Harry Potter in Ancient Greek
users.globalnet.co.uk
users.globalnet.co.uk
Obviously, my French (starting from zero) a mere year or so later isn't good enough to read something like Alexandre Dumas' masterpiece, but I figured if I started with a book I've literally read dozens of times in English that I always know what the next sentence will say, well, that would be a good place to start.
The same could be said about La sombra del viento, 100 años de soledad or Neruda's poems in Spanish.
In English, only Virginia Woolf inspires the same awe for language that these other books impregnated in me.
In some sense, these authors don't use words. They let words use them.
Sure do that. But no harm in reading these two books a few times before that, too.
Other plays like Hamlet, MacBeth, humble me. Same thing with Cervantes. Those guys pretty much redefined language and I don't think I have read enough to understand them. Maybe someday?
That's a surprising choice. Most Spanish readers would say that La sombra del viento is nowhere near an undisputable masterpiece such as 100 años de soledad, or even Neruda's poems (the literary stature of which is perhaps more contested).
In terms of use of language, it is just really that good. Neruda and Garcia Marquez are Nobel winners, and they are obviously better literally speaking. But the dude that wrote La sombre del viento knows how to use Spanish to describe beautiful sceneries and moments.
Also, keep in mind that this is my subjective view on things.
The same thing works for listening comprehension: Find a DVD box set of easy TV series, one where you can understand maybe 40% of the dialog, and just start watching. It's OK to use a good dub of a series you've already watched. Repeat this with, say, 5 series and you'll see an amazing boost in listening comprehension. TV series are usually better than films for this exercise, because they'll give you 50+ hours of mostly the same people speaking about a limited set of topics, which helps a lot in the beginning.
It seems like the brain is very good at upgrading partial comprehension to nearly complete comprehension. But the trick is getting to an enjoyable level of partial comprehension.
The idea is straight-forward:
Get a novel-length text in your target language, a high-quality recording of that text and a literal translation of the text in your native language. Alternate between reading the original text and the translation while simultaneously listening to the recording.
The method is supposedly fantastic, but it's incredibly difficult to gather suitable materials. While widely-translated books like Harry Potter seem ideal, the translations are not literal and occasionally the audiobooks do not match the texts exactly.
Further info:
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Listening-Reading_Met...
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20th...
It allows you to:
1. upload an entire novel
2. translate the words and phrases you don't know
3. review them later with spaced-repetition flashcards containing the original context sentence
As an aside, French literature pretty much sucks - don't kill yourself to get to the point where you can read Dumas or Zola in the original, it isn't really worth the effort (although I do have a bit of a soft spot for Maupassant, and French poetry is absolutely wonderful).
Wait, Ancient Greeks didn't eat potatoes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato)!
Main reason I found myself ultimately disengaged with Greek was the subject material... that and the ultimately limited tolerance of a 9 year old's mind for endless declensions and beatings.
"IMPERFECT INDICATIVE, BOY! FUTURE PERFECT INDICATIVE INDEED! COME HERE. HOLD OUT YOUR HANDS."
Shudder.
In all languages, regular verb conjugations are taught with some example, typically the simplest regular verb you can think of. It's "cantar" in Spanish, "to sing", it's often "parler" in French, "to talk", "amare" and "vocare" (to love, to call) are common in Latin.
In Greek, it's "λύω" (I untie), because yes, that's how common regular verbs are.
I wish that they'd involved us in it - explained the wonder of a language so ancient, so close to PIE, the tie of language to thought and semantic linking - but it was utilitarian. Latin was better as they intermingled it with roman history, but it was almost like they wanted Greek to be miserable. Our texts were printed in the 19th century - little leather bound books covered in notes on translation... In Latin. My school was such a time warp.
The effort and ingenuity he put into the translation is wonderful. I can't speak any Greek, so having the translations and logic laid out is a wonderful insight into translation as a process.
"And Harry Potter is Ἅρειος Ποτήρ [Hareios Poter]- ἄρειος [areios] means "belonging to Ares", the war god - appropriate for the young warrior, and ποτήρ [poter] is a Greek word for "cup" or "goblet" - presumably the cup of wisdom from which Harry must quickly learn to drink deeply."
It doesn't look like Aryan was what the translator believes it means?
I guess it's much better with his explanation, but "aryan glass" sounds amazingly funny in Greek. He basically nailed all the names, they're very well done, and all the explanations he gives for them are correct (the ones I've seen so far, anyway).
Unfortunately I can't recall enough about the article to search HN for it.
http://www.amazon.com/Harrius-Potter-Philosophi-Lapis-Philos...
This has been available for a while though.
And Quidditch is Icarusball. I love it.
This might be more relevant if HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE had a code for Ancient Greek.
Going by the language tag best practices every program should accept 3 letter language codes if it also accepts 2 letter language codes. But with software, you never know.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.1
That said, it would be amusing to see how many servers and clients actually support this.