Claims to be interested in European history further back than two-three centuries

The extensive number of translations, complete with notes and comparisons, makes it unnecessary to become a fluent reader of greek.

There are multiple different English translations of every primary text of any length from the Classical world. Further, the Greek is often available in print side by side with the English translation. Sites like Perseus also provide this service. You can therefore use your mediocre greek to read select portions when desired, and read the bulk of the text in English.

The same cannot be said of Chinese, though. However, I'm fluent in modern Chinese, so crisis averted. Every text I'm aware of has many different editions with modern chinese side by side with the classical text. Further, the classical script is printed in modern format, and it's not particularly hard to make head or tail of it if you have a limited understanding of ancient language and also have the modern text next to it.

Could I study greek and chinese more than I already have? Sure, I could do a lot of things. I don't see why it would be necessary, though, because my ability as it is today, coupled with the vast resources in English and Chinese, ensure that any section that interests me is comprehensible to a satisfactory degree.

Also, fundamentally speaking, I don't think the languages themselves have great inherent value distinct from the content of these texts.

t. retards who are unable to learn languages and make up excuses

The biggest joke are American """theologians""" who claim to be Biblical literalists but literally cannot read Greek let alone Hebrew and base their doctrines on the KJV.

So now germanics and slavic are related to greeks and romans?

Lol

Did I say that?

>The extensive number of translations, complete with notes and comparisons, makes it unnecessary to become a fluent reader of greek.

this but it still helps to have a passing knowledge of Greek terminology to be able to follow works
>andreia being used roughly for "courage" or other concepts. Literally comparable to Latin "virtue"
>spiritedness meaning "thurmos"
>"the Word" (Logos) knowing this term and its history and implications
>etc. etc.

especially if you have a translation that doesn't include extensive commentary. Britannica Great Books for example are pretty arbitrary with when they rarely explain terminology. Ignoring basic and constantly used concepts while translating some wordplay done by the author that doesn't translate

>>spiritedness meaning "thurmos"

I mean "thumos", it's only a matter of time before I say "Thermos" out loud though

Care to name some of these theologians?

Gary North comes to mind.

>claims to be interested in ancient history
>can't read linear B
>can't read ancient Indian scripts
>doesn't know how to speak ancient Dacian dialects
>doesn't know the right accent in which to speak ancient farsi

Virtually all those who claim that the KJV is a (if not the) divinely inspired translation do so because they can't read any ancient language.

>our translation is so good, it's even more accurate than the original!
This is your brain on burgers

What you say is meaningless because the true meaning behind many Ancient Greek and Roman phrases can't be understood without being a native speaker and/or without the context of the time. Many phrases meanings are simply unknown to modern scholars as both civilizations used many metaphors.

I read classical and medieval Greek and Latin (although my main interests are late antique and Byzantine, so I tend to read medieval texts). I can muddle my way through modern French and Italian but my German sucks and needs to be way, way better.

To be honest my Latin and Greek are very good - I have been studying both languages from childhood - but my lack of modern German is actually a greater scholarly hindrance than my knowledge of Latin and Greek is an advantage, given that even medieval sources tend to be available in translation today (although this tends to be truer of 'historical' and to an extent poetical works than it is of documentary sources).

t. DPhil.

>claims to be interested in European history further back than two-three centuries
>hasn't been alive for even one century and didn't witness any of it firsthand

Beyond reading primary sources in the original language, I was actually surprised that famous and influential late 19th and early 20th thinkers were never actually translated at all, or the translations ended up locked away in some library's storage room, so you have no choice but to read an anglo's Cliff Notes review of their works if you don't know French, German, Japanese etc.

>There are multiple different English translations of every primary text of any length from the Classical world

Factually wrong.

The only reason that Veeky Forums is so obsessed with primary sources is because they are too lazy to read different interpretations of the primary sources based on years upon years of scholarship. They don't feel like spending the time to find works by scholars with different perspectives about the works, so they make up some BS about how reading secondary sources means you don't have your own opinion on anything. Granted, you should read the primary source that you're studying, but it's incredibly arrogant to assume that your interpretation of a primary source is better than that of an academic who has spent his whole life studying it.

>having anything interesting past before 1600 besides the roman empire
lamo@urlyfe

I tried learning both greek and latin and sucked at both.

Pretty much this. I am not going to disparage knowledge of the older languages, but that knowledge is going to do you little good if you're not interacting with the scholarly literature, the insights of linguists, archaeologists, historians, etc. who have been using each other as resources and sharpening stones for decades. You see it a lot in religious circles, where some layman gets himself a dictionary of biblical Greek or Hebrew, and then starts coming to all sorts of conclusions he's convinced no one's ever thought of before: meanwhile, the scholars have already either argued it out extensively or dismissed it entirely, or haven't even considered it because it's simply wrong.

Most do. It's one thing to learn enough to muddle along through a text in Greek or Latin. It's quite another to have sufficient mastery to REALLY engage with the older literature without liberal use of aids.