Using the Bible or other religious texts as a resource to learn the language

[zjones]

I'm amazed that so many people start reading the Bible from the beginning in a foreign language, these people must be either very brave, very cool, or have a much higher tolerance for random sections of genealogy. I guess there's some good narrative in Genesis and Exodus but there are also some sections that are very dry. If I were to make a recommendations for someone, I'd say that it's best to start with a simple book, something fairly short and with a strong narrative like Acts (New Testament) or Esther (Old Testament). Specific psalms, like Psalm 127, might be a good starting place as well.

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Learning Modern Greek on the other hand has made me avoid any reference to the New Testament like the plague, since I cannot seem to get away from the overwhelming amount of Koine Greek resources that are marketed as simply "Learn Greek!!!" as if Koine Greek is the only version of Greek, or as if it supersedes the modern language of Greece.

Edit: Removed some personal ramblings that are not necessarily helpful for others.

[Adrianslont]

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned “The Jesus Film” yet. Evidently it’s available in 1600 languages.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_(1979_film)

Monty Python fans would probably be amused by the fact that the lead role is played by a bloke called Brian.

YouTube is your friend and there are lots of other Jesus movies and cartoons out there - taking much of their dialogue from the written text it seems.

It’s not my cup of tea but I thought some may be interested and not be aware,so. Setswana study group?

There is also lots of religious video content of an Islamic nature for a language I study, Indonesian (and other languages, no doubt). I had a brief look at some kartun2 for kids. Again, not my cup of tea but I did enjoy the one about the little boy who put bacon in his mum’s shopping trolley at the supermarket. Mum handled it well after a quick recovery from the initial shock. Link below for anyone interested.

https://www.youtube.com/user/kastarisentra

[rdearman]

Religion and politics: Some families have a rule that says, "No political or religious arguments during holiday dinner." This forum has a similar rule year-round, for much the same reasons. We have people here from all over the world, with incredibly diverse political and religious views, and we all get along much better if we avoid these subjects.

If the politics or religion is genuinely related to language learning, then you have a small amount of leeway—as long as people remain respectful and refrain from fighting. But if a moderator asks you to stop, please stop. You can fight about politics and religion on almost any other site on the Internet. This site is for language learning.

The OP asked about learning languages from religious text, I'm not really interested in critiques of the content of these texts. If you don't have anything relevant to add about learning languages from these texts then please refrain from responding.

[nooj]

Learning Modern Greek on the other hand has made me avoid any reference to the New Testament like the plague, since I cannot seem to get away from the overwhelming amount of Koine Greek resources that are marketed as simply "Learn Greek!!!" as if Koine Greek is the only version of Greek, or as if it supersedes the modern language of Greece.

I don't know how Greeks themselves feel about it, but I sometimes get the impression that foreigners are more interested in ancient Greek, a language with no native speakers, than modern Greek, the living language of millions of people.

As for the genealogies, I agree that they can be tiresome, but I find the repetition also kind of helps with reinforcing vocabulary. And especially numbers, which are a real hassle for me. I still have trouble with Basque numbers because they work on a vigesimal system. For example:

18Ehun eta hirurogeita bi urte zituela, Jeredek Henok izan zuen. 19Henok izan zuenetik, beste zortziehun urtez bizi izan zen, eta seme-alabak izan zituen. 20Beraz, guztira bederatziehun eta hirurogeita bi urtez bizi izan ondoren, hil egin zen.

When Jered was 162 years old, he begat Enoch. After he had Enoch, he lived for another 800 years, and he had sons and daughters. So, after he lived for 962 years, he died.

162 = ehun (100) + hirurogeita (3 x 20) + bi (2)

I need all the practice I can get.

Does anyone find that they have no trouble with vocabulary, but when it comes to hearing phone numbers or doing mathematics, they run into a brick wall?

[desitrader]

Glad to see Rdearman deleting all posts ONLY AFTER someone (i.e. me) objected to expression of self-hatred by a revered forum member, and not before. Until now everything was hunky-dory. It was only my intervention that took this thread off-topic, apparently. Completely fair and unbiased moderation, needless to say.

[rdearman]

I have left the sarcastic post above to illustrate that as usual any discussion of religion or politics deteriorates in to this. This type of behaviour will not be tolerated. I would advise EVERYONE to become familiar with the rules about posting, personal attacks, religious postings, etc. I considered locking this thread, but the OP might miss out on excellent advice in the future about using religious texts for language learning. If you are going to post in this thread then it had better be about language learning.

[Steve]

I've used the Bible myself for language learning and found it helpful. Here is some background that may be of use for deciding what parts of it to use as well as pros and cons.

The Old Testament (OT) was mostly written in Hebrew, likely across a number of centuries, with some sections in Aramaic. The New Testament (NT) was written in a form of Hellenic Greek. In addition, there are a number of books (existing only in Greek manuscripts) which were written during the period between the end of the OT and beginning of the NT. Various traditions within Christianity treat these "extra" books differently. For example, Protestants leave these books out. Roman Catholics add some of them. As I recall, Eastern Orthodox add a few that the Roman Catholics do not. There were also a number of books written during the time the NT was written that some Christian traditions consider part of the Bible. The term "canon" refers to which books a particular tradition recognize as authoritative for purposes of teaching and belief. Protestants have the most restrictive canon at 66 books. Most Bibles you will run across will likely either be the protestant or Roman Catholic canon.

One challenge with any particular translation is as to how "natural" the target language is rendered. This depends on the approach used by the translators. Some translators hold very close to original Hebrew and Greek word ordering and end up producing a somewhat unnatural use of language in the target language. Others do a nice job of doing meaning to meaning translation into a more natural use of language. Some intentionally produce a text at an easier reading level in a particular language. Also, depending on whether the translation is recent or centuries old, the target language usage may or may not be current. Most old versions are well out of copyright and are frequently the ones found for free in various places. Depending on the online site, some sites do contain newer translations and others do not. The bottom line is that any particular translation might represent contemporary and common usage of the language or it might be very dated and rigidly follow original language structures. You need to do a bit of research to learn which versions might be most appropriate in a particular language. Of course, some languages only have a single translation of the Bible (or sections thereof).

One of the nice features is a fairly standardized system of numbered chapters and verses which make it fairly straightforward to reference sentences and sections between languages. There are a few minor differences between the chapter and verse numbering in different canons. Historically, the chapter and verse scheme in the NT was added around 1500 in Europe in part to make it easier to deal with collating various manuscripts. One problem with the numbered chapters and verses is that in some places they seem to have been introduced with little rhyme or reason with regard to the underlying text. Some Bibles are formatted rigidly by numbered chapter and verses. Other Bibles are formatted with regard to the natural transitions in the text itself.

For more common languages, there are frequently parallel text Bibles available in various combinations of languages. For example, I picked up a parallel text Spanish/English Bible with the NVI and NIV translations for about $15. These translations are fairly contemporary language with translation teams that had similar approaches. Each page has two columns, Spanish on left and English on the right. In addition, I picked up the audio of the NVI. This has provided hours upon hours of audio and text to use in various ways. Lately, I've been doing transcribing which has been helping both my listening skills as well as practicing correctly writing Spanish. The site christianbook.com has a number of printed versions in different languages available. The site biblegateway.com has a number of translations in many languages along with audio in some of them.

With 66 books (or more depending on the canon) to choose from, there is a variety of material available to choose from. There are some books and sections which are basic stories in a narrative style. There are sections which contains liturgical details of various rituals. There is poetry. There are personal letters. Here is a sampling of possible books that might appeal to various people.

In the NT:

Luke and Acts (likely from the same author) contain the early history of the Christian church. Luke contains some commonly known narratives such as much of the Christmas story. "And behold, there were shepherds..." etc. The books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain similar material. Luke tends to be the more detailed and fits more naturally in with Acts having a similar style of language.

John (to be differentiated from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John which are letters) contains a series of more detailed stories in parallel with Luke. John tends to use much simpler language and often represents the spiritual concepts of Christianity with themes such as light versus darkness, life versus death, etc. It also contains a number of stories which include direct dialog. I started learning ancient Greek from John, became familiar with it, and now use John as the first book I start working through in another language.

There are many books called epistles which are basically letters written by individuals to various churches or other individuals. My guess is that most first time Bible readers would find these rather opaque and frustrating to follow at times. Basically, they give one side of a conversation where we really don't know all the details the writers and recipients had in common. Some are letters of a personal nature and others are basically sermons and preaching sent via letter.

Revelation is rather unique. Without going into details, it's basically the end of the world book written in highly symbolic language. You've got such things as the 4 horseman of the apocalypse and armageddon in there. My sense is a number of end of the world movies and books have borrowed themes and language from it.

In the OT:

Esther and Ruth are relatively short and self-contained stories.

Proverbs is basically a series of folklore and sayings. Psalms are a series of songs and poems. Song of songs is a symbolic portrayal of romantic love. Ecclesiastes is a somewhat cynical outlook on the meaninglessness of life. Job is a poetic book looking at the meaning of suffering in the world. These books tend to be more challenging in that their vocabulary is larger and unexpected due to the number of analogies and metaphors used as well as a more poetic styling.

Genesis and the first half of Exodus contain a number of stories which provide the backdrop for the Jewish and Christian traditions. Sections of the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy continue these stories. The books of Joshua and Judges continue this. The books (in Protestant naming) of 1st and 2nd Samuel focus on King Saul and King David who were basically the first two Jewish kings. The books 1st and 2nd Kings (and the parallel 1st and 2nd Chronicles) contain stories and history from the time of David until the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. Nehemiah and Ezra contain history after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile.

The prophetic books are in one sense similar to the poetical books. There is often much metaphor and allegory and symbolism. In addition, a few of these also contain historical narratives parallel with the narrative books.


So, in a nutshell, the Bible is dozens of separate books originally written in a few different languages centuries apart, and in different styles. Chances are that there are sections or books that various people would find of interest. The biggest plus for the polyglot is that if you can find a few books, stories, or sections you like, you have access to them in several languages along with a fairly standardized numbering system to follow between languages. If it's a more common language (say English or Spanish), there will be multiple versions in those languages which can be compared for different ways of expressing the same thing.

[iguanamon]

I'm amazed that so many people start reading the Bible from the beginning in a foreign language, these people must be either very brave, very cool, or have a much higher tolerance for random sections of genealogy. I guess there's some good narrative in Genesis and Exodus but there are also some sections that are very dry. ...

zjones, is of course, correct in this analysis. There is indeed a lot of dry narrative in Genesis and Exodus and that's why I recommend it. The thing that I like about starting literally at the "beginning" with Genesis is that all that dry repetition is an important part of how we learn languages. Granted, a learner can sit down with an srs program and the 5000 most common words and learn them that way, or I can read a narrative with which I am familiar and get that repetition in context.

There is nothing "brave" or "cool" about starting at the beginning with Genesis after learning the basics in a course. Making a parallel text is easy to do and cuts out the step of having to look up every single unknown word in the dictionary. The L1 text on the right can be glanced at quickly to verify guesses or figure out doubts. Of course, nothing precludes a learner from consulting a dictionary as well to gain more context for a word.

The good aspects about Genesis and Exodus for language-learners besides the repetition are the use of simple language and the integration and use of numbers. The French number system presented some difficulties for me to learn intuitively. Haitian Creole uses the French number system. The HC Bible writes them out in both numerals and words. When the recitation of genealogy and the ages of persons, or other series of numbers took over the narrative, I would think to myself, "ok, I'm learning numbers now". Going through the Pentateuch really cemented the number system for me and more importantly, the most common words and grammar patterns.

I will also add, that any work with which a learner may be familiar and is widely translated can be used effectively in a similar manner. The use and benefit of parallel texts, which can be easily made by learners themselves without computer skills, is often overlooked and undervalued by language-learners here on the forum.

People often ask here how they can make reading a more "active" activity. Similar to the Bible, widely translated books will have a lot that is written about them both in L1 and L2 to test comprehension and aid comprehension. In the US and most countries in the world, classic literature is taught, analyzed and annotated. The philosophy of Plato, Sophocles, classics of literature such as "Alice in Wonderland", "The Little Prince", the stories of Tolstoy, etc. ... these can be used with their translations to provide a shortcut, a bridge to, and a guided entry into consuming native literature. The analyses can be used to consolidate knowledge. Yes, translations are not native-generated prose or thoughts, but it will help a learner to make that leap a little more easily.

True, if all one reads in a language is translated literature, the learner will miss out on cultural acquisition and appreciation. Still adding in translated literature means that a learner has a bridge to more easily accessing that native literature. I can't start off learning a language by reading classics of its literature. To me, when I start learning a language, reading outside of, and alongside, a course helps me to more quickly acquire vocabulary and makes it easier for me to recognize grammar patterns and have the course illustrations of these concepts be more relevant to me. It serves as a jump-start to learning. There is no shame for a language-learner in starting to read with the help of a parallel text and a familiar piece of literature. The Bible can be a part of this as it is easily and freely accessible in a variety of languages and may be familiar to learners.

Some may perceive of this as "cheating", or as an unauthentic way of learning a language. It isn't. Using a familiar text, a parallel text, even familiar comic books and dubbed series, is a legitimate way to leverage knowledge to help someone to learn a language. As has been brought up by me and others, like emk, Cheat! Cheat brazenly! Cheat often!

[Longinus]

For me, the main advantage of religious texts is the availability not only of translations, but also audio versions of these translations. You can find them for lots of smaller languages. For example, in Albanian I have audio New Testaments in standard and in Geg, and an audio Quran. I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Quran as a learning resource, it's a nice size, and an audio version of each juz is about 30-40 minutes long, so it's easy to go through in the course of a month (there are 30 "juzes"; the Arabic plural is ajza, I think.)
And of course, for some ancient languages, religious texts are the only ones available, like Gothic or Pali or Pahlavi for example.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I second the comment about audio - I listened to Genesis in a number of languages a few months ago (in Russian, all five books). Where else do I find audio, free and legally, where I'm already fairly familiar with the content?