.16957978]

I am fascinated by the idea that ancient literature may contain incredible secrets. Does anyone here study ancient or dead languages? If so, please share your experiences and insights with me.

[Hardgebard No.16958383]

>>16957978
>discovering incredible secrets from the past
Epic post, Morty. Buuuurp.

[Anonymous No.16958409]

I'm working through Lingva Latina by Hans Ørberg to learn Latin, so I can read classical Latin. I'm hoping to read Ovid's Metamorphoses by the end of next year. Even though the book is supposed to teach you through the natural approach of language teaching, I have used outside help when it comes to grammar for chapters I had trouble with (latintutorial on youtube and PDFs from thelatinlibrary.com/ll2/ )

[Anonymous No.16958417]

>>16957978
Ancient documents are more likely to be the receipt of sale for a donkey than anything of great historic significance

[Anonymous No.16958432]

>>16957978
reddit

[Anonymous No.16958539]

it definitely does. no narrative of history or explanation of a time or place is a substitute for the secrets better and better understanding of a text will give.

[Anonymous No.16958640]

>>16958409
Er du mig?

[Anonymous No.16958687]

Also check this Latin to English dictionary out:
https://www.online-latin-dictionary.com/latin-english-dictionary.php
It shows declensions too which is extremely helpful.
>>16958640
Yes, hello.

[Anonymous No.16958716]

>>16957978
>Does anyone here study ancient or dead languages?
Akkadian and Sumerian.

[Anonymous No.16958729]

>>16957978
>only the black man speaks english
fucking anglos kek

[Anonymous No.16958738]

>>16958687
>studying Latin when your mother tongue doesn't have declensions
Why even bother? Your translations will amount to Wilson's Odyssey, if even, and your ability to create text in Latin will be equally as bad.

[Anonymous No.16958786]

>>16958738
I'm not learning Latin to publish translations. I'm learning Latin because I want to.
>Wilson's Odyssey,
I haven't read this translation, so I can't comment on it. What do you think about Lattimore, Fagles and Pope? Should they have bothered, seeing as English was their native language?

[Anonymous No.16958825]

>>16958640
/danlit/ øjeblik

[Anonymous No.16958932]

>>16958716
Seriously? I'd love to be able to read ancient Sumerian cuneiform but I have no idea where to begin. Also, I'm very interested in the Basque language as well.

[Anonymous No.16959108]

>>16958640
>>16958825
hej gutter

[Anonymous No.16959527]

>>16957978
Sanskrit is kinda insane, if not just weird.
Almost every consonant has its breathy counterpart, and there's also a special group of consonants called retroflex which roll your tongue back. It all to me seems unnatural, like the phonology was deliberately attempted to fill all the available possibilities your mouth can make.
If that's not enough, my first reading ever on sandhi scared me, it feels like attempting to learn coding without knowing anything at all, basically when a sound comes in contact with another sound they change in some way, and there are DOZENS of this shit, it's not even syntax yet, it's just how the sounds work with each other. Greek has that gg into ng thing, Latin has k turning to s with certain vowels, Sanskrit has this for I believe every fucking letter.
And the grammar, it has even more cases than Ancient Greek. I believe only Finnish wins against Sanskrit in this.
It all do not actually seem like a natural language to me, it's like someone took an already available language and then keep tinkering with it autistically to make it 'perfect' (thus the name, sanskrit).

[Anonymous No.16959544]

>>16958932
Check this out:
https://mega.nz/folder/x4VG3DRL#lqecF4q2ywojGLE0O8cu4A/folder/0tE2VBjL

[Anonymous No.16959705]

>>16957978
I learned Latin in high school. Got really good at it. Continued it college as a second major. Now I can pick almost any text written in Latin (from any time period) and read it, only occasionally having to look up a word, or stop at a particularly complex sentence.
Interestingly, I'm now hard-right... so there's that. I think they absolute amount of basedness that permeates Roman and Medieval texts can do that to you, because I can't point to a single instance or author that caused it. There wasn't, however, some other cause either. I really think it was Latin.

[Anonymous No.16959725]

>>16959705
>Interestingly, I'm now hard-right... so there's that.
Fuck you. Kill yourself, you absolute fucking faggot. You people are killing the classics.

[Anonymous No.16959732]

>>16959725
seethe more tranny.
We're not the ones who shit out translations like Emily Wilson's

[Anonymous No.16959753]

>>16959527
Sanskrit is indeed not a natural language, it has been created for the higher male class. Maybe you feel more comfortable with Prakrit.

[Anonymous No.16959837]

>>16958738
Retard

>>16957978
>I am fascinated by the idea that ancient literature may contain incredible secrets
It doesn't really. Tens of thousands of people have been personally mulling over all sorts of ancient texts in systematic manner since 19th century. Anything new at this point requires a fair amount of effort and will seem boring to anyone outside the field.
I can sort of find my way around in Old Church Slavonic (sometimes I check the Elisabeth Bible from 1751 while comparing translations), but pretty much all of the writing in the language is Christian religious stuff, downright repulsive for the layman.

[Anonymous No.16959865]

>>16959837
>Christian religious stuff
But that stuff *IS* the incredible secrets OP is talking about.

It's true that everything is pored over by academics, that just means the greatest secrets are the ones hidden in plain sight

>find a secret alchemical recipe hidden in gematria
>publish it, no-one gives a f***
>find a secret reference to Jesus Christ
>publish it, the establishment heaps scorn and derision on you
Gee, I wonder which one is more subversive and threatening to the powers that be!

[Anonymous No.16959879]

>>16957978
>everyone says "hello"
>the fucking italian screams 'SALAMI'
why are we like this wopbros

[Anonymous No.16959880]

>>16959865
>>find a secret reference to Jesus Christ
>>publish it, the establishment heaps scorn and derision on you
I see that you haven't been in much of a touch with Slavic studies/philology.

[Anonymous No.16959898]

>>16959880
I said "publish", not "discuss in your glorified Bible Studies class"

[Anonymous No.16960011]

>>16959898
You're still not very much acquainted with the field.
I guess this is how it feels when feminists bitch about every field being sexist and patriarchal and you try to reason with them.
- Studies are mostly not about discovering this or that cool secret in the text (alchemic recipes or references to Jesus). This isn't Da Vinci's Code.
- Finding a reference to Jesus in an Old Church Slavonic text is kind of like going to the forest and finding a tree. Slavists don't really do the former, just as biologists don't do the latter (unless it's an inordinary case that deserves a slightly different approach from what is typical).
- One of my professors published a whole book on Church Slavonic hagiography, while an another one published a book on hagiographies in general, and gave us hagiographies to read and analyse for a class on medieval literature. The powers that be are trembling at that point, I guess.
- Slavic philology is strongest in Germany and Russia. If you're so hopelessly retarded that you think anyone is bothered by finding a reference to Our Lord and Saviour, you can publish in Russian, so people can not care about the work in Russian instead of in your native language.

[Anonymous No.16960537]

>>16958932
>I'd love to be able to read ancient Sumerian cuneiform but I have no idea where to begin.
Learning Akkadian is very much advised before learning Sumerian - besides, Sumerian is very hard to learn properly outside of an academic context (autodidactism is normally completely feasible in learning a language, which, as I said, isn't exactly the case for Sumerian).

[Anonymous No.16960720]

>>16957978
Chinese is both one of the oldest languages in the world and the most widely spoken.

[Anonymous No.16960862]

>>16960720
>Chinese is both one of the oldest languages in the world and the most widely spoken.
But ancient chinese is quite different from the modern one, I suppose.
Also, what would I read in chinese besides Li Bai?

Is it worth it?

It makes easier learning japanese or are they completely different languages?

[Anonymous No.16960926]

>>16960862
>But ancient chinese is quite different from the modern one, I suppose.
Yeah, like Latin and French, I guess.

>My theory is that most religious people are this way concerning their own religion.
I'd say they're completely different.

[Anonymous No.16961393]

>>16960926
>>My theory is that most religious people are this way concerning their own religion.
>I'd say they're completely different.
?????

[Anonymous No.16963218]

>>16958738
>MUH DECLENSION LISTS
why do mouthbreathers insist on rearing their complete ignorance on language and a number of other topics? why do they talk about cases, conjugations, declensions as if they were the sum of language? read an introductory textbook on linguistics or something, good lord.

you can learn this shit on inpoot alone if you don't pedestal it as something impossibly advanced, especially when latin is a fairly simple language from an indoeuropean perspective.

[Anonymous No.16963238]

>>16959837
>Tens of thousands of people have been personally mulling over all sorts of ancient texts in systematic manner since 19th century. Anything new at this point requires a fair amount of effort and will seem boring to anyone outside the field.
i doubt it precisely because academics are in the own closed world and most often not concerned with drawing from the wider picture or assuming the worldview of the writer of old text. advanced stuff but stuff that misses plenty of other approaches which can be done at the basic level by a layman.

[Anonymous No.16963245]

>why do mouthbreathers insist on rearing their complete ignorance on language and a number of other topics? why do they talk about cases, conjugations, declensions as if they were the sum of language? read an introductory textbook on linguistics or something, good lord.
>you can learn this shit on inpoot alone if you don't pedestal it as something impossibly advanced, especially when latin is a fairly simple language from an indoeuropean perspective.

[Anonymous No.16963251]

>>16959527
american R is retroflex you retard that's why americans can't 'roll' it without changing the tongue position

[Anonymous No.16963271]

why so much animosity in this thread

[Anonymous No.16963274]

>>16959527
>like the phonology was deliberately attempted to fill all the available possibilities your mouth can make.
no that's because the description used for languages is systematic not all 'available possibilities'. don't mistake one as coming before the other.

but yes classical sanskrit is somewhat unnatural like all of these types of languages. well, most contemporary languages are unnatural too. changed and enforced through standard education.

[Anonymous No.16963338]

>>16959527
>I believe only Finnish wins against Sanskrit in this.
MUH CASE COUNT
god you're insufferble. no, there are plenty of languages with more cases than sanskrit. all caucasian and turkic and finnic languages. these languages are also agglutinative rather than fusional, so it is as learning affixes with regular modifications, mostly easier than learning a small number of a highly fusional cases because it's little different to learning it as though they were separate words.

it doesn't mean anything, neither does case count, because these are not the same strains of 'cases' nor is case a linguistic universal. it is essentially just simplified and grammaticalised additional words. many japanese particles are just as grammaticalised, more so than the prepositions and whatnot of modern romance and germanic languages, yet japanese doesn't have case agreement. i.e. full grammaticalisation doesn't have to lead to case agreement of words and ofc the way these 'cases' are used is very different. to speak of cases in general terms, it is only coherent to speak of closely related languages or bringing a clear definition to the table rather than vague analogy to some european languages.

[Anonymous No.16963346]

>>16963271
stop being retarded and read a book or stop posting

[Anonymous No.16963375]

>>16963338
also: 'case' is essentially defined as whether or not whoever wrote the standard grammar of a language decided to name a thing that. usually if it resembles latin cases enough but not always as many things that are nothing like it are also called cases, in languages where the person is way out of their depth.