What ancient or dead language/dialect does Veeky Forums know?

I am literally in seminary so there's a lot of /ecclesiastical/ words that I'm already familiar with.

Then you're going to get through Koine Greek really easily.

Thank God.

May the Lord bless you brother in Christ.

Because reading Plato in the original is way better than translation. I'm sorry you are a brainlet.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZMQnI0DE3T4

Latin. Dead, but not useless.

For me Middle Egyptian. Dead, and 100% useless.

Studying Classical Chinese. I'm hoping to master Seal Script afterwards.

Holy fuck that sounds hard.

I'm an autist for chink stuff and pretty okay with Mandarin; it shouldn't be too hard.
Since I already studied with or without others for a year by translating from the Shiji, The Great Learning, the Analects, and Zhuangzi, I already got the basics down.
Some of it is rather simple like Xunzi and the Great Learning. But ancient chinks, especially the more metaphysical ones, tend to combine terse, laconic prose with random esoteric characters, places, quotations, whatever. So that's quite hard.
The hardest one I translated was an early 20th century Buddhist's criticism of positivism and Bertrand Russell. Even with the professor that took the class half the semester to go through only 7-8 pages.

If you want to be truly fluent, you need to know a crap load of Chinese characters, history, literature, and philosophy.
The ultimate challenge is to be like the ancient scholars where you memorize all the Classics by heart to the point you can recite it backwards without any mistakes.

I speak Pontic Greek, and when I was in high school we learned Ancient Greek, and it was really easy for me to learn it. Long story short I don't speak it per se, but I read/understand and write it easily. It's insane to thing a dialect has so many similarities with Koine Greek almost 2000 years later.

Your dialect of Greek is more archaic than most Greek speakers, but Tsakonian still remains the king of ancientness in dialects when it comes to Greek.

Now what you mentioned about Tsakonian, I remember several years ago when I was serving in the military, I had a comrade from a village close to modern day Tripolis (in peloponnese) and we spoke to each other in our respective dialects and we could have a reasonable conversation. I was amazed. Pretty crazy considering my ancestor's dialect is a subdialect of Pontic, it's crimean Pontic Greek.

>but still has the gall to post in a thread about it

Indic languages are probably worth looking into since they're probably a less known and studied field in the West at least.

youtube.com/watch?v=v5JyRlNO2sc
You understand this?

Yes, it's intelligeble and I can understand the meaning, the -ente and -ere
suffixes are similar and close to Pontic
suffixes.

Nice
Φαντάζομαι ότι ομιλείς kαι στάνταρ Ελληνιkά;

Ναι αμε. Εσύ απο ότι kατάλαβα απο τα γράμματα που χρησιμοποιείς, όχι;

Όχι, είναι απλά το ελληνιkό font στο Veeky Forums που τα kάνει να φαίνονται περιεργα, my bad.

a bit of old and middle flemish

>μυ βαδ
It was MY bad you faggot

I miserunderstood cause I thought you typed some greek letters with english letters, so that's what I meant by MY BAD. Jesus..

It was my error

Tzutuhil, ancient, almost dead

Every educated Occidental should know Latin and Greek.

Anyone know the Hittite language?

Finished up my third semester of Latin last week. I want to get writings in Latin to increase my command of the language.

Nobody on here is going to, there are really not many qualified cuneiformists in the world today.

Γαμώ ότι αγαπάτε

αγαπω οτι γαμας

Ενας από τους λογούς οπού πάσχω από kατάθλιψη

Γαμώ το ΚΚΕ

σkατα

Πουτάνας γιε πούστη αλβανέ

10 αγγούρια σου εφερα
τα 5 για σαλάτα
kαι τα αλλά 5 μες τον kολο σου για να περνάς γαματα

two years studing greek in university and that is the knowlege i have acimulated

That's why you will get paid more

latin and greek

Ugaritic. Space Ugaritic to be exact.

Learning old English. Can you read a fair deal but am still struggling with the writing.

In seminary, whereabouts? What career plans do you have? I used to wish the Monastic life were still a thing, but I have only the literary interest and no religious faith.

Modern Greek?

>no religious faith

I seriously wonder how many people, especially amongst the higher ups and intellectuals of Christian churches, actually believe in Christianity.

Where I live, in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, USA, any social life revolves at least partially around the established churches of my area.

>Space Ugaritic

I'm not saying it was aliens...

I know Latin, Sanskrit and also Standard/Classical Arabic if that counts.

I have studied/am studying Ancient Greek, Tocharian, Old Persian, Avestan and Old Church Slavonic.

that's really cool, I'm trying to get to that eventually. What are you using to study it? Are you taking a course or self-studying?

i tried it out this semester but it wasn't as exciting as i thought it would be (partially because of the lecturer) and i ended up dropping it. i still know some cuneiform signs and some words though.

I'm at Talbot and my career plan is to pastor a church but I currently help lead our university ministry group.

>no religious faith.

Seek and ye shall find user.

>Sanskrit
As a Latin guy, how hard is learning Sanskrit? It seems pretty neat, and so does Old Church Slavonic. I wouldn't mind dabbling in those.

Go back to bleddit.

Bump

Bump

Bump

I studied Latin for four years in high school. I can read a Latin book if I have a dictionary.

Ancient Greek & Sanskrit... well, I can't say that I "know" know (that's probably impossible without a living community), but studied them in university.

Fuck off to Veeky Forums, heathen.

>that's really cool, I'm trying to get to that eventually. What are you using to study it? Are you taking a course or self-studying?

I'm doing both. I took two semesters of Classical Chinese last year and use pic related for independent study. This book is really good; not only does it provide the Mandarin sounds for characters but also the ones for Korean and Japanese.

Bump.

>acimulated
Should have studied English first αβροβάτη.

Bump

Anyone here interested in South and Central Asia?
Know well:
> Sanskrit
> Old Tamil
> Avestan
Ok knowledge:
> Pahlavi / Middle Persian
> Old Kannada

I am learning Tamil. Tell me something interesting.

I dont know the modern language well but my mother tongue is Malayalam, so i understand a bit. Why are you learning tamizh?

Interesting: Classical Tamil prosody rules are the only ones in India not based on Sanskrit. Also, it is NOT the most conservative Dravidian language in all ways. Malayalam has retained a lot that Tamizh has not, and vice versa. Learn all 3 (Southern) Dravidian languages and youll see some interesting stuff regarding how RRa is pronounced.

I only know some coptic chants my dad passed to me.

I can read ancient Greek (with heavy use of a dictionary) and can speak Latin conversationally. Went to an academic conference conducted entirely in Latin, was pretty wild.

This semester I was part of a reading group for Sabellic languages, but didn't really pick anything up except the basics of Oscan.

Because I worship the Tamil movie stars.

I read that Malayalam 'came from' Tamil in some way. Since you say it's often more conservative, is this true or false?

Are you Indian?

TLDR: No, Malayalam does not come from Tamil. Its a sister language.
Malayalam is a Sanskritized version of the Old Tamil which was spoken in Kerala prior to Brahmin (Nambutiri) domination. Modern Tamil is a descendent of Old Tamil as well, but Malayalam has its own dialectical features, and aspects of Old Tamil (and a lot of words) that modern Tamil does not. Both languages have diverged from the Old Tamil, and Tamil is more Dravidian in vocab than Malayalam's huge use of Sanskrit Tatsama. The reason Malayalam is so conservative in both Tamil and Sanskrit phonetics is due to its history and its a complex topic. Maybe I can start a thread on South Induan history sometime.

I am not of Indian origin. I have something to do with a predominantly Malayali group, but I won't say further.

A South Indian history thread might be interesting, assuming the thread doesn't get ruined. And Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Also, would you say Malayalam is the most conservative/archaic language in South Asia, as far as you know? Just wondering.

Aren't some religious chants passed down among a few families? They could be rare.

I assume Nasrani or such. My mother is one. Cool.

> Also, would you say Malayalam is the most conservative/archaic language in South Asia
No, though in some sense (phonology), it could be argued that it is, besides Sanskrit. Tamil is the most conservative of Dravidian vocabulary for sure. Malayalam has very pure-phonetically borrowed Sanskrit, thats pretty much the only way that its archaic. Average Mallus dont speak the formal way though, not at all.