Re: Classical Languages - Study Group
Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:58 pm
Exactly. I have had the same arguments over and over again. "Why do I have to learn the parts of the house or whatever? I want to read poetry". Well. you might as well find parts of the house (or animals, or plants, or tools) while reading poetry.
I usually counter with something on the lines: if you want to read Goethe in German, you learn German. It doesn't matter if you don't want to speak to Germans, or go to Germany, ever. It's the only way to practice and imbibe the grammar and vocabulary. You reach some kind of fluency first, then you go to the authors. You can have adapted readings meanwhile if you want a taste of those classics, that's great, whatever, but make sure you learn German. By applying a grammar method to a living language you make it as dead and dry as Latin or Greek are usually taught.
So it is not, really, a matter of "numbers of speakers", "no native speakers", but a matter of how we think of the language. Our mindset, our prejudices, our Weltanschauung (excuse my French ). The same could be applied to English. Even if Latin had millions of speakers today, rejecting active methods because they don't seem scientific enough is detrimental to our own learning, I think. (It's some kind of scientism, to put it in Hayekian terminology).
And of course, we have the historical example, which for Latin is often neglected, since most people only care about the Ancients. We have millions of books written in Latin, millions of people speaking in Latin for centuries after the language lacked any native speakers. Our own desire to read the Ancients and only the Ancients prevents us from actually reading them with ease and in our own terms.
We have the humanists writing Latin dialogues about going shopping, decks of cards and games, how to excuse yourself for not coming to class because you were ill... The humanists, I have realised, didn't have this quirks, so they learned, wrote, spoke, understood Latin. That's what makes the diference and what really separates us from any previous Latinist. How many people would consider teaching this kind of things in Latin class, right?
I usually counter with something on the lines: if you want to read Goethe in German, you learn German. It doesn't matter if you don't want to speak to Germans, or go to Germany, ever. It's the only way to practice and imbibe the grammar and vocabulary. You reach some kind of fluency first, then you go to the authors. You can have adapted readings meanwhile if you want a taste of those classics, that's great, whatever, but make sure you learn German. By applying a grammar method to a living language you make it as dead and dry as Latin or Greek are usually taught.
So it is not, really, a matter of "numbers of speakers", "no native speakers", but a matter of how we think of the language. Our mindset, our prejudices, our Weltanschauung (excuse my French ). The same could be applied to English. Even if Latin had millions of speakers today, rejecting active methods because they don't seem scientific enough is detrimental to our own learning, I think. (It's some kind of scientism, to put it in Hayekian terminology).
And of course, we have the historical example, which for Latin is often neglected, since most people only care about the Ancients. We have millions of books written in Latin, millions of people speaking in Latin for centuries after the language lacked any native speakers. Our own desire to read the Ancients and only the Ancients prevents us from actually reading them with ease and in our own terms.
We have the humanists writing Latin dialogues about going shopping, decks of cards and games, how to excuse yourself for not coming to class because you were ill... The humanists, I have realised, didn't have this quirks, so they learned, wrote, spoke, understood Latin. That's what makes the diference and what really separates us from any previous Latinist. How many people would consider teaching this kind of things in Latin class, right?