I took seven years of Latin in school. However it was only my second of three languages and for that reason we didn’t have that many hours per week.
We read Sallust’s Coniuratio Catilinae, Cornelius Nepos’ Atticus, part of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, some of Cicero’s speeches (definitely In Verrem and some In Catilinam and possibly others) and parts of De Re Publica. We also read part of Caesar’s Gallic War, poems by Catullus and various bits and pieces.
According my etymological dictionary (Kluge) earlier forms are:
Middle High German: ant
Old High German: anut
Old Saxon: anad (in place names)
Germanic: *anudi- (unattested)
French *cane * and Italian anatra are both from Latin anas, anatis. The c- seems to come from coin “quack” because in Old French Latin *anas * (duck) and *asinus * (ass) fell together as OF ane, perhaps leading to hilarious confusion. Pappera is supposed to be onomatopoetic.
Spanish pato is a great big mystery. I think it’s related to the Persian / Arabic / Swahili / Armenian / now Aramaic / a bunch of other things complex that all sound something like bat, in turn similar to a bunch of Slavic things that sound like pat, but I’m working on it. The phonetics are a problem: Arabic should have given a Spanish word like **albato, though “el pato” isn’t too far off.
I’m studying a bit of Latin, and we’re starting work on Koine Greek this summer. (Dale42, the NT is written in Koine, a somewhat simpler Greek than the Homeric.)
I speak Danish, and the Danish for duck is and, which I presume comes from the Latin. I was a little confused my first day in Denmark, when I saw Donald Duck comics titled “Anders And & Co.” which looks like a few too many and’s to an American.
I’ve had 5 years of Latin in High school, and then I’ve had a few college level courses more on the culture than the translating of the language.
I enjoyed it, but I rather much love the culture and mythology than I do sitting around conjugating and translating the epic works and all. But all in all a pleasant time for me.
Two years of Latin in high school. We too read Caesar’s Gallic Wars, some Ovid. I never regretted it, but my younger brother thinks it was a waste of time.
I took five years of Latin in high school. We translated some Seneca, Pliny the Younger and lots of Cicero. I loved it, but today it would be really hard for me to do anything with it because I spent too much time learning other languages for my Latin to have stuck. It would come back but it would require making an effort. Which I won’t. That said, learning languages is something of a hobby of mine and I spent some time studying Old Church Slavonic. Because I also speak Russian, I could probably read most texts in OCS as well, esp. with the use of a dictionary.
I also have grammars of Sanskrit, Polabian, Assyrian and Ethiopian but that’s really just to impress people
I tried to answer this yesterday, but hamsters (or perhaps ducks trying to disguise their origins) ate my post. Old English is ened, as noted above, but there’s also duce, the source of “duck.” It’s just from the verb “to duck,” as in to duck under the water, what ducks do when they feed. So an English innovation with no cognates.
The Old Cornish word for duck is “hoet” (… trying not to make the hijack completely irrelevant).
BWAHA! I am pleased to be the first one to say I do know some Sanskrit. I haven’t had anything resembling a formal education in the language but in the last couple of years I have been studying it on and off, and do know the meaning of a few hundred words.
I can read it since it’s essentially the same alphabet as Hindi, but my vocabulary just isn’t strong enough on its own to really understand what I am reading.
I do have training in the mantras, or the religious phrases and stuff.
Woohoo! Until someone else comes along, I am Master of Sanskrit as far as you all know!
The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, which generally represents a sort of middle-ground between classical Greek and the modern language. If I’m not mistaken, many of the significant differences being made around that time were more phonological than anything else - pronunciation was beginning to change but the written language was still fairly similar. Personally, having studied Attic and Homeric Greek, I found myself capable of translating a bit of the New Testament. I imagine the reverse would be true.
However, ancient Greek is a tricky little language. You can find books that will explain the grammar of Homeric Greek and you can find books that will explain the grammar of Koine Greek. Some things will be the same. Other things will be very different (noun declension comes to mind). Basically, with a knowledge of Homeric Greek you’d be able to take a decent shot at the New Testament, but it’s definitely a different dialect.
Now I’ll just wait for someone who’s really studied Greek in depth to come and explain how wrong I am.
Latin is dead in the sense that it’s not changing (which is the standard linguistic definition of a dead language). Obviously all of the languages mentioned in this thread are used to some extent, but the syntax and vocabulary are pretty much written in stone.
For what it’s worth, the Hebrew word for duck is “barvaz.”
Modern Hebrew and biblical Hebrew are the same language; at the most, “modern” Hebrew has a much larger vocabulary while “biblical” Hebrew occasionally uses some grammatical structures rarely used in modern speech. Basically, Hebrew spoken today is closer to biblical Hebrew than current English is to the English of Shakespeare.
As to the OP - like most Hebrew speakers, I can understand a bit of Aramaic, as the languages are pretty close to one another.
Between years and years of high school and college German, and some familiarity with Chaucer, I could probably get by fairly well in 14th century London.
Though I don’t know if you could call Middle English a dead language.
Which is basically just a contraction of Bar-Avaz, or “small goose” (literally “child of the goose”.) We won’t be finding any cognates here… Wonder if there’s another, obscure word for “duck” in any Hebrew sources?
Agreed. Almost any high-school student can read the Bible in the original, with only some very occasional help for some of the really obscure vocabulary.
I used to think so too, until I tried reading some full passages at one point. Didn’t really work very well… the languages seem deceptively more similar than they actually are, at least IMHO.
The RAE agrees with you there. The Spanish word for duck which is derived from Latin is ánade, leading to the verb anadear, to walk like a duck (to waddle).
1 year of Latin in High School. I was Science track.
