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Very much so.
Makes me wish I'd have spent my time in school more wisely instead of sitting around just getting by and daydreaming about blowing my brains out.
Never too old to start learning, though with language i've heard it is harder to learn as you age.
Makes me wish I'd have spent my time in school more wisely instead of sitting around just getting by and daydreaming about blowing my brains out.
Never too old to start learning, though with language i've heard it is harder to learn as you age.
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
You're still young enough, especially if you're like me and only study languages to be able to read them.
I've learned small amounts of german, spanish, and arabic. Most of what I still remember is spoken. As for writing and reading I know less.
Srontgorrth
Member
I'm really bad with learning new languages. In my second semester of Elementary German and it's taking up more of my time then anything else, even though I'm taking Psychopharmacology, Political Theory etc. Stupid Honors College language requirements... I think the language is pretty cool and so on, I just can't wrap my head around all of the grammar and so on.
Srontgorrth
Member
Both, pretty much. Some areas are easier than others, but it all just builds up to be a giant mess of...language.
Vimana
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One thing that has helped me when learning new sentence structures and grammar that are foreign to me is to try to recall every word in the sentence, then try to understand the meaning using the new grammar. It's hard at first to not try to reassemble it to fit the grammar you're familiar with, but if you persevere, it makes picking up new grammar easy as shit. One tip I have to make it easier to use the new grammar mentally is to say the meaning to yourself in your head or aloud with each word. You know it's working when it becomes easier not to rearrange the grammar in your head in order to understand the sentences.
Also, learning the basics of another language besides the one you're trying to learn can help considerably. I'd be struggling with Korean grammar right now if I never had the experience with putting the word "now" right after the subject in Chinese, and putting the verb at the end of the sentence or after the subject in Latin. The only new thing that hit me with Korean grammar was that prepositions like "to" are attached to the end of the noun. For example, if you say "I go to the town center," in Korean it's "I town center-to go." And with all my experience picking up basics from languages like Norwegian, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, French, and Italian, learning the mechanics of a new language is almost instant for me. Though, I understand it may not be as easy for others because I have been in a multilingual household for years, so that may have extended my "window" for learning new words easily.
Anyways, good luck with German.
Also, learning the basics of another language besides the one you're trying to learn can help considerably. I'd be struggling with Korean grammar right now if I never had the experience with putting the word "now" right after the subject in Chinese, and putting the verb at the end of the sentence or after the subject in Latin. The only new thing that hit me with Korean grammar was that prepositions like "to" are attached to the end of the noun. For example, if you say "I go to the town center," in Korean it's "I town center-to go." And with all my experience picking up basics from languages like Norwegian, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, French, and Italian, learning the mechanics of a new language is almost instant for me. Though, I understand it may not be as easy for others because I have been in a multilingual household for years, so that may have extended my "window" for learning new words easily.
Anyways, good luck with German.
Srontgorrth
Member
During the first semester there was a lot of sentence structure and whatnot, which I've gotten the grasp of pretty well (and the subsequent exceptions, rules et cetera). Maybe there's just too much info in too little time or something, I'm not sure.
The bright side is that I only 5 five weeks left, and my overall grade a couple weeks ago was an A (due to a bunch of extra credit), but just got the test back from last week and I got a 49% lol. The majority (out of 22) people got a D or an F, though...
Vimana
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I've heard German has ancient Indo-European-esque complexity, so I'm guessing it is no easy feat, especially if one has not been faced with that type of grammar before.
I will never think a (widely spoken) modern language is hard after making attempts at learning Sanskrit. If you want to feel like any widely spoken modern language is easy, try learning Sanskrit.
There are a few things that make it hard as shit.
- Nine verb conjugations in just the present tense. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that in the other tenses it's the same number of conjugations.
- Twenty-four ways a noun can be inflected. Three times for singular, dual, and plural, multiplied by eight for all the cases.
- Really complex sandhi. Basically, sounds are changed based on what one word ends with and the next one starts with. There are four kinds of it in Sanskrit. Vowel to vowel, consonant to consonant, consonant to vowel, and vowel to consonant. And from trying to memorize the charts, I'm fairly certain the change is different with each sound combination.
- Annoying consonant conjuncts involving r. Usually you can tell what the combined consonants are from putting the letters together, like स्व (sv), combination of स (s) and व (v). This is r र, and this is sr स्र. There is another r, like the one in English, but it is treated as a vowel.
- Sounds that don't exist in English. There are four t sounds and four d sounds. With practice, it isn't too hard to recognize them, but when speaking at any speed faster than really slow, they're easy to mix up. This also makes spelling harder, too.
- A tendency to combine words together. I don't mean compound words that make sense, like cannot. I mean combining all the words that could make up a sentence into one word.
I'm pretty sure this was tl;dr, so that proves how fucking frustrating of a language Sanskrit is. And that's really annoying, because most likely being the closest to proto-Indo-European, learning it could serve as a really good bridge to learning any Indo-European language. Hell, of all the Sanskrit words I learned, I couldn't find a single one that I couldn't relate to another Indo-European word.
I will never think a (widely spoken) modern language is hard after making attempts at learning Sanskrit. If you want to feel like any widely spoken modern language is easy, try learning Sanskrit.
There are a few things that make it hard as shit.
- Nine verb conjugations in just the present tense. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that in the other tenses it's the same number of conjugations.
- Twenty-four ways a noun can be inflected. Three times for singular, dual, and plural, multiplied by eight for all the cases.
- Really complex sandhi. Basically, sounds are changed based on what one word ends with and the next one starts with. There are four kinds of it in Sanskrit. Vowel to vowel, consonant to consonant, consonant to vowel, and vowel to consonant. And from trying to memorize the charts, I'm fairly certain the change is different with each sound combination.
- Annoying consonant conjuncts involving r. Usually you can tell what the combined consonants are from putting the letters together, like स्व (sv), combination of स (s) and व (v). This is r र, and this is sr स्र. There is another r, like the one in English, but it is treated as a vowel.
- Sounds that don't exist in English. There are four t sounds and four d sounds. With practice, it isn't too hard to recognize them, but when speaking at any speed faster than really slow, they're easy to mix up. This also makes spelling harder, too.
- A tendency to combine words together. I don't mean compound words that make sense, like cannot. I mean combining all the words that could make up a sentence into one word.
I'm pretty sure this was tl;dr, so that proves how fucking frustrating of a language Sanskrit is. And that's really annoying, because most likely being the closest to proto-Indo-European, learning it could serve as a really good bridge to learning any Indo-European language. Hell, of all the Sanskrit words I learned, I couldn't find a single one that I couldn't relate to another Indo-European word.
Srontgorrth
Member
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
Vimana
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It's true, you have to admit. The only benefit of learning Latin and Greek I can think of that is universal is allowing easier learning, use, and sometimes, invention of technical English vocabulary. This also applies to other languages in Europe, but I'm not going to list seeing as there are some that may use their own vocabulary to create more complex concepts rather than deriving from older words.
I have no doubt that spending time on Latin, ancient Greek, and Sanskrit have made it much easier for me to learn languages in general, but that's not a benefit most people need.
I have no doubt that spending time on Latin, ancient Greek, and Sanskrit have made it much easier for me to learn languages in general, but that's not a benefit most people need.
unknown
fuck ftagn
and you know...getting to learn about another culture that often happens from studying any language, reading that culture's literature in its original language and things like that.
Not to mention that translating is a fairly complex task and involves a lot of issues of ownership of text and what the translator is doing by the very act of translating a text from another language
Not to mention that translating is a fairly complex task and involves a lot of issues of ownership of text and what the translator is doing by the very act of translating a text from another language
zabu of nΩd
Free Insultation
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Are you saying that these perks of studying dead languages are ends in and of themselves, or do they serve some more important purpose? If it's the latter, you're being rather vague/incomplete about what that purpose is.
Vimana
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Not accusing you of this, Grant, but I don't think most people truly grasp the meaning of "dead language." A dead language is one whose words no one says anymore, that lacks any meaningful or visible influence on any modern language. Latin, ancient Greek, Sanskrit, old Persian, and old Norse do not really fall into that category. There are still parallels with the modern versions in the form of terms and phrases within that are directly taken from the languages from which they are descended. A dead language is something like Akkadian or Sumerian.
