# Ancient languages: most challenging one



## JLanguage

Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Chinese, Egyptian or others, give your opinion. I'm especially interested in Sanskrit and Hindi just because the writing looks so fascinating to me as a native English speaker.

Hope to create an interesting discussion,
-Jonathan.


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## Whodunit

JLanguage said:
			
		

> Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Chinese, Egyptian or others, give your opinion. I'm especially interested in Sanskrit and Hindi just because the writing looks so fascinating to me as a native English speaker.
> 
> Hope to create an interesting discussion,
> -Jonathan.



Let me begin with Latin. It has 6 cases (5 you have to know), it's vocabulary is very large and sometimes not yet fully explored.

I don't know Ancient Greek, Aramaic, Chinese, hieroglyphes, not even Hindi and Sanskrit.

But once I started to learn Hebrew. I was fascinated in these "circular-rectangular" characters. But I've never studied its grammar. Maybe I can do it later. So I don't know how hard it'll be.


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## JJchang

Ancient Chinese looks exactly the same as traditional Chinese. but it doesn't have those colloquial interference such as having zi 子 at the end of certain nouns (so you don't have to worry about why "house" has zi but "door" doesn't), or sometimes the counting adjectives 個 枝 隻 張 把 條.... so I think it's easier for foreigners to understand. The problem is although it is not too difficult to understand ancient Chinese, it's extremely difficult to compose in it.
Try google "san zi jing" (13th century) for a start if you are wondering what I'm talking about. Then you can move on to more advanced ancient Chinese.


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## JLanguage

Biblical Hebrew in my opinion, isn't that hard especially since it's similar to modern Hebrew. I don't know about writing Biblical Hebrew, since that isn't done except as an academic exercise, if at all.


I'm in my first year of studying Latin and it isn't that hard to learn the basics, but mastering Latin is really hard. In order to master it, you'd have to have memorized all the different case endings, verb conjugations and other rules of inflection. I'm not sure I'm going to be able understand Vergil in four years.

Classical Arabic is supposedly pretty tough, and I'm sure it would take at least a few years of intense study for an average non-Arabic native to understand the Koran. 

As for writing Ancient Chinese, writing any ancient language is tough, but maybe Chinese is especially hard.


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## roxy_gurl

i like heiroglyphics because first of all it is the only language that i actually know a little of among all the others that you mentioned and also because the letters are so interesting and they look like little pictures.  however this is just my own opinion, but i still think it is an interesting language


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## Lakeview

JLanguage said:
			
		

> Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Chinese, Egyptian or others, give your opinion. I'm especially interested in Sanskrit and Hindi just because the writing looks so fascinating to me as a native English speaker.
> 
> Hope to create an interesting discussion,
> -Jonathan.



Hindi isn't really an ancient language, so you can narrow your focus a bit more .


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## elroy

Yeah...what exactly is our gauge to determine which languages classify as "ancient"?

Classical Arabic is extremely difficult, but is it an ancient language?  Sure, it's old but it's very much alive and used today in almost every aspect of life (except for everyday oral exchanges), in which sense it is unique among most of the "ancient languages."

So it it ancient, modern, both, or neither???


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## avalon2004

Ancient Greek is quite hard, but probably not as much as the other languages mentioned (except Latin). I've found with Greek it's easier to get to grips with the modern variation(s) of the language first before studying the Ancient form as that way you don't get completely thrown in at the deep end (Greek grammar/spelling has been simplified since the times of Plato and Socrates!)


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## vachecow

Lakeview said:
			
		

> Hindi isn't really an ancient language, so you can narrow your focus a bit more .


Yes...I actually have a friend who speaks it....anyway, I know from personal experience that Latin is easier than both Hebrew and ancient Greek.  Or at least thats my oppinion...


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## JLanguage

vachecow said:
			
		

> Yes...I actually have a friend who speaks it....anyway, I know from personal experience that Latin is easier than both Hebrew and ancient Greek. Or at least thats my oppinion...


 
I know that Hindi isn't an ancient language, I was simply saying before that I find the alphabet very interesting. I was ambiguous, I know. Now aboout Classical Arabic, that is the language of the Qu'ran, correct? There are still people that speak it? Well then I guess it doesn't qualify as an Ancient Language. And really when I said ancient language, I also meant that the language should no longer be actively used, a dead language. In this case, I think that Anglo-Saxon would qualify, but not something like Classical Arabic.


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## Outsider

roxy_gurl said:
			
		

> i like heiroglyphics because first of all it is the only language that i actually know a little of among all the others that you mentioned and also because the letters are so interesting and they look like little pictures.


You mean ancient Egyptian...   
By the way, the modern descendent of Egyptian is Coptic. It seems to be an endangered language.


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## elroy

JLanguage said:
			
		

> I know that Hindi isn't an ancient language, I was simply saying before that I find the alphabet very interesting. I was ambiguous, I know. Now aboout Classical Arabic, that is the language of the Qu'ran, correct? There are still people that speak it? Well then I guess it doesn't qualify as an Ancient Language. And really when I said ancient language, I also meant that the language should no longer be actively used, a dead language. In this case, I think that Anglo-Saxon would qualify, but not something like Classical Arabic.



Classical Arabic isn't spoken except in very formal registers - such as the news, for example.  Also, any foreign TV show that is dubbed is dubbed into classical Arabic.  So it's kind of in-between, in a way.


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## JLanguage

elroy said:
			
		

> Classical Arabic isn't spoken except in very formal registers - such as the news, for example. Also, any foreign TV show that is dubbed is dubbed into classical Arabic. So it's kind of in-between, in a way.


 
I didn't know it would be so difficult to determine what is and what isn't an ancient/dead language!


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## Outsider

Varieties of Arabic.
Studying Arabic.


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## elroy

JLanguage said:
			
		

> I didn't know it would be so difficult to determine what is and what isn't an ancient/dead language!



The study of languages is more complex than meets the eye!


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## esper

I would say that what is easy or difficult depends a lot on what your mother tongue is. Like, for me ancient greek is a lot more "accessible" than latin - let alone ancient chinese! I guess it's the other way around for "romance" language speakers - latin is far more familiar to them. Furthermore, personally I wouldn't classify ancient greek, latin, chinese and so forth as "dead" languages. To me, they are languages that have evolved into a new form. Perhaps in 200 years' time Shakespear's english will sound as ancient as Plato's greek but it'll still be english!


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## Alijsh

For me these three sisters: Avestan, Sanskrit and Old Persian.


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## HKK

I can assure you: for an "Indo-European", Arabic is more difficult than Latin and Greek together, both in grammar and vocabulary.


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## palomnik

I've tried my hand at a number of ancient languages over the years, from Old Irish to Mayan hieroglyphics. Personally, I still find the one that was easiest - and most satisfying, at least so far - was Greek, more so than Latin in both respects. People are scared away from Greek (and other dead languages) by the different alphabet, which should not be a major consideration.

Elroy, while I agree that MSA is basically the same as Classical Arabic, there's a world of difference between trying to read al Hariri and the daily newspaper, and I'd include Arabic as a qualified member of the Ancient Language Association.

I found reading Classical Chinese perhaps the most thrilling ancient language to deal with, but mainly because it meant dealing with a world so far away - in time, space, and aesthetic values - from my own, so there were a large number of subjective factors involved. Be advised though that most (but not all) studies of the Classical idiom expect that you already know modern Chinese.

Most material in Mayan hieroglyphics consists of little beyond short inscriptions; the only literary material that has come to us was written down in the roman alphabet after the European invasion. However, the process of learning to read the hieroglyphics themselves is an exercise in the potentials of human aesthetics; in many ways it is the most involved script ever devised, not the least because the scribes "played" with the script in a variety of interesting ways that our modern culture would consider to be couterproductive to establishing clarity of expression.

I'm working on Sanskrit now. The grammatical resemblances to Classical Greek are intriguing, although I'm still too early in the process to appreciate the literature on its own merit. Sanskrit seems to me to present some tremendous initial hurdles, such as the _sandhi _system and the elaborate verbal conjugations, which disguise the fact that the language can be surprisingly straightforward when you actually start reading it.


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## Alijsh

palomnik said:


> I've tried my hand at a number of ancient languages over the years, from Old Irish to Mayan hieroglyphics. Personally, I still find the one that was easiest - and most satisfying, at least so far - was Greek, more so than Latin in both respects. People are scared away from Greek (and other dead languages) by the different alphabet, which should not be a major consideration.


Since you've tried a number of ancient languages I'd like to know your opinion:

As far as I see, the topic starter wanted to know which ancient language(s) you are interested in, and not which ancient language(s) you find harder or easier. 

Now, do you still say Greek? Is it the most interesting ancient language for you? By the way, have you tried Sanskrit? I'm personally interested in Avestan, Sanskrit and Old Persian because of their structure. As a side point, there have been suggestions to use Sanskrit as a metalanguage for knowledge representation in e.g. machine translation [source]


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## palomnik

Ali, the ancient languages I've studied that most interested me were Greek and Chinese, not necessarily in that order. The one that I find most "challenging" in terms of difficulty is still Latin, oddly enough. I find reading Classical Latin to be too much like doing a word puzzle, as if Latin writers tried to achieve too many effects with illogical word order. I've always been bemused by the cult of Latin clarity. Greek, on the other hand, seems to drive the reader onward, providing reading that is gripping, clear and subtle all at once. And the ability of Classical Chinese to pack so mch meaning into so few words, and do it with so much precision and serenity, always amazes me.

I'm working on Sanskrit now, although I don't know it well enough to make an intelligent judgment on it compared with other languages or whether it's fit to be a "metalanguage", although I've heard that argument before.  I find its extensive use of the middle voice, ergativity and tendency to make compound words interesting, though, and similar in many respects to Greek.


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## Lugubert

I suppose that the thread refers to languages that can be learned. Otherwise, for challenges, there's the language of the Indus-Sarasvati culture, from which we have just short inscriptions on seals, so that we can't even tell if it's Indo-European or Dravidian or something quite different.

I don't have an opinion on Ancient Egyptian, but I think that Sumerian is a very demanding language.

On the languages mentioned in the OP, I have tried Classical Arabic and found it difficult. But some ancient texts were less troublesome to me that some contemporary examples.

I'm not into older Chinese yet, but I'm aware of 


			
				palomnik said:
			
		

> the ability of Classical Chinese to pack so mch meaning into so few words, and do it with so much precision and serenity, always amazes me.


I'm quite impatient to dig into it, in late autumn this year.

Hindi can't be compared to Sanskrit. Their syntaxes belong to different worlds. For Sanskrit, the immense number of forms is a huge obstacle. A verb root can theoretically have some 720 different forms - person, gender, number, tense, mode etc. quickly add up.

If I were to go for an easier ancient language (easier for a European, that is), I might pick Latin or Greek, or perhaps Old Church Slavonic.


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## sinclair001

There is a very recently discovered language named linear B, described by Michael Ventris
http://www.varchive.org/dag/decipher.htm
"The Mycenaean World", por John Chadwick. *Scientific American* 1977; 236 (2): pp. 130

Is possible to date to know about coptic, 
http://www.stshenouda.com/Society/socp05.htm

Relationship between coptic and egyptian:
"After 400 AD, the *Egyptian* language was written in the Greek alphabet, with the addition of several extra letters to represent *Egyptian* sounds that didn't exist in Greek. This form of *Egyptian* is called *Coptic*, and was in turn eventually replaced by Arabic, the language spoken in Egypt today. The *ancient* *Egyptian* tongue died out -- only the hieroglyphics remain to remind us that it ever existed."
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...om+ancient+egyptian&hl=es&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=co

BTW: Champollion knowledge on coptic allow him to discover the meaning of the hyeroglyphics, using the word ra for sun and linking to the pictogram.


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## Lugubert

sinclair001 said:


> BTW: Champollion knowledge on coptic allow him to discover the meaning of the hyeroglyphics, using the word ra for sun and linking to the pictogram.


I won't ever belittle Champollion's research, but I must mention the Swedish diplomat Johan David Åkerblad. His work included much interpretation of the Demotic script on the Rosetta stone, and proof that the Coptic language had roots in Ancient Egyptian. Champollion built a nice structure on Åkerblad's foundations.


> There is a very recently discovered language named linear B, described by Michael Ventris
> http://www.varchive.org/dag/decipher.htm
> "The Mycenaean World", por John Chadwick. *Scientific American* 1977; 236 (2): pp. 130


If you haven't already, do read John Chadwick: _The Decipherment of Linear B_. "Very recently": weeell, that book is (c) 1958, and the breakthough _Documents in Mycenaean Greek _by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick was published in 1956.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Lugubert said:


> I suppose that the thread refers to languages that can be learned. Otherwise, for challenges, there's the language of the Indus-Sarasvati culture, from which we have just short inscriptions on seals, so that we can't even tell if it's Indo-European or Dravidian or something quite different.


 
It is not even sure if those inscriptions refer to a language in the first place: this always has been an assumption, not a conclusion! 


> not one of the thousands of articles or books written on the topic since the 1870s included any systematic justification for the belief that the inscriptions were in fact linguistic.


(More information on the website of S. Farmer, a comparative historian who often works together with Indologist M. Witzel.)

This pdf-file might be interesting, and for people who still want to deciphere the script(?), this announcement (a $10,000 reward) might be an encouragement .

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Lugubert

Frank06 said:


> It is not even sure if those inscriptions refer to a language in the first place: this always has been an assumption, not a conclusion!


I have often thought that the seal inscriptions are just names and addresses, but it is of course possible that they are, but non-linguistic symbols: "The tall man living in district 4, block Lion, house Goat" etc.



> not one of the thousands of articles or books written on the topic since the 1870s included any systematic justification for the belief that the inscriptions were in fact linguistic.


I must admit that I haven't seen mentioned earlier that they aren't, either.



> (More information on the website of S. Farmer, a comparative historian who often works together with Indologist M. Witzel.)


Thanks! I have great respect for Witzel's knowledge and tenaciousness when debunking frauds (like here) and correcting misunderstandnings.


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## e.ma

Don't you think those Indus signs look like some kind of pictographic writing? Have they been compared to ancient Chinese signs rather than to those of southeastern Europe?
I would say they _are_ writing, but maybe writing concepts or symbols instead of sounds.

I would like to say that for we European people is quite challenging to study non-alphabetic languages (ancient or modern, dead or alive), since they convey a very different way of thinking things.


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## Lugubert

e.ma said:


> Don't you think those Indus signs look like some kind of pictographic writing? Have they been compared to ancient Chinese signs rather than to those of southeastern Europe?
> I would say they _are_ writing, but maybe writing concepts or symbols instead of sounds.
> 
> I would like to say that for we European people is quite challenging to study non-alphabetic languages (ancient or modern, dead or alive), since they convey a very different way of thinking things.


I see no more than chance resemblance to old Chinese writings. The Indus valley set is (too) often compared to Easter Island signs, and drawings of the respective sets are compared. Some signs look really similar then. The people who made the drawings may have been inclined to enhance any resemblances, but if you're lucky enough to find real photos, you'll realize that it's more like chance's play again. It's for example not very original for a pictographic script to have a symbol that looks like a man.


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## e.ma

Thank you for your sage contribution, Lugubert. After your post, I'll search for information on Easter Island signs. Those early scripts open a way to an early stage of language/thinking which I'm finding to be the most challenging of all language-involving aspects!

To the thread: could undeciphered languages (tracked through their remaining signs) be the most challenging of all?


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## Lugubert

e.ma said:


> To the thread: could undeciphered languages (tracked through their remaining signs) be the most challenging of all?


Of course! For one of those, maybe belonging to the category "is it a script?", there's the Phaistos Disc


> No object directly comparable to the Phaistos Disc has been found.


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## Whodunit

e.ma said:


> To the thread: could undeciphered languages (tracked through their remaining signs) be the most challenging of all?


 
I don't think your question is very clear. What do you mean by _challenging_? Of course, they are the most _challenging_ languages in terms of studying, because if it isn't deciphered yet, you obviously can't study it.


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## Lugubert

Whodunit said:


> I don't think your question is very clear. What do you mean by _challenging_? Of course, they are the most _challenging_ languages in terms of studying, because if it isn't deciphered yet, you obviously can't study it.


We can't study those languages as such directly, but we might find a method to decipher their scripts, and thus get access to the languages. Ventris and Chadwick managed Linear B, Champollion using Åkerblad's pioneering elucidated hieroglyphs. Some day, somebody might find a blingual inscription (or wahtever) which solves yet another mystery.


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## e.ma

I think undeciphered languages can only be "studied", and not "learned". I go for it.


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## mataripis

e.ma said:


> I think undeciphered languages can only be "studied", and not "learned". I go for it.


Undeciphered languages/scripts  hold the meaning with least importance.and i agree it can be studied and not learned, the past lessons from dead language is enough for all present age people to determine what are the errors done by early people that must be avoided in our time. The three major ancient languages 1.)Greek 2.) latin and 3.)Sanskrit  evolved and prevailed and influence most of the world languages today because of the depth and great wisdom of early people who used them in communicating with Holy Creator and well mannered people.


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## Sobakus

In my opinion one of the most diffucult IE classic languages for an average European is Old Slavonic. It presents the learner with all the difficulties that Russian does like perfectness and palatalisation, but has at least two times more declension types, all the typical IE tenses like aorist and perfect, one more number and loads of other exciting stuff. It's definitely much harder than Latin.


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## koniecswiata

Certainly Summerian and Elamite pose a big challenge.  Maybe they will never even be sufficiently decyphered.


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## paulbrevik

I enjoy my studies in Old Icelandic. Its grammar is more difficult, I would say, than modern Icelandic, and the original runic alphabet doesn't make it easier. But as for the most difficult, I would have to say sanskrit or old persian, because of their extremely complex script and equally complex grammar.


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## sotos

palomnik said:


> from Greek (and other dead languages) .



Greek is not a "dead language" as it is still spoken. Even the ancient greek is daily used in the Church.


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## mataripis

i think it is better to familiarize first to rural forms of language in every nation because the ancient terms are still existing with them. I believe the ancient words are related to some words in languages in rural/isolated areas. The changes in every language developed out of new belief and system they adopted from other cultures or incoming new ideas.i read in some articles that ancient people long time ago were able to communicate with one another even they belong to far places or with thousand miles distance between their origin/place and there is a possiblity that the root words of many words are almost the same or related and they were able to pick up their similarities and help them understand one another.


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## berndf

sotos said:


> Greek is not a "dead language" as it is still spoken. Even the ancient greek is daily used in the Church.


Classical and Koine Greek still are "dead" languages in the sense that they have no native speakers.


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## gibouille

I've heard Armenian is quite subtle to master. Never tried that myself.


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## ireney

Well, in partial defense of sotos (ancient Greek is obviously dead), he may be trying to make a point: English is English, German is German and so on and so forth, why should the language Greeks are speaking be _modern _Greek? I personally just don't think it an issue really, but, if that's what he's talking about, I cannot exactly fault him.


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## berndf

ireney said:


> Well, in partial defense of sotos (ancient Greek is obviously dead), he may be trying to make a point: English is English, German is German and so on and so forth, why should the language Greeks are speaking be _modern _Greek? I personally just don't think it an issue really, but, if that's what he's talking about, I cannot exactly fault him.


Yes, absolutely. By comment has targeted at his second sentence (_Even the ancient greek is daily used in the Church_).


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## dkarjala

JLanguage said:


> Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Chinese, Egyptian or others, give your opinion. I'm especially interested in Sanskrit and Hindi just because the writing looks so fascinating to me as a native English speaker.
> 
> Hope to create an interesting discussion,
> -Jonathan.



In terms of dead languages, I've studied Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, Classical Arabic a bit of Sanskrit, Hittite and a dash of Middle Egyptian. I have to say, the one language that really overwhelmed me was Sanskrit, in terms of acquiring mastery of the inflection. 

Sanskrit has 8 productive cases, singular plural and dual for all persons, subjunctive and optative moods - it has forms in all the 'slots' that are 'missing' in Greek, Latin, etc. Plus, you have to learn the sandhi rules for each combination of letters, and allophonic variation in Sanskrit is treated, and written, as a phonemic change, sort of like what you have in Celtic languages. I can't speak to Chinese or more obscurely _written_ languages, but to me, Sanskrit is *the* daunting synthetic language _par excellence._

I took the path of Arabic and didn't have time to wrestle with Sanskrit but it's on the shelf, staring me down menacingly and someday I hope to return.


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## palomnik

sotos said:


> Greek is not a "dead language" as it is still spoken. Even the ancient greek is daily used in the Church.



Quite true, Sotos, and I stand corrected. One of the nice features of learning classical Greek is that it is relatively easy to learn to read modern Katharevousa.


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## Hulalessar

sotos said:


> Greek is not a "dead language" as it is still spoken. Even the ancient greek is daily used in the Church.




Rightly or wrongly, when English speakers use the word "Greek" they often, if not usually, mean (in the case of language) Ancient Greek and (in the case of people) the Ancient Greeks. The language spoken in Greece today is often described as Modern Greek to make it clear that it is not Ancient Greek that is meant. "He knows Latin and Greek" can only be taken to refer to Ancient Greek; few people would say: "He knows Latin and Ancient Greek". If a local authority offers evening classes it will in its prospectus specify "Modern Greek" if that it is what is on offer. I googled "university course Greek" and the first site to come up was Glasgow. The course is entitled "Greek" and it says: "Greek involves the study of classical Greek language and literature and ancient Greek civilisation". Accordingly if anyone says "Greek is a dead language" they mean no more than that "Ancient Greek, like Latin, is a dead language".


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## Perseas

Hulalessar said:


> Rightly or wrongly, when English speakers use the word "Greek" they  often, if not usually, mean (in the case of language) Ancient Greek and  (in the case of people) the Ancient Greeks. The language spoken in  Greece today is often described as Modern Greek to make it clear that it  is not Ancient Greek that is meant.


If I ask someone "Do you speak Greek?", I think he will understand "Modern Greek", though.


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## Hulalessar

Perseas said:


> If I ask someone "Do you speak Greek?", I think he will understand "Modern Greek", though.



Obviously. It all depends on context. Few people these days gossip in Attic!


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## Rethliopuks

I did not finish reading but I want to mention that you'll need to rely on *Chinese charaters* as to learn ancient chinese. Using romanization of modern Chinese languages can be sometimes torturing, whatever the language(e.g. Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Minnan, Min-tung, Hakka, Hsiang, Gan) you choose. 
This is because what you can read and learn is most likely the Written Ancient Chinese, whose standard was first established in between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago. In those times Chinese' in pronunciation is believed to be very different from our usual recognition, much more difficult and also greatly free from homophones. Moreover, people use a writing system that conveys meanings more than sounds so their writings were further more based on meanings. Although you'll find as time passed the language used constantly changed and became increasingly easier to understand(in perspective of modern Chinese), still don't even try to solely adhere on romanization all the way.


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## biala

JLanguage said:


> Biblical Hebrew in my opinion, isn't that hard especially since it's similar to modern Hebrew. I don't know about writing Biblical Hebrew, since that isn't done except as an academic exercise, if at all.
> .



Biblical Hebrew is written and printed now exactly like modern Hebrew. In the  biblical times (first temple period) the letters were different. The letters we are using today (including for printing the bible) are derived from Arramaic (or "Ashuric" -Assyrian) letters which were adopted as far as I know during second temple era. They look different from the more ancient ones but their names (alef, beit, gimel...) are quite similar. Today they look like that:  הן נראות כך 
or in handwriting:הן נראות כך
In the medieval days there was a printing script called "ktav rashi": כךנראה כתב רש"י


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## Time traveler

I think the answer to the thread's question depends on the answer to two personal questions - What is your first language? If you are a Greek speaker, the answer is probably Ancient Greek as they are still very similar. If you speak one of the Romance languages, then probably Latin followed by Ancient Greek will be easiest. I don't know for certain, but I suspect if Hindi is your first language you would find Sanskrit easiest.  I will get to English below, as that is my first language and the answer is not intuitive. The other question is - What ancient language did the person first learn? If you first learn Greek, it will be easier to pick up Latin than if your first ancient language was Sumerian or Old Norse or Gaelic. This also seems apparent to me.

I am a native English speaker. I have spent now about 6 years studying Homeric Greek, about 8 mos. Latin and Old English and somewhere along the way looked at Modern Gk. for about 6 mos. Almost forgot, high school French for 6 years a long time ago, but I retain the basics and some vocabulary. 

It might seem ironic at first, but I find learning Old English MUCH more difficult than Ancient Greek. Latin is by far the easiest of the three to pick up. I presume that is because of the two reasons I started with above. First, the root words in Latin and Ancient Greek look much more like Modern English than Old English does. When I first started learning Ancient Greek I compared the first 21 lines of The Iliad with the first 21 lines of Beowulf in OE to determine which had more easily recognizable English roots. I found 20 something words in Homer that were immediately familiar to me (I forget it if it was 21 or 27), but only a few words in Beowulf (perhaps as few as 2 - hard to remember). So, even as a beginner, Ancient Greek words were far more familiar to me than Old English words. When I started Latin at the same time I started OE, I found no comparison at all. Latin words are just very familiar to English speakers as so many are used in our language that come directly through Latin or filtered through French.  

Second, Latin is easier for me because I already learned Ancient Greek. I can't unlearn Greek and test it, of course, but the similarities between Greek and Latin (for obvious reasons) make this seem quite evident to me.  

After all of that, to answer the question directly, if you are a native English speaker, Latin will be easiest to pick up and even easier if you first learn Ancient Greek.


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## Tamsin31

I really don't know.  Even though I have ok knowledge of German with many gaps, Old High German looks very different and probably would'nt be any easier to learn than Old English.  The same goes for any kind of Old Low German such as Old Saxon.


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## virrkoe

While it is true that very many ancient languages have long gone dead, there is one very ancient language, which is considered to have provided the root for 30 or 40 languages, still alive and vibrant and  spoken in Southern part of India cannot be forgotten or ignored. The language is called Thamizh. Dr Caldwell has rated this as one of the very highly developed languages. This even predates Sanskrit. A large number of surnames in Europe have stark resemblance with the names found in ancient Thamizh names. The Spanish surname "Nadal" in Thamizh means "Rule the Country/Nation" indirectly it means king or emperor. At present "Nadal" may not even mean anything because of lack of etymology. Similarly "Federer" can be a derivative of "Vaettarayar" which again means "desirable king".


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## Barsac

The Spanish surname "Nadal" means Christmas, Natalis in Latin, Noël in French.

One possible origin of the name "Federer" comes from the german word "Feder", meaning Feather. Possibly somebody who used a feather to write...


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## berndf

Barsac said:


> One possible origin of the name "Federer" comes from the german word "Feder", meaning Feather. Possibly somebody who used a feather to write...


The name is indeed related to_ Feder=feather_. It is a name derived from an occupation/profession like Smith, Baker, Cartwright or Cooper. A _Federer _can either be a merchant who trades in feathers or a poultry farmer (source).



virrkoe said:


> A large number of surnames in Europe have stark  resemblance with the names found in ancient Thamizh names.


Pure resemblance means next to nothing, if taken out of context.


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## virrkoe

Dear Mataripis Sir! 

    How do you ignore Thamizh (Tamil) from the list of the major ancient languages? Kindly be aware that Thamizh is considered to predate Sanskrit, the only difference being Thamizh is still spoken by a very large diaspora, thus making it one of the most ancient languages that has not long gone dead like a few others. I would suggest kindly read on Caldwell, Marraimalai Adigalh and Thaevanaeyap Paavaanhar on the theories about the long history of Thamizh language dating back to the period of Kumarik kanhdam (Big land mass of Kumari) that is supposed to have existed above sea to the south of present South India and Sri Lanka. I feel strongly that many surnames and some first names as well as titles like Nadal, Vettori/Vittori, Elina/Erin/Caroline/Carolina, Raikkonen, Vettel, Roy, Vladimir/Volodamer, Sharapova, Chevalier, Catholic, Daniel etc have a very strong affinity to the Thamizh roots.


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## virrkoe

Sirs! The word "Feder"=Feather can also, as an epithet,  mean a leader or a king of a clan who sports one or more feathers in his cap as a mark of a victor. This practice of wearing feathers did exist since ancient times which probably gave  the idiom "adding a feather in the cap". This practice and and explanation goes along with affinity explained earlier in my post.


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## His Grace

virrkoe said:


> Dear Mataripis Sir!
> 
> How do you ignore Thamizh (Tamil) from the list of the major ancient languages? Kindly be aware that Thamizh is considered to predate Sanskrit, the only difference being Thamizh is still spoken by a very large diaspora, thus making it one of the most ancient languages that has not long gone dead like a few others. I would suggest kindly read on Caldwell, Marraimalai Adigalh and Thaevanaeyap Paavaanhar on the theories about the long history of Thamizh language dating back to the period of Kumarik kanhdam (Big land mass of Kumari) that is supposed to have existed above sea to the south of present South India and Sri Lanka. I feel strongly that many surnames and some first names as well as titles like Nadal, Vettori/Vittori, Elina/Erin/Caroline/Carolina, Raikkonen, Vettel, Roy, Vladimir/Volodamer, Sharapova, Chevalier, Catholic, Daniel etc have a very strong affinity to the Thamizh roots.



Kindly be aware that according to *actual scholars* Tamil evolved at least one millennium (one thousand years) after the development of Vedic Sanskrit, and also that according to *actual scholars*, Tamil is in no way linguistically related to European languages. The Dravidian languages are their own linguistic group, and Sanskrit is older than all the Dravidian languages. 

And if you're referring to Bishop Robert Caldwell, kindly be aware that he was a nineteenth-century linguist. It has been over half a century since Marraimalai Adigal. Please refer to modern scholars and not biased sources like yourself.


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## aruniyan

His Grace said:


> Kindly be aware that according to *actual scholars* Tamil evolved at least one millennium (one thousand years) after the development of Vedic Sanskrit, and also that according to *actual scholars*, Tamil is in no way linguistically related to European languages. The Dravidian languages are their own linguistic group, and Sanskrit is older than all the Dravidian languages.
> 
> And if you're referring to Bishop Robert Caldwell, kindly be aware that he was a nineteenth-century linguist. It has been over half a century since Marraimalai Adigal. Please refer to modern scholars and not biased sources like yourself.



To me, Vedic Sanskrit is a myth and there is no proper translations available to the vedas. The Vedas are mantric words, ie. normal words encoded to maintain its sacredness, which got corrupted as there was no writing during its creation period. No records to prove this language is spoken by any section of people. The Avesta is another Mantric language formed for the same reason from existing persian normal languages.

Its another complete myth that old Dravidian is not related to European languages. 

My idea is that the whole world used the same Technology to create words and so its normal they all look similar and spread more faster than we think of.


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## His Grace

aruniyan said:


> To me, Vedic Sanskrit is a myth and there is no proper translations available to the vedas. The Vedas are mantric words, ie. normal words encoded to maintain its sacredness, which got corrupted as there was no writing during its creation period. No records to prove this language is spoken by any section of people. The Avesta is another Mantric language formed for the same reason from existing persian normal languages.
> 
> Its another complete myth that old Dravidian is not related to European languages.
> 
> My idea is that the whole world used the same Technology to create words and so its normal they all look similar and spread more faster than we think of.



Modern linguists do not support this opinion. Do you have any facts to support yours?


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## Copperknickers

JLanguage said:


> Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Chinese, Egyptian or others, give your opinion. I'm especially interested in Sanskrit and Hindi just because the writing looks so fascinating to me as a native English speaker.
> 
> Hope to create an interesting discussion,
> -Jonathan.



I think Ancient Greek is by far the easiest of all of them. Its actually more similar in some ways to the Germanic language family than Latin, and has a slightly more intuitive syntax (although more complex grammar). 

Sanskrit has very complex grammar and syntax. I've never tried any Semitic languages, though I imagine they're a lot more difficult not being Indo-European languages.


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