Going along w/what Reality Chuck said, in the early '70’s I learned five languages: BASIC, RPG, (something)(something)1, COBOL, & FORTRAN.
At some point, I would like to learn whichever Greek the New Testament was written in. I would then like to have the time to read it in that language.
Love, Phil
Makes me think of the problem with Basque, where Batua (lit “unified”, the official version invented by the government, taught in schools and used on TV) is all over the place, but the actual live dialects are being supressed by the Basque government itself. My Basque-speaking coworkers are trilingual Batua-local dialect-Spanish (and then go and add French or more commonly English on top of that). One of them talks about having problems in school because her father is from a different town, so she mixes two different dialects: the teacher would scold her every time she used non-Batua (her and any other student), the other kids would laugh any time she used her father’s dialect. I know Basque-as-first-language people (including two of my coworkers) who got flunked in their Basque Language Certification for using one non-Batua word. They’re strangling the language in order to save it.
Until very recently, Basque had very little in the way of writtten documents, so compiling its variants and real vocabulary was a daunting task. I can see the need for a shortcut, what I dislike is using the shortcut to destroy the original path.
I hear you, but that’s the way most languages went. State formation is lethal for linguistic diversity.
Actually, it’s also used in systems that can kill people when they function all right - like guided missiles.
There has been a renaissance of sorts outside the Gaeltachtaí with the Gaelscoileanna movement. However, there aren’t enough secondary schools that teach through Irish IMHO. TG4 (Ireland’s Irish language tv station) used to have all or most of their ads as gaeilge but now it seems only a few are, usually government ads. Funnily enough there’s an ad for Specsavers that airs on English channels both here and in the UK that is soundtracked by “Mo Ghile Mear”. S4C, the Welsh channel is impressive in the breadth of programming they have through Welsh. Welsh seems to be alive as an urban language. You can’t really say that for Irish anymore or perhaps yet.
Ooklay outway!
I can read the Icelandic Sagas in original form. But that’s only cause I know Icelandic, which hasn’t changed that much.
And duck? That´s Önd (which I actually doubt comes from latin, since “nothing” else does)