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/lit/ - Literature

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3754310 No.3754310 [Reply] [Original]

Why haven't you learned Latin and Greek so that you can read the pagan classics and the early church fathers in the original languages, /lit/? As I'm sure you all know, knowledge of these languages is a prerequisite to attaining patrician status.

>> No.3754315

>>3754310
>υπονοώντας οτι δεν ξέρω ελληνικά.

>> No.3754323

1. Not my field, not even close to my field. Don't even personally like the literature all that much, don't care.
2. Also do not care about being a "patrician", whatever the hell that is these days

>> No.3754329

Ah, and also to read sundry writings since the fall of Rome and down to our pathetic abandonment of our heritage in the 18th century. Can't forget about those.

>> No.3754336

>>3754310
do you expect me to read every fucking thing?

>> No.3754345

>>3754310
It takes years of hard work to develop the competency to just pick up and read from anywhere in such a text. Even after all those years, you still won't be able to dispense completely with a dictionary.

It takes like ten years to develop real competency with such an ancient language.

On top of that, all those years won't reward the learner with anything that can be written on a resume; similarly, those years won't yield any benefit to travelling--seeing the world.

>jaded

>> No.3754349

>>3754323
>>3754336
>>3754345
Typical plebeian babble and excuses for ignorance.

>> No.3754360

>>3754345
Someone has lied to you, I'm afraid. Learning to read an ancient language is the same as learning to read a modern language. There is not some mystical veil of impossibility hanging over them.

>> No.3754390

Because there's nothing wrong with English translations.

>> No.3754397
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3754397

>my face when people who read virgil in translation

>> No.3754398

Κόραξ κρέας ἁρπάσας ἐπί τινος δένδρου ἐκάθισεν. Ἀλώπηξ δὲ θεασαμένη αὐτὸν καὶ βουλομένη τοῦ κρέατος περιγενέσθαι στᾶσα ἐπῄνει αὐτὸν ὡς εὐμεγέθη τε καὶ καλόν, λέγουσα καὶ ὡς πρέπει αὐτῷ μάλιστα τῶν ὀρνέων βασιλεύειν, καὶ τοῦτο πάντως ἂν ἐγένετο, εἰ φωνὴν ἔχειν. Ὁ δὲ παραστῆσαι αὐτῇ θέλων ὅτι καὶ φωνὴν ἔχει, ἀποβαλὼν τὸ κρέας μεγάλα ἐκεκράγει. Ἐκείνη δὲ προσδραμοῦσα καὶ τὸ κρέας ἁρπάσασα ἔφη· «Ὦ κόραξ, καὶ φρένας εἰ εἶχες, οὐδὲν ἂν ἐδέησας εἰς τὸ πάντων σε βασιλεῦσαι.»
Πρὸς ἄνδρα ἀνόητον ὁ λόγος εὔκαιρος.

>> No.3754402

OP here. For anyone interested in taking up the mantle of your forefathers rather than wallowing in ignorance, the best textbooks currently available are "Learn to Read Latin" and "Learn to Read Greek" published by Yale. The Latin is one textbook and one workbook, the Greek is two textbooks and two workbooks. The textbooks are large, thorough, and contain numerous readings. The workbooks are likewise voluminous. The series is more expensive than most but it is worth it.

>> No.3754404

>>3754402
How long would a project like that take? Before becoming an effective reader.

>> No.3754408

>>3754402
Also pdf answer keys for the workbooks are available from the publisher upon request.

>> No.3754422

I am a classicist, and I would never recommend anybody bother to do this if they could spend their time learning a modern language instead.

>> No.3754436

>>3754404
Well it of course depends partly upon you, how much time you are willing to put in each day studying, how effective of a learner you are, etc.

If you are a dedicated student I would say a conservative estimate for Latin would be one year, but you will not be reading at a fluent speed when you are done. Greek perhaps longer.

>> No.3754444

>>3754441
Which word is that?

>> No.3754445

>>3754436
One year of Latin would not enable you to happily read a text. Unless you are actually unemployed and do nothing else all day.

>> No.3754441

>>3754349

Please stop using that word.

>> No.3754452

>>3754445
That's more or less what I mean. If you are a busy person and cannot put in a large amount of time it's going to of course take you longer.

>> No.3754457

>>3754452
Also my estimate was for effectively completing the textbook, I should clarify.

>> No.3754473

>>3754402

> For anyone interested in taking up the mantle of your forefathers

>In most cases, however, the chief result of the classical drill work was to imbue the student with a lifelong hatred of classical languages. "The classical men made us hate Latin and Greek" is an altogether typical comment. "A more horrible torture could scarcely be imagined for criminals" is another. "The absurdity and the cruelty of the process are almost equally unimaginable." Andrew D. White remarked that at Yale in the [eighteen]fifties "the majority of the average class" looked on the classical professor "as generally a bore and, as examinations approached, an enemy; they usually sneered at him as a pedant, and frequently made his peculiarities a subject for derision." Charles Francis Adams wrote in his memoirs that the "fancy for Greek" which he brought to Harvard in 1853 was quickly dampened by methods of instruction that "were simply beneath contempt. ...We were not made grammarians, and we were not initiated into a charming literature."

-Professing Literature by Gerald Graff

That's your mantle. You can keep it.

>> No.3754487

>>3754473
Rank anti-intellectualism. I wouldn't expect anything better from modern man.

>> No.3754504

OK being Greek i have a question for you guys.

When I was at school being taught ancient Greek(a lesson most students didn't really like) our teachers would always say: "You should feel ashamed for not wanting to learn your own language while in other countries people are being taught ancient Greek in schools and they love it." Is this true, or your regular teacher bullshit?

>> No.3754507

>>3754487

>from the modern man

He's... quoting people from the period.

>> No.3754508

>>3754360
Both these languages are dead; there are no more native speakers. A language lacking a colloquial aspect is significantly more tedious to learn.

Add to that, the idioms are significantly more alien. English, German, French, Italian etc all evolved together, sometimes convergently; this allows their idioms to have more in common.

I've been reading Greek and Latin for five years. I've been reading Sanskrit for three. Most would term me as having an advanced knowledge of these languages. All I can see are my own limitations.

Contrast this with how, after a year and a half of French, I was reading popular fiction like that of Maurice LeBlanc and also scholarly works like the Indo-European linguistics works of Dumezil.

Someone once said that it takes approximately ten thousand contact hours to master a skill. That's very true in the case of Greek and Latin. Ten thousand hours, for anyone other than a scholar who gets paid to do it, amounts to about ten years.

>> No.3754509

>>3754504
I'm American. We didn't learn anything in school

>> No.3754513

>>3754473
>In most cases, however, the chief result of the mathematics drill work was to imbue the student with a lifelong hatred of mathematics. "The mathematical men made us hate algebra and trigonomey" is an altogether typical comment. "A more horrible torture could scarcely be imagined for criminals" is another. "The absurdity and the cruelty of the process are almost equally unimaginable." Anonymous Retard remarked that at Yale in the [eighteen]fifties "the majority of the average class" looked on the mathematics professor "as generally a bore and, as examinations approached, an enemy; they usually sneered at him as a pedant, and frequently made his peculiarities a subject for derision." Dumbass McGee wrote in his memoirs that the "fancy for math" which he brought to Harvard in 1853 was quickly dampened by methods of instruction that "were simply beneath contempt. ...We were not made mathematicians, and we were not initiated into a charming field.

You can say nonsense like this about anything.

>> No.3754515

>>3754507
He's quoting people from after the large abandonment of classical languages in the 1700s.

>> No.3754526

>>3754513
>You can say nonsense like this about anything.

But why would they? Those are your bullshit forefathers commenting on the study your lot have romanticized beyond recognition. Why discount it?

>> No.3754537

>>3754509
I knew it thanks for confirming

>> No.3754534

>>3754526
Did you even read the complaint? "It was taught in a way I didn't like so it's bad." Why should I take this idiocy seriously? Go ask college students what they think of their math classes and see what many of them say.

>> No.3754533

>>3754515

>abandonment
>they're being taught at Harvard and Yale

Buh?

>> No.3754547

>>3754533
Abandoned from use (Latin) and wider learning.

>> No.3754574

>>3754508
I did not have this much difficulty with it. I'm sorry that you did.

>> No.3754575

>>3754534

Why romanticize a practice that was neither practical (See >>3754547) nor pleasurable?

>> No.3754580

>>3754547

So people in a relatively similar circumstance to you all.

>> No.3754595

>>3754473
>Students complaining about school.

I have never seen that one before!

>> No.3754597
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3754597

I read the Fitzgerald translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey and liked it. Come at me.

>> No.3754605

>>3754580
It's much worse now, but basically yes. Classical languages became something viewed as solely part of the past rather than something important and practical for current learning. We've surely suffered damage from the loss of the common academic language of Latin.

>>3754575
1. I found the process to be painful, but I also enjoyed learning it.

2. What does any pain in the learning process say about the pleasure of possessing the skill? Does a piano player necessarily enjoy doing all of his drills? But once he is able to express himself the skill is pleasurable.

3. I think you're simply taking some complaints about the process used to teach something and then using that to discredit the thing being taught.

>> No.3754620

I'm learning, p-please give it time. Rome wasn't built in a day!

On a side note, a patrician multi-millionaire teacher of mine at college reads Latin text and if you give him a phrase, sentence or word he can tell you it in Latin.
Quite a man, we often sit at the smoking shelter for an hour lunch break or so and solve the worlds problems over a smoke, such as patrician males do.

>Captcha: Pythagoreans hadeogiv
>Pythagoreans
Sounds prestigious, mane.

>> No.3754622

>>3754605

I don't care if you want to learn Latin. What I want to dispel is the bullshit romanticizing of the "classical education". Most students hated it and most didn't even really learn it (at least as far as Greek and Latin are concerned).

>> No.3754630

>>3754620

You guys sound insufferable.

>> No.3754643

>>3754622
I am romanticizing anything, it is the possession of the skill of being able to read classical languages, not the learning process. You are complaining about process of learning, which I've demonstrated to be something separable from the possession of the skill learned. That is not to say that learning ends at some point, but there is a clear difference between the novitiate period of drilling and what comes after. All you have are students complaining about school. It's meaningless.

>> No.3754646

>>3754643
If I am romanticizing anything*

>> No.3754653

>>3754622
> Most students hated it and most didn't even really learn it
>Most students hated it

[citation needed]

>> No.3754659

Guys should I learn Latin to sound like an intellectual?

>> No.3754667

Guys should I spend my days reading fantasy and never seek to better myself or learn interesting things?

>> No.3754675

>>3754667
its the American way

>> No.3754697

>>3754667
>false dichotomy

>> No.3754704

>>3754310
Because I'm a working musician, you ass; neither time nor need to learn two more languages.

>> No.3754711

>>3754653

Uh, I provided one. Professing Literature by Gerald Graff. Chicago University Press.

>> No.3754713

>>3754704
are you a musician or a 'musician'?

>> No.3754726

>>3754697
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

>> No.3754766
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3754766

>>3754704

>> No.3754773

>>3754504
Ancient Greek and Latin used to be taught but a fair few decades ago.
I went to private school (Scotland) and I did Latin, I also had the option of Greek in later years.

>> No.3754793

Because why would I spend all that time just so I could read some shitty old books that are only around today because there was nothing else at the time.

Everyone knows all the stories anyway so it's utterly useless.

>> No.3754821

>>3754793
or that are only around because when the barbarians were tearing the shit out of Europe people thought they were the only ones worth saving?

>> No.3754884

>>3754667
Why would spend all your time reading fantasy if you didn't find it interesting?

>> No.3755402

workinonit.mp3

>> No.3755451

>>3754821
did the barbarians really ruin books, though? that doesn't seem like something barbarians would do.

>> No.3757608
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3757608

I'm sort of learning Latin and Greek concurrently and for some reason I'm finding Greek easier than Latin.

But I'm also trying to brush up on my Spanish and French (may be making a few jaunts to the Continent while I'm in the UK next semester) over the summer. I think I may have too much on my plate.