Does anyone here speak a dead language?

[BurtWorm]

And I don't mean proper English, you snobs! ;)

I've been teaching myself Latin, courtesy of the Cambridge Latin Course. Don't ask me to show you what I've learned because it isn't settling in their very securely. I'm doing it mainly for the pleasure of reading (one day, I hope) the thoughts of a 2,000 year old mind, like Cicero, Ovid or Lucretius. But it's hard! The tenses I can deal with, but all those cases and declensions! As they say in another allegedly dead language, oy!

[Book Lover]

1. If you are interested

I can recommend "Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency" by John Traupman (ISBN 0-86516-381-2; www.bolchazy.com) as a good way to gain familiarity with the vocabulary and sentence structure.

As for myself, I have studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sanskrit and Assyrian. It's like potato chips; once you start...

[BurtWorm]

2. Thanks for that tip.

I'm reading English Grammar for Learners of Latin on the side, to try to reinforce my sense of syntax. I would like to be conversational in it. It's hard to believe anyone ever was. Of course I think what we learn is the literary form. The spoken form must have been a bit different.

[Book Lover]

5. Excellent book

I used the English Grammar book in my first class, and it was a real aid. And yes, Latin is usually studied to be read, not spoken, though I imagine there are societies that promote speaking and writing Latin among its members.

[miss_kitty]

41. used to be the catholics-et cum spirit tu tuo

dominos and biscuits. amen.

[KeepItReal]

3. Sanskrit got me into trouble once...

Danced with this knockout girl at a local hotspot...asked her to give me the digits by writing them on my cellphone's PDA screen with the stylus.

Looking at her illegible handwriting, I said (without thinking) "What is this, sanskrit??"

She was not amused.

[DrWeird]

4. My mom teaches Latin.

In fact, she started a literary journal for people who want to publish original work in Latin.

She also "speaks" ancient Greek, and Sanskrit.

[Book Lover]

6. How cool!

May I ask the name of the journal?

[lakemonster11]

7. Greek and Latin

I've been taking Ancient Greek for a few years, and I'm about to start my second year of Latin.

[timtom]

8. The Firesign Theater

has a segment of one of the guys reciting some Latin on the album, "Dear Friends." Most recitations I've heard (and I studied Latin in junior high school and in college) were done with no thought to the phonology of the language.

But the FST's rendering sounds pretty much like Classical Latin might very well sound. (The r's are trilled slightly, for example.)

[OldEurope]

9. Ceterum censeo regnum Bushium esse delendam.

:crazy:

[BurtWorm]

30. I'm not up to that part yet.

But if you're saying what I think you're saying, ita vero!

[JSJ]

10. i speak the language of truth nt

[rasputin1952]

11. LOL...good one...I speak English, and bush is trying his damndest...

to kill it....:)

[soothsayer]

12. Latin for this grrrl

Excellent language. German has the same sentence structure as Latin, so if you get one down, the other is pretty easy. Except I think only Latin has the ablative.

[Kellanved]

13. yup

Translating the ablative into German can be difficult. The standard "durch" (through) translation is considerd bad style.

[BurtWorm]

24. All right!

Ablative!

:thumbsup:

[BiggJawn]

14. I am proficient in Morse Code.

Fewer and fewer people converse in this language every day. It's not taught in schools anymore,INCLUDING the Army's signal School, Boy Scouts don't know it, and it's not a requirement for a maritime radio operator's license.

[BurtWorm]

34. Do you go to Morse Code conversation hours to keep it fluent?

:hi:

[eyesroll]

15. I know a bit of esperanto, which was never really a live language

to begin with...

Sometime I need to sit through the Shatner movie in Esperanto, which I do own but haven't watched yet...

[Magrittes Pipe]

16. I speak Sumerian.

No, I don't.

[Mandate My Ass]

17. I took five semesters of it in college

We read Ovid's Metamorphosis the final semester (the highlights anyway). I loved it.

It starts to make sense when you reach critical mass. You're just not there yet. You won't be sorry if you stick with it.

I've always regretted not keeping up with it, especially since I heard they're hiring Latin tutors at my niece's prep school and paying $50/hr. It might be time to hit the books again.

[Samurai_Writer]

18. I speak Elvish...

does that count? I read and write Latin, having grown up going to catholic school, but don't speak it.

[BurtWorm]

25. How much Latin do you read and write?

quantus latinum legis scriptisque?

(Ut videre potis, ego paucum latinum scribo.) :shrug:

[LibLabUK]

19. Cool!

"I've been teaching myself Latin, courtesy of the Cambridge Latin Course"

Caecilius est pater.

We used the CLC at school, it was an excellent way of learning Latin.

[BurtWorm]

26. Matella est mater.

Grumio est coquo!

[Screaming Lord Byron]

20. Gaelic.

Nah, not really. No-one speaks Gaelic.
It's a dead language, y'know.

[Mrs. Overall]

21. Yes! I taught Latin at the high school level

and have also studied Ancient Greek.

I am in the process of deciding whether to return to graduate school
and study Latin or perhaps Old (Beowulf) and Middle (Chaucer) English.

Dead languages are the best!!

[Texasgal]

22. I speak Persian

Which is no longer used.

[BurtWorm]

27. How about Farsi?

When did Persian become Farsi?

[Texasgal]

37. Farsi and persian are two different

languages. Persian is the ancient language, Farsi is much newer.

[Texasgal]

38. Farsi and persian are two different

languages. Persian is the ancient language, Farsi is much newer. ( they are similar, but not the same)

[BurtWorm]

42. Isn't Farsi to Persian what Italian is to Latin?

The ancestral language?

[Texasgal]

44. I would say that is a good comparison!

I have found very few who speak Persian, and when I do encounter them, they are usually extremely elderly, or someone who has studied it. Like me...

[BurtWorm]

45. Just curious: what made you study Persian?

Are you of Iranian descent?

[Texasgal]

47. Nooooo...

My family was a very progressive hippie family. We took in exchange students all thetime. One year we took in a boy from Tehran. He had escaped the uprising, escaping through mountains with smugglers who raped his mother and sister. ( they escaped to Turkey) We found him through an exchange program for people who had gone through political exile.

We helped him get his family over, when I met his mother, she spoke persian, I could never understand why her kids had a hard time understanding her. It was because she spoke the "old language" and never had the "resources" to learn the "new" language. I thought the language was beautiful and I wanted to learn it, she helped me some, and then when I entered college I took a course. I can write it too. It's beautiful really.

Side note: The family ended up doing quite well. The exchange student is now a dentist. Practices in New York!

[BurtWorm]

49. Interesting!

My wife loves Persian miniatures. I could swear they're decorated with Arabic script. Does Persian use the Arabic alphabet, like Urdu? Or did the Persians invent their own alphabet?

[Texasgal]

51. It is urdu....

But some puncuation is different. It's really a lovely script. I have enjoyed reading it and writing it. I find it to be a wonderful cultural experience for me, and I have met so many cool people because of it.

[bif]

23. I speak late 60s English

It's pretty bogue, man.

[BurtWorm]

28. Gear!

:hippie:

[bif]

35. Far out1 Another speaker.

[BurtWorm]

36. I'm hep to the lingo, cat! It's my bag! Sock it to me!

[Fleshdancer]

29. Does piglatin count???

:D

[BurtWorm]

31. Oh

nay. ;)

[northzax]

32. I speak Freeper

soon to be a dead language!

actually, there was a time I could hash my way through Latin and Romanche (almost a dead language)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

33. APL, Algol, Fortran. (nt)

[Ilsa]

40. Oooh I speak fortran.

Well, I used to.
My dh speaks lots of dead computer languages.

[AlFrankenFan]

39. Latin and I suppose you could consider Hebrew dead...n/t

[BurtWorm]

43. Biblical Hebrew is dead, I guess.

Do you speak Israeli Hebrew, too? How different are they?

[liontamer]

46. I can sing my country tis of thee in latin

and I can program in basic and pascal (or at least I could. I haven't tried in a while)

[LeftishBrit]

48. I did the Cambridge Latin Course at school...

And I remember listening to the tapes! My Latin has become pretty rusty over the years, however.

[BurtWorm]

50. I wish I could get the tapes.

I'm basing my pronunciation on a guide I downloaded from the Internet.

[liontamer]

55. I only ever took a 6 weeks workshop in latin

that's all i know :shrug:

[bikebloke]

52. Dipped a foot in Scottish Gaelic

At the time, I had noisey neighbors and was sleep deprived and just plain knackered all the time. My books and tapes are now packed in a box. Which one, who knows.

I also looked into Latin. At the end of one of John Fowles books, he had something in Latin. I was trying to suss out what he said. Recently, I found a translation on a John Fowles website.

[Guy_Montag]

53. There's still a few thousand people speak Scottish Gaelic

in Scotland as their first langauge. I think there's more in Canada.

[GiovanniC]

54. Quidquid Latine Dictum Sit, Altum Viditur

Anything said in Latin sounds profound.

[Xithras]

56. Speak? Latin. Read & Write? Breton, Manx, & Irish Gaelic

Yes, I'm aware that Breton, Manx, & Irish Gaelic aren't technically dead languages yet (though a strong argument could be made for Manx), but they're all so close that they may as well be. In addition, all three have stopped adding new words. When a Breton speaker mentions a computer, for example, the word he actually uses is "ordinateur" or "un PC", which are the French terms for computer. There is no Breton native word for computer. Manx and Gaelic speakers simply use the English word "computer". Since these languages have ceased growing, it's only a matter of time until they simply become dialects of English and French.

BTW, I CAN speak them a little, but I tend to mangle the words so badly that I don't even try. The Gaelic languages are very hard to pronouce properly if you aren't brought up speaking them.