Ancient language scholarship

As I keep mentioning in all my posts, I like to learn languages, and I have been studying Chinese, modern and classical, for the better part of 5 years. I have also dabbled in a number of other languages, such as German, Russian, and Latin.

Recently I've been getting more and more into the ancient world, the history of it's sciences and religions, among other things. By the ancient world I mean mostly the Hellenic period down to the flourishing of Islam. Actually that's closer to the medieval period than the ancient one proper, but of course, nothing is as fragmentary as our conceptual delimitations suggest, and to have a more or less complete picture implies going back all the way to archaic Greek, Perisa, and even India (I have long been interested in the Sanskrit language as well). Just outlining this scope of study comfronts me with a very wide variety of languages to consider. I've already mentioned Sanskrit, and that one is at the fringes of the region that I've set myself to learn about. Latin, though at the western extreme of the (geographical) continuum, is a lot more present since we have inherited much through them and I have the advantage of speaking a romance language as well as my previous, albeit far from complete, study of it.

Greek enjoys pride of place, even though I haven't studied it beyond some very basics, and I am not very well versed with it's vocabulary, though I am acquainted with very many words with greek etymologies. It is, however, probably the most relevant language for me, it's presence and influence never fails to manifest itself across a whole range of forms of thought. It is a difficult language for me due to it's unfamiliarity, something you wouldn't expect coming from a person who's enthusiastically embraced Chinese and Russian; the latter being so heavily influenced by Greek.

And at the far eand, besides the already mentioned Sanskrit, there are a number of other languages for which I would at least want to develop some level of familiarity, if only with their alphabet. I am talking about Hebrew (probably biblical), Egyptian, and some Arabic or Persian language. I don't think I am going to go and learn something like Aramaic, Akkadian or Ugaritic, though I must admit they all have their merits.

~bartender, I think today I'll have a beer.

I just found the writings of a man named Frithjof Schuon, and even though I have barely just started to read him, I find his whole persona very interesting. He is a scholar of comparative religion who actually does manage a number of these languages, and cites a great variety of mystical and religious traditions. This is a whole great field that I find irresistible.

I like to study and take notes, and I like it so much when my notebooks are filled with scribblings in very many different writing systems: chiense, cyrillic, greek, and then and there some mathematical and functional-programming notation. I must admit part of the reason I want to learn all these alphabets is for the vanity of having a lot more of that. Well, I may use them when the internet collapses and I have nothing but my notes to entertain myself with.

zampano

I have some familiarity with Greek! Mostly Koine (the dialect of the Eastern Roman Empire from I think around 200 B.C. through the Byzantine period), although a little bit of Classical as well. I had two years of Classical Greek in college, then a few years ago got a textbook on Koine to re-familiarize myself with the language and specifically learn how Koine works. It's thankfully simpler than Classical.

The main thing I've noticed is that what vocabulary you need to learn depends on what you're going to be focusing on. So for me, I got into Koine to read early Christian texts (so the New Testament, early Christian writers, etc.), which means learning the vocabulary that those sources use and how they use it. Even then, some things are their own animal: the Greek of the Septuagint is almost its own dialect from a vocabulary standpoint.

Feel free to hit me up if you need any help with Greek!

immy

Great post! Personally I've started learning Latin recently and I'm absolutely loving it. I've also started to develop an interest in the ancient world that I didn't have beforehand, so if you know any good resources please send them my way!

I think that learning classical languages must be something of a rabbit hole; Now that I've started with Latin I want to learn (in order of my level of interest) Sanskrit, Old English, Proto-Indo-European and Ancient Greek.

detritus

Yes, Germanic languages are their own rabbit hole. And so are slavic languages! Only PIE is not a language at all, its a bunch of etymological reconstructions. Speaking of which, Chinese diachronics is another hole that runs deep.

I can recommend thelatinlibrary.com for a lot of latin texts with which to sharpen your teeth.