Language Studies

[Sapper41]

Well I couldn't think of a good thrad title. But like we were talking about on another thread, Who studies languages other then english? More specifically Ancient languages?

I personal study Biblical Hebrew and you can learn some basic too, at:

Learn Biblical Hebrew

It's a pretty good site for the basics Enjoy! Like I said if you have any question just ask I may be able to help, even though i'm a beginner ,myself.

Shalom!

 

[Sapper41]

Here are the posts from the other thread:

Like the advantage of learning Latin and Greek... you get to understand where a lot of modern languages come from.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Freya
Like the advantage of learning Latin and Greek... you get to understand where a lot of modern languages come from.


Someone who understands that etymology is actually very interesting, and therefore it's worthwhile studying classical languages! Such a breath of fresh air!

I'm studying biblical hebrew right now, and some words have connections to modern English words but not any where near as many as Latin or Greek.

How hard is hebrew to learn? How is the alphabet constructed? It's interesting to know, because I find the Greek alphabet very easy to deal with and have no problems recognising it, but I'm also learning Japanese and struggling to even build up a complete knowledge of the hiragana alphabet, let alone katakana and the thousands of kanji characters! One thing you notice when studying a language with completely separate roots is also that grammatical forms and functions differ tremendously, whereas most European languages I have studied work similarly.

Shalom Themistocles!
Lets see... the aleph-bet (alphabet) has been pretty easy to pick up. It is very very very different from english and greek. There are 22 letters and no vowels. The vowels are a series of dots places around the letters. The great thing about hebrew is that unlike english the sounds of the letters and vowels never change. For example in english the letter A sounds different in the word Cat, caught, call, etc, in hebrew the sounds never change. Because of this the basics of reading have been very easy to pick up. The grammar on the other hand is alot different from english. Here a site to pick up some hebrew aleph-bet basics and some words.

Learn Biblical Hebrew Basics

If anyone starts getting into it and has any questions just ask, i'm getting pretty good at it Also have you activley studied greek at all?

I minored in Latin in college, which I found very helpful in passing my Chaucer class - a lot of middle English has latin/french roots. I also find it helpful in spelling words, I just have a better feel for when longer words have double consonants (Cincinnati, for instance.) But I mostly found it a nice change from my literature classes, since most of them were very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants discussion affairs. One could not bs one's way through a Latin translation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashlea
One could not bs one's way through a Latin translation.




I think I'll check out that Hebrew link when I have some free time.

Great I hope you enjoy it I do!

Damn I really will have to come back to this thread when I have more time. This kind of stuff fascinates me

Quote:
Originally Posted by Freya
Damn I really will have to come back to this thread when I have more time. This kind of stuff fascinates me

That makes two of us Though perhaps we ought to start a new thread, rather than continue to hijack Sappers Lifetime Reading thread...unless Sapper doesn't object...

Sapper do you mind?

Aaah he loves it really

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashlea
I minored in Latin in college, which I found very helpful in passing my Chaucer class - a lot of middle English has latin/french roots. I also find it helpful in spelling words, I just have a better feel for when longer words have double consonants (Cincinnati, for instance.) But I mostly found it a nice change from my literature classes, since most of them were very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants discussion affairs. One could not bs one's way through a Latin translation.


I took Latin for four years in high school. It has definitely helped my spelling and vocabulary. It also helped with the little bit of Spanish that I took...though I can read Spanish much better than I can speak it or understand it while being spoken (that has a lot to do with the speed at which it is spoken).