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/lit/ - Literature

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23225406 No.23225406 [Reply] [Original]

If the ancient classics are so important why are they written in dead languages?

>> No.23225411

>>23225406
Damn...

>> No.23225413

>>23225406
Correct. They aren’t Western, so stop claiming them.

>> No.23225430

>>23225406
convince to me learn latin, bros. i need language credits for my degree so i'd like to learn french but an online college course is hard to find and my school only offers latin. i dont care because its a dead language, i want to learn french so i can live and work in france.

>> No.23225432

notice how the bible is mostly written in hebrew, a living language of the great nation of israel. this is how you know you should embrace jud... i mean christianity, haha

>> No.23225433

>>23225430
Latin sounds cooler than French.
It isn't primarily spoken by black people.
Everyone with an IQ above 90 knew it until like 1900.
Better authors.
If you get really good at Latin, French will be super easy anyway.
Quoting French is pseud but quoting Latin is based and patrician.

>> No.23225449

>>23225406
This really made me think...

>> No.23225457

>>23225406
ayo wtf? das crazy bro...

>> No.23225460

>>23225433
This is true, except the better authors thing.

>> No.23225464

>>23225406
The importance they have superceded the people who recorded them.

>> No.23226291

>>23225406
Because they were living languages at the time.

>> No.23226509
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23226509

certe mortuae, inde vero immortales factae

>> No.23226611

>>23225406
The modern Greek government wanted to adopt either Ancient Greek or Koine as the written standard, but opted for Demotic Greek, because they thought there's zero prudence in it. Only the French are autistic enough to preserve Medieval spelling with none of the phonetics.

>> No.23226642

>>23226611
>Only the French are autistic enough to preserve Medieval spelling with none of the phonetics.
Don't forget the English.

>> No.23226662

>>23226642
English is basically a creole, not the same thing.

>> No.23226674

>>23226662
The English creole hypothesis is decidedly fringe.

>> No.23226722

>>23226642
English actually keeps many spelling French changed, like “forest” instead of the modern French “forêt”

>> No.23226729

>>23226722
Right but I mean things like "knife" or "thorough" that reflect how it was spelled 600 years ago.

>> No.23226732

>>23226729
*reflect how it was pronounced, oops

>> No.23226860

>>23226674
The English spelling doesn’t even try when it comes to loanwords. Romance languages have barely any, so imo German is a good comparison. German almost always adopts native phonetics to loanwords. So “abstraction” in German becomes “Abstraktion” and so on. English is a creole in that regard because it doesn’t even try. A French loanword? French spelling. Native Germnanic word? Germanic spelling.

>> No.23226893

>>23225430
Non-meme answer: Even if you're not Christian, there's a TON of Latin patristics work that's still untranslated. I have it on good authority that, if you know Latin, and are willing to begin translating some of these works, there are academic presses waiting to publish you. There are Latinists and Grecists in the last 2 decades who've built entire careers by translating the works of lesser-known saints.

>> No.23226910

>>23225406
>>>/his/

>> No.23227796

>>23226893
Do you have any book recommendations? Is there anything else I should know before starting?

>> No.23228071

>>23225406
If this thread is so important why was it posted by a faggot?

>> No.23228593

>>23227796
Assuming Latin, the Biblia Sacra Vulgata; then general "histories" of the early Latin Church, probably up to Jerome and Augustine, to give you historical and theological context; and from there, look into whatever work you're translating, learn about the saint, and read about his time in Church history and his theological influences (probably Augustine and/or Origen desu). Biblical commentaries are probably the most in need of translation right now, so you'd just pick the biblical book using a modern translation (like the RSV) and follow along with the commentary. I'd recommend looking at this video:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3ZBJVUWGfY
Around the 31:00 mark, the speaker asks for those with knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Syriac to reach out to an email (which is given in the video at that point) and he'll recommend works you can go for, and from there, can hook you up with the publishers.

>> No.23229413

>>23226860
>The English spelling doesn’t even try when it comes to loanwords.
What's that have to do with it? We were talking about the English language, not its orthography. English would still be English if you wrote it in a completely different orthography.

>> No.23229715

>>23225406
Because languages die. The better question is "why would anyone bother to translate them into living languages if they weren't great?"

>> No.23229733

>>23229715
Though in the case of Latin and Greek they didn't exactly die, they just evolved into other languages.

>> No.23229748

Because the classics was and is more important than the languages that they were written in.

>> No.23230214

It's a good question though. If they were so great then our language would have evolved to fit them and wouldn't have diverged away from it. Why would anyone ever let language diverge so far away from these classical texts that are so perfect and great and holy? The second a generation starts to be unable to understand them there should be huge pushback to reeducation the populace to revert the langauge back into the language of these great works.
But that didn't happen, collectively, it was decided that understanding these works was not a priority, not worth keeping.

>> No.23230365

>>23229748
except that every western author up to Eliot says something to the effect that one who has only read the classics in translation cannot be said to have read them. were they just being snobby?

>> No.23230404

>>23230365
Any translation doesn't really fully capture the original.

>> No.23230409

>>23230214
>Why would anyone ever let language diverge so far away from these classical texts that are so perfect and great and holy?
It's not a matter of "let". As Samuel Johnson put it, to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.