2016/06/07 22:51:27
outland144k
Rain

 
 
Being a lifelong student of religion and scriptures, especially the Jewish Bible, knowing firsthand just how much can get lost in translation and considering the multiple layers of meaning hidden behind the original Hebrew text, I figured I'd skip latin for now and pick up Hebrew.
 
I'd already started teaching myself the alphabet a few weeks ago - 15 minutes a night, a few times a week - and I've finally reached the point where I can (laboriously) read full sentences in books, recognize words and pick up bits of vocabulary.
 
Reading "backwards" is a very strange experience, and writing even more so - I almost feel like a kid learning to write. It's as if your brain rewires itself. Some kind of mental gymnastic, pretty interesting in itself. Even just the way you handle the book or make transition from one page to the next.
 
Fascinating.
 
So I guess it'll be Greek next and then Latin.




Congratulations!
I found Greek to be fun, but I had a teacher.  There are quite a number of connections one can make to English.  I got to the point where I could read pretty easily out of the New Testament or Septuagint.  I need to brush up now, however.  A number of, er, "life experiences" have slowed me down.
 
Latin is cool, too, but I never studied it, per se (though I can figure out much of it).  I did have Italian and enjoyed that very much, but found to my total delight, that of the romance languages, Italian was the closest to Latin.  When I noticed this, my Italian teacher told me that the father of modern Italian, Dante Alighieri, often deferred to the Latin when systematizing the language.

 
I don't read Hebrew (yet), but my wife does.  When we are looking at an Old Testament passage, we often find it helpful for her to look it  up in the Hebrew and I look at it in the Septuagint.  That way, we get the original and the shadings of the scholarship of the Seventy and, therefore, the translation that was most used by the Apostles. 
2016/06/10 23:07:07
craigb
I've studied LOTS of languages throughout my lifetime:  B, Assembler, C, C++, C#, Basic, Visual Basic, LISP, ADA, Fortran, PL/I, COBOL, Python and some Spanish.
 
How much I remember is a totally different topic... 
2016/06/12 00:07:03
eph221
craig is it possible to write poetry in fortran?
2016/06/12 01:10:08
craigb
eph221
craig is it possible to write poetry in fortran?




Not really.  For that I always used assembler.
2016/06/18 07:06:31
eph221
How much does ancient Aramaic differ from modern Hebrew?
2016/06/18 17:02:07
Rain
eph221
How much does ancient Aramaic differ from modern Hebrew?




I have yet to find out - once I start digging in the Talmud...
2016/06/18 20:21:55
outland144k
eph221
How much does ancient Aramaic differ from modern Hebrew?




Very little.  My wife can read both, but has had only training in reading Hebrew.  Almost all the letters are the same, but pronunciation may be a bit different.

2016/06/18 22:09:32
Guitarhacker
Where does Aramaic fit into that picture?  That is another language used to write the scriptures. 

Learn that and you can watch Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ without the subtitles.
2016/06/20 03:52:27
Moshkito
Rain
...
Fascinating.
 
So I guess it'll be Greek next and then Latin.




I guess the music is taking a break or stopped?
 
Wait ... wait ... you can try singing in those languages, and every one will think you are just like MAGMA and their "Kobaian" language in all of their work! 
2016/06/20 14:16:15
craigb
Rainorian Chants? 
12
© 2026 APG vNext Commercial Version 5.1

Use My Existing Forum Account

Use My Social Media Account