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Language brought back to life | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 27 09 December 2011 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is clear that the Neo-Latinists (those who want to use Latin as an active language and not just to read old texts) already have gained much from the electronic media and from easier travel opporetunities, and I don't say that they do a bad job. But they might still benefit from looking at the systems used by Esperantists to see how a parallel group with similar status tackles recruitment etc.
However there is one big difference between the two communities. For sound historical reasons the Esperantists don't have anything like the historical perspective of the Latinists. The point is however that this historical perspective also is a liability insofar that those who just want to keep Latin "artificially, hermetically sealed to not change as the linguistic environment changes as it does", and who have dropped any ambitions of using Latin actively. My point is that the Neolatinists in fact have more in common with the mentality of the Esperantists than they have with the purely passive learners of Latin - or with those who only want Latin back as a liturgical language. --- Problem: we talk a lot about Latin because there actually is a movement to revitalize it. But the groups that want to revitalize other extinct or moribund languages have to face similar problems. For instance Ancient Greek in its different forms might be a candidate, although I'm not tempted right now. My studies of Low German have also been hampered by a lack of active comunities with activities on the internet - it is not accidental that the 'night op Platt' which I once saw on NDR was dominated by programs about peat diggers and poor farmers far from any town, and an image like that that isn't attractive for new learners. I have noticed that there are some very good sites on the internet that care for Irish, including the speech synthethizer at abair.ie, and the wide gamut of language versions of Wikipedia is also something that can inspire modern learners. The main problem for Modern spoken/written Latin now is its black school/sacrosant image, and to make a case for active use of Neolatin you need to point out that Latin doesn't have to be dusty.
Actually Latin didn't die - it just became a zombie. Edited by Iversen on 09 December 2011 at 2:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4583 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 18 of 27 09 December 2011 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4714 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 19 of 27 09 December 2011 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree completely, and I think Neo-Latinists will slowly catch onto this. Latin has this sacrosanct image that makes people distance themselves greatly, and those who 'learned' it in school are going to suffer from shellshock from that hell forever, and the mindset that Latin is a hobby for stuffy pedants will continue as long as the paltry Latin education that does exist is nothing more than Grammarfied; An Inquiry on how to make a rich, vibrant and enduring language into boring schlop. Again, Just look at this exceedingly great person; http://www.youtube.com/user/evan1965 He will single handedly teach Latin to a new generation to those who want it, in a manner reminiscent of teaching a language rather than a math problem with words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stephen7878 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4592 days ago 34 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Greek, Italian | Message 20 of 27 19 December 2011 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I might be the only one on this forum who disagrees with most of you all when it comes to revitalizing a dead language. Don't get me wrong I am a huge history buff and even went out of my way to get a Social Sciences minor by taking Roman and Greek Civilization classes at my university, and not to mention learning Italian and Greek with the intention of visiting these countries soon, and I owe atleast a small part of my hispanic heritage to Rome (and a big part linguistically), but I just don't see the need to bring it back right now.
Every major change has to be brought about because there is a need to do so, which is why I don't see the revitalization of Hebrew as a comparison to bringing back Latin because atleast in that situation the language was something that was common between most Jews when Israel was formed. And I dont think its fair to bash all the couch-potatoes and Justin Beiber fans (atleast for this reason), because for the common person, why learn another language just for the sake of it when your's works perfectly well? Not everybody finds learning languages interesting. I'm sure people on golfing forums are bashing people like me right now because I think golf is dull. So in short, I don't think Latin ever will or should be brought back as a living language (with native speakers) because the need is simply not there. It grew up and changed and instead of being the mother who doesn't want to let her child leave the nest, we need to embrace it and understand that languages, along with everthing else about us is fluid and moves only in ONE direction, and going against it is like trying to hold back a river with your bare hands. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6470 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 21 of 27 20 December 2011 at 12:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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Bah! I don’t think anyone is implying that a dead language should be resurrected upon people by force; I see it as
rather something evangelistic mission (in the non religious sense of the words) — Latin was used in academia, diplomatic correspondence and for the greater part of Western European religion. Thousands of people have spoken, albeit not native, Latin, written in Latin, being taught in Latin, taught in Latin — taking notes in Latin! The museum about my home university, the University of Uppsala, has a notebook from one of it’s pupils from 1477 where there are notes in Latin, not a single Swedish word upon that face, and some odd cartoonish picture of a human (perhaps it was the notes from a lecture in medicine?). People who want to revitalise Latin shan’t be told that it shan’t be done: who are you to tell people that we shall let centuries of knowledge, culture and expressions of the minds of our ancestors shall be thrown into the abyss? The abyss, by the way, is a cool word speaking of the dead, being a word that has traveled for at least 7000 years. It originates from the word Abzu, the name of the ocean of freshwater beneath the surface of earth, passed on through Akkadian, into Old Persian, and with Alexandre the Great into Greek, from Greek to Latin, and from Latin to us. As for children, I can se worse things be done to them than teaching them Latin, mind you, many countries in the world hold corporal punishment for children legal - as opposed to what it really is, assault. Some people neglect to teach their children their native language, in Sweden Saami is threatened due to that (and to harmful politics during the pre-war era) and the native languages of South America seem to submit to the same faith. Is there some law telling me that I cannot both embrace modern French and be a part of a Living Latin community? And as far as I’m concerned, no, and indeedly so, everything is not, absolutely not, going in one mere direction; oh were the world so simple — black or white! Humanity, or maybe rather society, has multiple times — you should be aware your studying ancient Mediterranean civilisations, the sometimes we take one step forward, two steps backwards, and then perhaps three to the left. Rome went from kingdom to «democracy» to dictatorship. Magnificent and advanced cultures were scattered and torn apart during the bronze age collapse for yet by us unknown reasons. However: there’s a lot to read about the time before. Not all of it has yet been read. The corpus of cuneiform text is vast, vaster and by all means huge. It’s enormous. Shall we let this just disappear, let the clay tablets dissolve into dust blown away by the winds caused by the chase to the future? Shall these old literary tradition only be stored in libraries as rather mathematical-equation-looking only people which Asperger’s dare to touch? We have always, humanity that is, had an urge to preserve, to understand and to excavate the past. Assurbannipal boasted that he himself had read and interpreted inscriptions from before the great flood — he could read Sumerian, a language that by his time had been dead for more than thousand years, and the king of the Neo- Babylonian empire had archaeology as a hobby himself and went out in Mesopotamia issuing excavations of old previously habited sites. His findings were curated by his daughter, the high priestess of the god Sin, in a museum built in her abode: a complex that constituted her home, a temple for the god Ningal, altars for deceased kings and priestesses, a school for women and a museum. That school, by the way, taught the priestesses-to-be Sumerian, as well as Akkadian. We could go forward, we could ditch the past — we could even ditch languages other than English, the lingua franca of today: why bother with other languages? Were we to embrace the future, why not just choose five languages and kill the rest — isn’t it inevitable anyway? Ana minnum eli lišānim Akkadim tanadî? Lišānum gitmal! Šumma lišānum Akkadum idakka, ša ūl damaqu. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stephen7878 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4592 days ago 34 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Greek, Italian | Message 22 of 27 20 December 2011 at 1:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think you completely misunderstood what I said. I am not against preserving our past, in fact far from it, I too would like to one day tackly Latin and Ancient Greek to truly appreciate literature and records in the language in which it was meant to be enjoyed in, but I stand firm by my argument that to re-introduce it as modern day native language is just not necessary at the moment and thus wont happen (I'll be willing to put money on that if anybody wants to take that up).
That being said, I completely agree that students should have an understanding of their past and be given an education that includes the classics, but if your familiar with the american education system then you should know that we have WAY bigger hurdles to tackle at the present time. Edited by Stephen7878 on 20 December 2011 at 1:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6470 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 23 of 27 20 December 2011 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Were I not gay I’d definitely have children and teach them Latin whilst young, in fact, it has very often crossed my mind. However, I’ve heard no one suggest that a resurrection of a dead language should come from above, i.e. governmental intervention; no one here would like to be forced to learn a language that is not of their choice. Using a language, even if it’s just a mere hobby and just for fun, will strengthen one’s ability to understand it. ʾTis sad that scholars now day only have an interest in the old tongues passively, possibly with a large grammar book and an even larger dictionary to be used for every other word or sentence. And, as stated above, that there aren’t anyone arguing for people, children, be forcefully taught a dead language but rather getting people engaged and interested in it makes your counter argument regarding the educational system of the USA (America is two entire continents…). Most countries have struggles with education, USA are certainly not alone and in Sweden it was one of the more important parts during the latest election. I would be one of the first to say that teaching Latin to pupils in primary school be a very bad idea — it is obviously hard enough to teach them to use their own native language, especially in regards to the English orthography that Britons and citizens of the USA very often assault. Very often they won’t even bother using apostrophes where they’re appropriate. There’s a limited amount of times one can read De Bello Gallico before it gets dull and dry; if one were to read other things in Latin that is grammatically correct, the inner corpus would be filled with Latin expressions, words and phrases so that a student be able to read more fluently and perhaps without these dreadful commentaries and annotations full of §’s and numbers. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 27 21 December 2011 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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True, Stephen7878 didn't advocate destroying our past - like the futurists who wanted to get rid of all museums and all old art, or the despicable Taliban who blew up some huge Buddha statues just because they didn't fit into their own mindset. But even the word "preserve" may be to limited. Preserving a dead or extinct language means preserving its old texts and - if possible - having some means of decoding those old texts and translate them into something more understandable for modern humans. But the Neolatin movement wants to do something more than just preserve Latin, they want to use it actively.
Realistically nobody would expect Latin ever again to become the daily language of large populations, and there is no reason to wish that. Given the situation in the world today it would be almost as unrealistic to expect that all learned people should revert to writing in Latin as they did just a few centuries ago. And nobody in their sane mind would expect every modern child to learn Latin in school - that time would be better spent on learning living languages. Latin now may still to some extent have a role to plays as liturgical language, but outside the Roman-Catholic world it will just be a hobby for a small segment of the world population. But it can become a very rewarding hobby, because 1) that the amount - and value - of the old texts is sufficient as a reward for learning the language, 2) that it is so welldocumented that adding new elements that make it useable for speaking and writing today isn't an insurmountable obstacle, 3) enough people have decided that it is worth having Latin as a hobby (or in some cases maybe even obsession) that there is a living community now who can communicate efficiently through the electronical media - they don't all have to live in the same place or communicate through snail mail. It would be fun if the same thing could be done with Sumerian or Akkadian or other languages from the antique world, and maybe Hampie will be part of a Neo-Akkadian movement. Within the Nordic countries there is already something like revival of the old Nordic Ásatru (the viking religion) - and having Icelandic as something like a surviving dialect of the old language could make a resurrection of Old Norse feasible. Personally I would also like to learn to speak and write Old French. I can read it more or less fluently (and to a reasonable extent also Old Occitan), but so far I haven't found a decent French-Old French dictionary, and as far as I know there is no community to speak of who have tried to resuscitate Old French. But it would be fun trying. And using Anglosaxon actively would also be fun, although I'm further from that goal right now. So preservation is just the basic requirement. The actual resurrection of old languages is more than preservation, but not something which large populations can be expected to participate in. Edited by Iversen on 21 December 2011 at 12:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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