Living an Ancient Language (with Luke Ranieri)
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- Luke Ranieri (of @polyMATHY_Luke and @ScorpioMartianus ) argues for studying ancient languages in the same way as one would study a living language.
Jackson Crawford, Ph.D.: Sharing real expertise in Norse language and myth with people hungry to learn, free of both ivory tower elitism and the agendas of self-appointed gurus. Visit jacksonwcrawfo... (includes bio and linked list of all videos).
Jackson Crawford’s Patreon page: / norsebysw
Visit Grimfrost at glnk.io/6q1z/j...
Latest FAQs: vimeo.com/3751... (updated Nov. 2019).
Jackson Crawford’s translation of Hávamál, with complete Old Norse text: www.hackettpub... or www.amazon.com...
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Poetic Edda: www.hackettpub... or www.amazon.com...
Audiobook: www.audible.co...
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Saga of the Volsungs: www.hackettpub... or www.amazon.com...
Audiobook: www.audible.co...
Music © I See Hawks in L.A., courtesy of the artist. Visit www.iseehawks.com/
Logos by Elizabeth Porter (snowbringer at gmail).
I've taken both Latin and Old Norse language and literature courses and funnily enough, two of the lecturers recommended us to watch you guys in your own respective channels to ease the learning. Grammar books offer a concise presentation of grammar and as such can often be difficult to understand. It seems like no matter how many times you read the exposition, you simply cannot make sense of it. Channels like these two (three) put these expositions in a different light and thus straightens the learning curve for us students. I can speak for many of my peers, we are indeed grateful for your effort, both of you. I truly hope you deem the youtube activism as productive and fruitful, because it is worth much more than a book for us. We got plenty of books, but we only got two of you.
@@sarcastaball Prove what exactly?
I am so envious that you have Latin and Old Norse. That is truly great.
@@sarcastaballWhat exactly is unreasonable or unbelievable about the claims he made? These are two of the best online resources for both languages. If I were a teacher trying to get students more excited and have better results, I’d recommend them too.
@@sarcastaball what a weird request to make tho
This is the best crossover ever!
I wonder how many speakers of these two languages actually met each other when the languages were widespread
absolutely
@@decimusausoniusmagnus5719 that makes sense man
@@elchemyst the problem here is that the classical Latin that Luke speaks and the Old Norse that Jackson speaks is separated by 800-1000 years. When Old Norse speakers met Latin speakers, they were monks who spoke some sort of clerical Latin as a second language. When classical Latin speakers met Germanic speakers, what they heard was usually some form of proto-West Germanic or Gothic. The Romans probably did meet some proto-Norse / North Germanic speakers, but it is not very well attested to.
@@gavinrogers5246 that does make sense
The only two extant poems in Gothic we have were both written by J.R.R. Tolkien.
You shall not pass kidney stones
Tolkien wrote "You cannot pass".
I know of "Bagme Bloma", but what is the second?
@@visserskarel I thought Tom Shippey published it. But when i look in his "Road to Middle-Earth," I find "Bagme Bloma" and three OE poems. Hmm. I thought sure I'd seen a second Gothic poem by JRRT. I might be mistaken, but it nags at me. I'll have to keep looking.
There are actually some more examples of modern gothic literature :3 I think if you just type smth like “gothic language poem” into UA-cam you’ll find some.
There’s even an active community trying to revive the beautiful gutisk language
Jackson totally nailed the Scandinavian attitude towards the foreigners trying to speak our languages. I'm from Denmark and I just realized I've been guilty of this too, without even being aware of it. We all do it as soon as we notice someone struggling with danish even a little bit, it's beyond a stereotype. We automatically switch to English and the only explanation I have for it, is simply a matter of efficiency, saving time and effort of both parties in the conversation. This of course, entirely disregards the possibility that a foreigner might be doing exactly what they're talking about here.
I'm from Canada. My uncle moved to Germany for work a couple decades ago and he complained about the same thing, I think specifically swedish? He'd go and try to practice and they'd just laugh and reply in perfect english
This obviously well-intentioned attitude unfortunately results in our having more trouble learning your languages, though.
@@jorgeclaverie6752
There is nothing well-intended about it....
I've mentioned the "english" and "everything else" way my brain files languages several times, and other people have looked at me like I have two heads, so it's great to hear that actually that *is* how it works. Doesn't make it much less infuriating when I need Swedish and get Spanish, mind...
My brain is similar but it divided into Germanic, Romance, and Slavic. So if I'm speaking one and I don't know a word, my brain will grab from another language in the group. But if I'm speaking Polish and the only non-English word I know is Italian, my brain will throw that that Italian word into my Polish. And yeah, everyone stares at me. Or if I'm struggling in a Spanish conversation and people behind me are speaking German and someone asks me a question in English...... My brain will do its best to respond... In.... German. 🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️
@@ak5659ouch. I did feel sorry for my fella a while back when the german guy (understood English and swedish a bit but didnt speak them) with a holiday home across the road came over for a drink with me (speaking English, understood german and swedish enough to get a lot of what the guys said said and mostly struggling with his dad in whatever language because he mumbled) , a Swedish neighbour (no other languages) and his half-deaf dad who heard best in italian, so he was trying to translate on the fly for his dad and the swedish neighbour and sometimes clarifying for me or the german. He mostly spoke the right language to the right person but the look on his face at times... And I just remembered my GCSE german mock speaking - Suddenly all I could remember that day was French, even though I'd dropped French a year before. And my ex, on a road trip, had been speaking Spanish and French, and then got to a shop where the guy only knew German and English, and he couldnt remember the English for eggs.
This was a big problem for me back in highschool spanish. Cause I learned a decent amount of portuguese and russian in middle school, so sometimes I would be writing and use portuguese or sometimes even russian words in the space of spanish words that I should have used.
Note: if you go to Quebec as an American and try to speak French, people will probably like you. If you go to Quebec as an anglophone Canadian and try to speak French, they may call you a square-head.
or if you go to a store in Lisbon and speak Brasilian portuguese they insist on answering in English. This really happens. But that is the opposite of what you said.
@@angelavonhalle5144 they just laughed at me
People from Quebec ARE American, because America is the name of a huge continent (not a country). America extends from Northern Canada and Alaska all the way down to the Southern tip of Patagonia in Argentina and Chile.
@@jorgeclaverie6752 This meme is hilarious. Citizens of the United States of America are unambiguously called Americans in every language in the world, including Spanish and Portuguese. Pretending otherwise is an exercise in vapidity unworthy of serious interaction. In English, in every kind of English, an unqualified 'American' never means anything else but a citizen of the United States; to refer to inhabitants of the continents, one must always add the qualifiers "North" and/or "South".
As a test, I suggest you go to Rivière du Loup and find a random Québecois and ask him whether or not he is American. See how long he suffers your vapidity on this point.
This sounds fun to watch, but I can't stop looking at the ingraved stick, amazing
agree, but I'm wowed by the mountains!
You complete each other so well in making your points understood, at least by me! I love your efforts in learning languages!
I find it weird if Norwegians don't appreciate you speaking Norwegian, but I hear you saying so. I believe your Norwegian is way better than my and many of my countrymen's English.
Thanks to both of you for sharing your knowledge.
I had that in Brazil. I wanted to pick up some Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) and everyone told me NO. They wanted to practice their ASL with me. So I only learned a few places names. The same happened to me in Iceland. I learned the signs for Reykjavik and Faroe Islands.... And that's it.
Possibly analogous situation: I translated Elvis's version of "You ain't nothing but a hound dog" into classical Arabic. But when I sing it to most Arabs, they don't think it's funny; they seem to think it is vaguely sacrilegious.
"I'll kill you, infidel!" 😂
LMAO
Yes, because Classical Arabic is not only the prestigious language of Late Antique and Medieval Arabic poetry, literature, science, etc....
It is also the sacred language of God's word, i.e., the Quran.....
The distinction between reading and translating is really important in my mind. I speak Spanish, non-natively, fairly well, and can read it fairly fluently, but my ability to translate is.... slow. I can translate things, and have, but it takes far longer than just reading, and I didn't really realize that until watching this.
When Jackson said "You could do it- but why?" I was reminded of a tweet I saw a little while ago.
Someone was reading a book in latin, and a polish monk wandered up and asked in latin for help navigating the airport. The monk only knew latin and polish, the OP knew no polish.
Of course, that kind of circumstance is getting rarer and rarer haha. But becoming fluent in even an ancient language (or a conlang, as I heard a similar story with klingon once) does open up communication avenues that didn't exist beforehand, as well as knowledge ones. I think even a useless skill can provide some value to your life overall. So maybe an immersion course for Old Norse could provide some good!
That's awesome. J haven't had anything that useful, but I run a farm with a tourism component and I've had three guests in the past few months since I started studying it that knew Latin and were absolutely delighted to be able to speak it with someone. Its been good for business lol
I would say the active use of "dead" languages provides insight into the minds of our ancestors since language shapes so much of what we know and understand.
This is the best crossover ever, please do more videos together! Pure awesomeness
Absolutely. I watch both of their channels and would take note of the fact that either of them had posted a video - then probably watch it later on, but when I saw it was a crossover of the two channels I had to watch it immediately. Excellent video and very informative. I would really enjoy hearing more conversations between the two of them on almost any language related subject :P
Jackson, you mentioned, in a previous video the greatest western of all time “The Searchers”. It already feels epic and your adaptation into saga form may be possible way to assuage the spirit of John Wayne.
My Grandpa's cousin, Frank Nugent, wrote "The Searchers." Weird, how connections work and they loop back on themselves.
I hope you don’t mind but I love your vids as a podcast and something I can pause and go back to finish. As a former educator I’m so glad that UA-cam has become a vehicle for engaging learning
I loved the depth of this discussion, and the fact that the two of you really explored multiple ways of thinking about the relationship between language generation and comprehension, and how both interact with how we understand texts and even the cultures that produce them. One specific thing that jumped out at me was when Dr. Crawford made the offhand comment that when he provides a word-for-word translation of something (in a teaching context) he is not presenting it as a tool for understanding the meaning of the text per se, but as a tool for understanding the structure of the language. For some reason, that caused me to make another connection: one of the things I find most valuable about learning to express myself in a dead language is the insight it gives me into the culture(s) the language is from. There is something very visceral about puzzling out how to say (eg) "thanks for loaning me the book" and realizing that (for one reason or another) it just can't be expressed... or at least, not in a way that "feels" natural in English. At least for me, I think that gives me more of a feel for how different the mindset and cultural "background assumptions" of another culture are than I might get simply by analyzing source texts in the original language.
Illud nōn exspectāvī!!
Been watching doctor Crawford for a long time, never it crossed my mind that there would be a crossover with Scorpio, incredible! ;) Gaudeō :)
Luke is an awesome individual and even responded to one of my posts on his polyMATHY channel. Both of you are great teachers in our modern electric agora....live long and keep on spreading the word(s). Cool to see both of you, together!
Dr. Crawford,
This is a wonderful discussion and something I'm very passionate about. I love Historical Linguistics and love learning how languages have changed over time and how they're related to one another(possibly because I'm researching evolutionary biology, I like learning how things are connected), and if I didn't go into Biology, I most certainly would have gone into Historical Linguistics.
My boyfriend on the other hand studies Applied Linguistics, particularly the Lexical Approach to foreign language teaching, that emphasizes lexis over grammar: "lexicalized grammar, not grammaticalized lexis", as he always repeats to me, because he hates the teaching theory that is heavy grammar focused, and instead focuses on "lexical items as chunks", i.e. idioms and collocations, etc. According to the Lexical Approach, this is a better fit for how people learn their first language as children, we learn new words, collocations with those words, and learn how to string them together, long before we become aware of the "grammar" behind it: in other words, we don't think "we have to say X in this particular way because it's grammatically correct", as fluent, native speakers, we just do it without much thought because we know which words go where.
Learning a dead language is a different matter altogether, because you're not learning it in order to "communicate", hence the focus on grammar(which can help in reading to some extent), but I've always been interested in the prospect of trying to learn Old Norse or Latin using the theories of Secondary Language Acquisition and the Lexical Approach. It could be a very nice bridge between the two disciplines and it could possibly facilitate learning these languages more effectively while making it less daunting to learn "a dead language."
Cheers, and take care.
I love this! It answers the question of when does one start thinking in another language.
Gotta ask yourself this @18:23
This made me immediately pity those learning to read Egyptian hieroglyphics since we apparently don't know that much about its actual pronunciation and therefore learning to converse as a means of learning the language is most likely not a real option :P
From what I've heard, quite a lot of Egyptian has been reconstructed from Coptic and afro asiatic, so it's not as impossible as you might think
Ordering pizza was always the first thing I learn in any language that I study. I can now order Pizza in 7 languages. I don't exactly speak all of them fluently, but as shown I've got the important stuff down.
That is funny, but don't you have trouble with being expected to understand more?
@@melissahdawn Not really, I usually am able to make it clear that I just do it for the smile of my conversational partner. Furthermore, I am able to communicate in these languages, just not fluently.
I genuinely appreciate listening to you two talk about education. This is a rare gift
Jackson! You should start a podcast in Old Norse, that would be amazing to listen to ☺♥
Haha, I have Star Wars playing in the background as you talk about your saga. Thanks Dr Crawford.
You guys make some of the best vids…have been enjoying your recent collaborations.
What a great conversation. Spoken word with the capability for novel expression is so important for comprehending literature.
I mean, I don't have an inner voice, and I have aphantasia (lack of a mind's eye), but I do understand what you mean by fluency. Fluency to me has pretty much always meant reaching the point of not needing to translate in your head. That's a high bar to reach, but it's worth working towards.
I have aphantasia too! Sadly it has inhibited my language learning for a long time.
@@branarthen2268 I didn't even know I had it until a couple years ago, when scishow made a video on it. My immediate reaction was pretty much exactly what they said "People don't... actually _see_ things when they imagine them right? That's not how that actually works, that's just a metaphor, right?" apparently not... On the other hand, as far as I can tell, it's never hampered my language learning as far as I can tell, so don't let it get you down, there are ways of working around it.
@@Great_Olaf5 Glad to hear that it hasn’t hindered your language learning! I will keep trying to find a way around it.
Came for the ancient language discussion. Stayed for the bird facts (and the great discussion too).
This was a fascinating and engrossing conversation. Really enjoyed it! Hoping someone could hook me up with the book Luke mentioned that's side-by-side Greek and Latin where you can see that one is imitating the other, please? Again, great video!
It's also the scenery, the background. Just stunning.
It's such a pleasure and privilege to be able to "eavesdrop" 😂 into a conversation such as this one. Thanks for what you do and its effect on our personal development, education and... "edification". 😊
We Germans might tend to correct alot, since for a lot of Germans especially in the North, the language education was so aggressive, that it completely disrupted the colorful dialect continuum we once had. Speaking clear standard High German became very important for many of us. And of course we are very straight forward and direct. So it might be a combination of the two.
Yeah and it is spreading to the south now, where dialects were less f****d up
@@vt2788 Unfortunately, but not all is lost.
Try crossing the border and hearing SchwiizerTüütsch. You might have some fun here,
@@angelavonhalle5144 Yeah the swiss dialects still seem oddly stable. Just subject to some dialect leveling within the country, but I guess you can't do anything about that
You would appear both to have had a productive "holiday" together! The videos have been great!
"Something's going on in Kentucky thats kinda cool."
That's a sentence I never thought I'd hear spoken seriously.
When did this purism take hold? Latin was an international language in which scholars communicated across native-language barriers as recently as 400 years ago, and that must have meant some communicative ability was expected even though nobody had been a native speaker for over a thousand years.
We have a blue jay that likes imitating a hawk... while stealing our dog food. Smart birds!
You guys have a very good chemistry. I enjoyed listening to your crossover videos.
Yessss ...the possibility of a podcast by my favourite language experts...
Quark from Deep Space Nine is actually who I first heard the word "vole" from.
Are those linguist sticks that you're holding in this video?
In a taxi in gothenburg: "självklart lär jag mig svenska" "What? WHY?"
I always read as imagery! Thé either is action or and object! Thx 🙏🏻, for this presentation! Good stuff!
Thanks, Jackson & Luke! "Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence."
- Louis L'Amour. BTW, The Michel Thomas method is an awesome aural language retention system, y'all reminded me of here. True reading: A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.
Louis L'Amour ..I'll stop now ;D
About translation: they could give some insight that you wouldn't have realised reading the original, because it references an expression you didn't know, but I have met the opposite as well: there was a story, I think it was by Carme Riera, that I had read in Catalan, but later I encountered a Dutch translation, where the speech of a working class character was translated in such a neutral use of language, that the effect was completely lost.
I just bought a signed copy of the wanderers havamal, I really like the book and would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about purchasing. You received your PHD in Scandinavian studies at the university of Wisconsin Madison correct? Thank you for your time, and have a great day.
Here is how I know I am not translating when I read French. I wrote to my boss, "Merci" (for something). He replied "Bienvenu." I replied, "Bienvenu à ou?". If I had been translating, I would have heard "welcome", which makes sense, in English, as a reply to "thank you". But having only heard these kinds of exchange in Metropolitan French as opposed to Canadian, I was not used to "bienvenu" being used as a response to "merci". I was used to "pas de quoi". So, I had no idea why he was welcoming me to somewhere.
Tip: my appallingly pronouced 20 words of French were raputurously received. It is important to identify oneself as neither English nor American. Je suis Australienne! Score!!!
True reading: A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.
Louis L'Amour
'Bad incarnation of a franchise...'
Definitely talking about the starwars sequels here
Now we need a collab with Luke to do some dubs into Old Norse
At around 7:00 in the video, Luke talks about words instantaneously becoming sound then turned into an image. I'm curious how that sort of literary pipeline would work for someone who's deaf. Would skip the sound part and just become an image in the their minds? Would there be an intermediate image where they would see the signs for it? Or perhaps feel some kind of kinesthetic memory of making the signs? It's an interesting question to me.
There has been a good body of research over the last few decades on this! The general result is that there is a visuospatial equivalent of the "phonological loop" that is involved in mental processing of sign language, and that there are neurological differences that can be detected depending on whether the person learned signing first or learned an spoken / auditory language first. If you're interested in the topic, I recommend Googling for academic papers on "phonological memory" and "sign language", there is a lot of interesting stuff out there.
Or if you acquire partial deafness, (hard of hearing), you might have to adapt. And see television and movies in other languages with subtitles. Unfortunatey many subtitles are unreadable because they use white letters on a white image. So the aim is surely not to speak too much with native speakers, but you can concentrate more on texts. I do not know what initial deafness can be like. It is a continuum as they say. Oh, and often lip reading helps, but you might have to know the written word to excell in this.
I used to have some of those jays & they lovvvvved pistachios inside the shells ~ kept them entertained pecking at them for a while too 🥰
Go Wheeeeeeeeeelock!
"My second language track" depends on what I am speaking most in the moment. It tends to be be Dutch. It now has switched palces with German and sometimes causes the tongue twisting. But whenever I hear a French accent, my brain switches to French, and then I get stuck and can't speak Dutch or even English without stumbling over words.
Really been enjoying these videos of you two
From Ælfric's Colloquy:
Master: Are you willing to be flogged while learning?
Scholar: We had rather be flogged that we may learn, than remain ignorant, but we know that you are kindly, and that you will not lay strokes upon us, unless we oblige you to do so.
Responding to the discussion about learning American history, someone who likes to learn American history through biography and also likes the history of the American West should read about Kit Carson. Among other things, he was a scout for John C. Fremont during the Mexican-American War, and, in 1848, Fremont chose Carson as the courier who would deliver a letter from Fremont to the President of the United States, informing the President of the California gold discovery that would lead to the Gold Rush. Carson was the ideal courier. He could be counted on to get the letter safely from California to D.C. on horseback through contested country that was not completely under the control of the U.S government, and he could be counted on not to be tempted to read the letter himself, because he didn't know how to read.
As portuguese and english speakers, moving to Puerto Rico, my mother tolds us, you'll get the hang of spanish in a couple of months. She was right. We noticed cognates and usual changes (FOGO, FUEGO). But I also notced that some classmates were scared of making mistakes. The "faux amis" were sometimes a danger. As for (a little) latin, there were plenty of cognates. Sometimes the words were understood, but what did the whole sentence mean. No cinema for classical latin, except for catholic chantings maybe.
I wish there was an Old Norse version of 'lingua latina per se illustrata'
Me too
So I kept hitting the like button, but It only recorded one like overall, should I report this to youtube? Is this a bug? Because obviously one like Isn't enough to express my love for this video.
One of my favorite things from learning ASL is when something just doesn't translate into English words, but I can still understand. In many cases it's much faster to communicate in ASL than in English. You can convey all at once what someone did, how they did it, and how they felt about what they did, etc. I remember the more proficient I got with signing, the more frustrated I became with how slow English can be. Saying something like, "I saw online that it's supposed to be extra cold this Winter" has so many words before it tells me what the actual subject is, haha. Whereas in ASL, it might be something like, "THIS WINTER COLD(emphasized) I SEE ONLINE." I could be wrong about the exact grammar, though, I'm pretty rusty.
Second language track - I see you and raise you. I speak (in daily life, not just reading) a good fistful of languages and find that my brain organizes them in its own unhelpful ways, putting mismatched pairs together to where in a pinch I'll grab a word and be weirdly off base. For example, for a while it put French with Swedish and Spanish with Turkish, I guess because the phonologies are similar-ish (lots of slippery vowels in F & Sw, no consonant clusters in Sp & T). I wonder if this reflects a fundamental brain focus on phonology over, say, syntax and vocuabulary.
44:15 How symbolic that a Stellar Blue Jay is imitating a hawk as you guys are talking about imitating other languages that aren't your native tongue.
Word for word translations can help you actually see the world as an ancient did. Every language encodes a different world, a different sensorium, a different way of seeing. Even in your own language, knowing roots can illuminate how the mind works through language.
23:45 Wait, this dude studied Malagasy? Very cool.
Is this considered an all-staff meeting? ;)
Retelling stories in another cultural context immediately reminded me of 7 Samurai.
I understand the associating a word or concept with an action. I play games while listening to podcasts and informative videos. If its a story game certain videos or concepts of those videos will pop into my mind at certain points of the video. And so its like i'm reliving listing to those concepts while playing that game. Conversely if i rewatch or listen to these podcasts or educational videos I can remember what game I was playing when I listened to it the first time and what I was doing.
And so I can definitely see the bonus to connecting language learning to action and activity.
I think the word Luke was searching for in the first part may have been subvocalization?
the thing that happens when you're reading where your brain uses the same or similar processes as to when you're speaking that language
I'm in the middle of this debate
Around 24:10 is an interesting idea I didn't realize, but it makes sense. When I try to learn little bits of another language, I end up comparing it to Spanish more than English in my mind, even though English is my native language.
An English acquaintance of mine that moved here to Norway ended up mixing Norwegian into the French she already knew. She didn't properly realize this until going on a trip to France, and suddenly all kinds of Norwegian words came out. I think the two languages ended up cohabiting in the same language centre in her brain.
I studied German at school and after I left I started learning Portuguese. As a beginner I mixed it up with German so often, but I thought I was the only one who did that! I feel strangely vindicated by the video and your comments, haha.
I love the content and the videos. I would like to interject a thought I had. Could one of the problems with teaching a dead language be that if you reincarnate a dead language do you not run the risk of introducing drift and or other common language changes over time ?
People think that history is about factoids. The factoids come along naturally if you encounter them so many times that remembering them becomes helpful. History is about building themed stories. It's about building an understanding of what life would have been like for people in various stations through different aspects of life ranging from politics to cookware. A lot of the big names were less important or less admirable than the spouses, friends, servants, and others who made their reputations possible. We need more biographies of these people.
Part of the problem with grammar-translation (and Latin especially) is that it is rooted in the scholarly aspects of law and theology where absolutely solidly nailed down definition is the goal; you land or the ultimate disposition of your soul is at stake! You don't need that precision in getting joy from the metre of Aeschylus or the Beowulf author- there is enough to feel and sense your way through meaning.
The same extends to almost all modern writing outside of very specific domains. Even in scientific journals, language is often pretty loose, and the importance lies in the mathematics.
I don’t agree with his reasons, but I think in order to understand what we read we need to understand alternative ways to express the same things in the language and why it is expressed as it was. Fluency is necessary for understanding the nuances.
Excellent discussion!
I really wish I could take classes with either of you.
I can't find an appropriate place to ask my question. What kind of farm crops, vegetables or grains did Norwegians eat in the 13th century around the time of accepting Christianity into their society or culture? I don't think it was corn or wheat. Something in old Norse about that?
BTW I just played back your video. In it you use “um,” “‘em” plus just plain “uh.” As said,it’s no big deal. Um, Il love your videos!
Some languages when you read, you would speak or sing the words out loud. Reading silently is a relatively newfangled idea.
The Gothic texts are direct translations from Greek and very heavily influenced by it. We have very little "Gothic Gothic". So sticking with the text is a bit off point. To have an idea of how Gothic was actually spoken, you should know a couple of the other, better attested Germanic languages. ON and OE leap to mind since there is so much of both.
Throughout the middle ages, English students who wanted to go to school were taught in Latin. No, English is spoken. Interesting that we have lost that approach in the modern era.
Is there a place that we can find the star wars saga? I would like to read it for self entertaining and educational purposes
It’s nice to hear two deep-voiced manly men discussing something so esoteric as linguistics and ancient literature!
25:30 or thereabouts reminded me of how my sister described using a book to teach her students Dutch: the curt commands made her feel like an SS officer.
Wait, I went to Kentucky in the early 80's. The Classics Dept. wasn't NEARLY as cool sounding as what you all said. Dang it, I missed out. Then again, at that point in life I really wasn't in the best place to understand all of this stuff. Oh well. And PIE as well? They've stepped up their game, clearly.
Oops! I was addressing Luke in regard to “um” etc. maybe therein lies the misunderstanding. Sorry!
I tried to take immersion classes but had a much harder time picking up on languages in that setting than the rest of the class. Why does that happen? I wonder if I would need to practice treating foreign language vocab as loan words.
People are complicated and classes are often limited. Also pure immersion is often a bad way to learn, since there are some things you just can't infer.
@@MenelmacarLG pure immersion is great imo but only if you already have a good understanding of the language. It makes a good speaker a great speaker but you need that solid base first
It depends on the language you are learning, which material you have access to, which language(s) you already command. One language might warrant another approach. I learned english by immersion through television and learning little bits to get around (as a 5 year old) this is very limited. Immersion works well with music too. But this takes some time - but little effort. What you call loan words, plus cognates, "similar words you may know" was my main instrument towards learning languages. The more languages you understand the more similarities you discover. Then the most important thing is courage to make mistakes.. When we were reading El Cid in a sort of old spanish, EL Cid gave someone a "presente", modern spanish is "regalo". I was the only one in class who had the courage to say it can only mean "regalo". (Present, in English, of course). Don't worry, I hope you will find your way into language learning and don't give up.
Oh, and then there is the sound of language, you may find out in immersion classes that the sound of the language doesn't "agree" with you. I had a teacher who lisped, and a German teacher who spoke with an Austrian accent- Sometimes another way will work for you better.
@@angelavonhalle5144 Thank you for your in depth answer!
Yee haw! 🤠 YAY!
You are so sweet togeheter!
38:58 “ROMANES EUNT DOMUS?!”
What is modern Hebrew? It is a spoken, live revival of an ancient language.
1:10 I heard correctly?
_that aren't in the Gothic Bible_
What about Skeireins and Bagme Bloma?
You don't mean to say you did like my lector in Old Greek who had us translate his rants against feminism into Attic?
I'm always charmed when he's distracted by an animal.
1:53 Why is there so much purism and conservatism in academics? If you are not supposed to ever branch off of whatever the orthodoxy on a topic might be, how could we ever learn more than we already know?
He's talking about Star Trek Picard
I knew what voles were in early childhood, so this is weird growing up with them being more common that mice.
Should I only speak English that shows up in the attested record?
I don't think saying "What's the point?" of learning a dead language, since no one speaks it, is a good argument for anything. Intentions are purely subjective.
Nevertheless, I think deep down, it is important to recognize that any modern speakers of an ancient language are inevitably not that ancient speaker group, and therefore one needs to (mostly) stick to attested writting if one wants to actual talk about that ancient language.
That being said, I strongly doubt any attested language actually represents any native dialect of a speaker group contemporary to its time. The attested language is language nonetheless, but a narrow window into a much wider world of speakers who thought and had contextualized how they felt about the world in terms of their speech. Language is as much a collection of experiences than a sampling of written words. Learning to speak the language is just an exercise in those experiences (imperfect as it may be).
Plus, modern speakers of a dead language can provide a wealth of insights by their shared linguistic experience. The extreme end of this is something like modern Hebrew, which is not the language of 3k years ago, but a modern revival. Despite this, it has produced a bunch of scholars who are effective native in a strongly related form of the language, and therefore can relate to it in ways unaccessible to a Hebrew-to-English transcriber. As an English speaker, maybe this means it helps you to understand Chaucer or Shakespeare.
But inevitably, if one is trying to do science, then one shouldn't confuse their newly acquired ancient tongue with the orginal thing (or some dialect of it). But one doesn't need to hide themselves from the experience of the language just to make this distinction. Shunning people to do otherwise seems to me more like well intentioned, but poor scientific wisedom.
I wonder how hard it'd be (if possible) to teach yourself to speak old Norse as a fluent language as Ranieri speaks Latin.
The same person can pronounce “um” as a back vowel, a nasal vowel or a shwa. It’s not fixed by grammar. You do all three. Play back your videos and notice. It often depends on the length of the pause or one’s enthusiasm. In any case it’s not a big deal. Don’t take my comment to heart.
O Deus meus, Latinum amo!