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Does Latin make you clever? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6072 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 25 of 42 21 February 2009 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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People all the time use phrases whose origins they don't know. I suppose it is a case of whether you take the world for granted or not.
Someone I find interesting, William Tyndale, lived in a day when the Latin version of the Bible was taken for granted. Tyndale, an early Protestant and quite a considerable linguist, devoted his later life to translating it into English and a lot of his translation has entered the language, since it strongly influenced the King James Bible. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6072 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 26 of 42 21 February 2009 at 12:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That is indeed Shakespeare. He may have based the speech on Plutarch's account of events, but Plutarch wrote in Greek. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Olympia Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5781 days ago 195 posts - 244 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Old English, French | Message 27 of 42 21 February 2009 at 2:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I would say that anyone who tells you (or attempts to demonstrate to you) that he or she knows Latin probably
doesn't know it as well as he or she thinks. Most of the people I've found who actually know a fair bit of Latin are pretty modest about it. I can't count the number of times that I've heard someone misuse a Latin phrase. Unfortunately most people don't notice the mistake, but it's really embarrassing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| jbbar Senior Member Belgium Joined 5600 days ago 192 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English | Message 28 of 42 21 February 2009 at 3:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
No, but there's a good chance it will make you delusional. I've seen plenty of these people who've learned Latin and Greek in school and I notice they tend to THINK they are more clever than others. In reality they're not any more intelligent, well-informed or smarter than the Average Joe. On the whole they tend have a large presence among high-educated idiots who live in fancy ivory towers and just love to whine about the civilization that thanks its existence to a blend of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Keeping yourself well-informed and learning to think for yourself willl make you clever. But what really makes you a clever person is sound morals and principles. Edited by jbbar on 21 February 2009 at 3:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6072 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 29 of 42 21 February 2009 at 10:00am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In Withnail & I, a British film made in 1986, Uncle Monty and his nephew Withnail exchange comments in Latin at one point. It is little more than a sign that they both went to public school. The third person in the scene, Marwood, probably didn't as he does not seem to realise what they are saying.
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| krog Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5849 days ago 146 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Latin | Message 30 of 42 21 February 2009 at 10:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It looks like I might be suggesting that Shakespeare stole some of his creativity by just very literally translating things out of Latin. The last thing I'd want to do is insult the Great Bard. But he did go to one of those schools all filled with dark wooden furnishings, where you probably got caned pretty bad if you messed your Latin conjugations up. Didn't Shakespeare have (allegedly) 'little Latin, and less Greek'? I don't think he knew much Greek. What languages are in the plays? There's a book by David Crystal precisely about this, 'Shakespeare's Words', but I don't have it to hand. Quite a bit of French, some Spanish and Italian and a little bit of Latin. Could Shakespeare actually speak French? There must be a page at least of French dialogue in Henry V. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| krog Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5849 days ago 146 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Latin | Message 31 of 42 21 February 2009 at 10:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Wouldn't that just make you a decent person? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6072 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 32 of 42 21 February 2009 at 10:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That was Ben Jonson's comment on him in an obituary poem. Jonson himself was very erudite. Someone who claimed to have known Shakespeare said later in the 17th century that Shakespeare knew Latin quite well and had been a schoolmaster before going to London. There is an entire scene in Henry V in French. Shakespeare lodged with a family of French Protestant refugees for a while, and may have learned French from them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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