this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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Latin Language
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My main focus is Indo-European studies. For IE there are three "big" languages: Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Among all three, Latin is the most accessible for me as both my L1 and L2 are Romance (Portuguese and Italian respectively).
Plus there's something emotionally fulfilling on understanding the past, and noticing that human nature is still the same. Catullus' poetic persona as a horny teen, Cicero pondering about the nature of the things, Apicius the foodie, Jerome and his obsession for an accurate but clean translation, Octavius... well, behaving like the politicians of today. And to understand those people we need to understand their language, at least a wee bit.
(I often joke about this by saying that "what the Romans called «merda» [shit] is still merda today.", as the word is still the same in PT and IT. It doesn't work in English though.)
Same, but I want to learn a language of every type before my time comes. I'm native at Arabic and it is really interesting hearing other semitic languages, I understand 5-10% Hebrew and 40% of Maltese (some people even consider it a dialect of it lol)
I want to learn at least one Slavic, romance, Germanic and sinaic language. My choices for them are ukrainian, Latin and Esperanto, Dutch and very basic Chinese since logographic languages interest me :) (ofc I am not learning all of these at once lol, these are languages I am interested in)
And Roman senators/writers were hilarious, especially Catullus. It's interesting to see how these people are human like us and had day to day lives and are not some ancient alien race we treat them as.
Your focus is way wider than mine! I do have an interest on a few non-IE languages (mostly Guaraní; it would be actually useful in my case), but my current focus is on Sanskrit.
The thing with Maltese vs. other Arabic varieties reminds me a lot Sardinian vs. other Romance varieties - insular leftovers from a branch of the family that is gone elsewhere (Siculo-Arabic for Maltese, African Romance for Sardinian), with people arguing if they should lump it together a nearby variety (Tunsi for one, Italian for another). But sorry, I digress.
Exactly! Specially in the Romance cultures, people see them as some sort of "ultra-civilised ancestors, with a refinement that was lost over time", just like aliens. But once you dig through their texts and lives they become more and more relatable, you know? (Just like that Sumerian fart joke. Or Aristophanes foul wordplay.)