Ancient language

“ If the Greek and Latin tongues are still living, why not the Greek and Latin nations? If these languages are not ancient, is there anything ancient? The course of nature goes on, and materials of all kinds are used over and over again in unbroken continuity, but because the present is thus born of the past, are we to forget the distinction between the living and the dead. If the ancient languages are modern, then of course ancient history, and ancient philosophy, and ancient art, are modern history, modern philosophy, and modern art, and there is no end to the stupid confusion. ”

“ So the religion of ancient Rome domesticated all the gods; and so the English language, if it should become the medium of international intercourse, might by translation or imitation of other literatures or by the infiltration into it of foreign words and styles, really become a vehicle for all human ideas. ”

“ He who would imitate an ancient language with success, must attend rather to its grammatical character, turn of expression, and mode of arrangement, than labour to collect extraordinary and antiquated terms, which, as I have already averred, do not in ancient authors approach the number of words still in use, though perhaps somewhat altered in sense and spelling, in the proportion of one to ten. ”

“ We shall now limit our regards to the Greek language alone, and shall attempt to exhibit its more prominent and characteristic features as compared with those of its sister tongues. In the sounds which were formed by the various articulation of the voice, the Greek language hits that happy medium which characterises all the mental productions of this people, in being equally removed, on the one hand, from the superabundant fulness, and, on the other, from the meagreness and tenuity of sound, by which other languages are variously deformed. ”

“ Among the Greeks, whose literature never suffered a complete eclipse, a similar effort to restore the classical tongue resulted in a kind of compromise; the conventional literary language, which is neither ancient nor modern, differs widely from the vernacular. ”

“ The beauty and dignity of the ancient tongue possesses such an attraction for cultivated writers that they are led insensibly to adopt its forms and borrow from its wealth of phrase and idiom. In the next place, a certain literary tradition and usage has already been formed which cannot easily be broken down. For more than half a century the generally accepted written language, half modern half ancient, has been in use in the schools, the university, the parliament, the state departments and the pulpit, and its influence upon the speech of the more educated classes is already noticeable. ”

“ This fact becomes singularly apparent in the circumstance that the ancient literature, having its root in oral tradition, extending back to the most hoary antiquity, and losing in force and vigor exactly in proportion to the strength of foreign, external influences upon it—employs the mother tongue as its organ, and thus becomes in the truest sense of the word a popular literature, while the literature of modern times developed out of the Roman culture, which was introduced with Christianity, and in the beginning made use of the Latin language as the vehicle of its thought. ”

“ Variety of forms, inflexions, and dialects in the Greek language.—§ 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several dialects—characteristics of each dialect.
§ 1. Language, the earliest product of the human mind, and the origin of all other intellectual energies, is at the same time the clearest evidence of the descent of a nation and of its affinity with other races. Hence the comparison of languages enables us to judge of the history of nations at periods to which no other kind of memorial, no tradition or record, can ascend. ”

“ If it could be a scientific question which of the two is the elder sister, Greek or Latin, Latin, I believe, could produce better claims of seniority than Greek. Now, as in the modern history of language we are able to explain many things that are obscure in French and Italian by calling in the Provençal, the Spanish, the Portuguese, nay, even the Wallachian and the Churwälsch, we can do the same in the ancient history of language, and get light for many things which are difficult and unintelligible in Greek and Latin, by consulting Sanskrit, Zend, Gothic, Irish, and even Old Bulgarian. ”

“ They and others of their countrymen have translated the literary treasures of those ancient nations into their own tongue, and thereby enabled those speaking their language, who are not skilled in classical languages, to enjoy and profit by the works of antiquity. ”

“ And if, in addition to a knowledge of its vocabulary, the laws of its construction also, and the nicest proprieties of its syntax and style are known; and if, moreover, the changes that have taken place from age to age in the sense of words, and in modes of expression, are understood, we then possess ample and exact data with which to compare any book that pretends to antiquity. A writer who employs his native language must be expected to conform himself to its usages ”

“ It is as difficult to suppose a person intending to write a modern English as to suppose him writing an ancient English novel: that is a label which begs the question. One writes the novel, one paints the picture, of one’s language and of one’s time, and calling it modern English will not, alas! make the difficult task any easier. ”

“ The Latin of mediæval Europe, though the language of scholars, was for all writers an acquired language, and its use for the literature of the middle ages gave to that literature an inevitable formality and artificiality of style. The Greek used in early Rome was the natural literary language, because it was the language of all the cultivated literature that was known, and it was learned by the Romans of the educated classes in their earliest years, becoming to them if not a mother tongue, at least a step-mother [167] tongue. ”

“ There is no snare in which the feet of a modern student of ancient lore, are more easily entangled, than that which is spread by the similarity of the language of antiquity to modern modes of expression. I do not presume to interpret the obscurest of Greek philosophers; all I wish is to point out, that his words, in the sense accepted by competent interpreters, fit modern ideas singularly well. ”

“ The Greeks, though they did not raise language to the rank of a deity, paid her, nevertheless, the greatest honors in their ancient schools of philosophy. There is hardly one of their representative philosophers who has not left some saying on the nature of language. The world without, or nature, and the world within, or mind, did not excite more wonder and elicit deeper oracles of wisdom from the ancient sages of Greece than language, the image of both, of nature and of [pg 089] mind. “What is language?” ”

“ Modern Persian, on the contrary, is poorer in flexions than almost any language which exists; it may be said, without exaggeration, that its whole grammar might be compressed into a few pages. Modern Greek is the analysis or decomposition of ancient Greek during a long period of barbarism. The Romance languages are Latin submitted to the same process; Italian, Spanish, French, and Wallachian, are merely Latin mutilated, deprived of its flexions, reduced to shortened forms, and supplying by numerous monosyllables the learned organisation of the ancient idioms. ”

“ For the training here required, the ancient languages, Latin and Greek, were indispensable, and for the ministers of the Church, Greek and Hebrew in particular, as the languages in which the Word of God was originally conveyed to man. ”

“ Greek metaphysical literature contained the sole stock of words and ideas out of which the human mind could provide itself with the means of engaging in the profound controversies as to the Divine Persons, the Divine Substance, and the Divine Natures. The Latin language and the meagre Latin philosophy were quite unequal to the undertaking, and accordingly the Western or Latin-speaking provinces of the Empire adopted the conclusions of the East without disputing or reviewing them. ”

“ The English language, which is spoken throughout a large part of the civilized world, and by one third of its inhabitants, has also received so many additions from Romanic sources that we to-day scarcely utter a sentence without using some word once used by the citizens of ancient Rome. ”

“ Language, The, is one of the so-called Romanic languages, all of which are descended from the language of ancient Rome. Wherever Roman law, custom and trade established themselves, the language followed. ”

“ I have conversed with many who were reputed learned when in the world, because they were acquainted with the ancient languages, as the Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and who had not cultivated their rational faculty by means of the things written in those languages. ”

“ The assertion is often heard that the ancient languages supply a permanent standard by which to judge of the progress and the decay of modern languages; also that the ancient classics must be regarded as furnishing the models for purity and beauty in style. ”

“ The facility with which the ancient languages lend themselves to the expression of new ideas is evidenced by the fact that the great majority of our scientific ideas, as survivals of this period of Latin intercourse, bear Latin and Greek designations, while in great measure scientific ideas are even now invested with names from these sources. ”

“ What fatal splendour has succeeded the ancient Roman simplicity? What is this foreign language, this effeminacy of manners? What is the meaning of these statues, paintings and buildings? Fools, what have you done? You, the lords of the earth, have made yourselves the slaves of the frivolous nations you have subdued. You are governed by rhetoricians, and it has been only to enrich architects, painters, sculptors and stage-players that you have watered Greece and Asia with your blood. Even the spoils of Carthage are the prize of a flute-player. Romans! Romans! ”

“ For a further 1000 years and more Latin remained the common speech of educated men throughout Europe: the 'Universal Language.' Greek had been smothered by the Turk. Through all that time—through the most of what we call Modern History, Latin reigned everywhere. ”

“ When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of authors in the Greek and Latin languages. ”

“ The literary argument for enforced study of Greek and Latin in our day has not much weight. What I call the glossological argument has more. Every well-educated person should have a thorough understanding of his own language, and no one can thoroughly understand the English without some knowledge of languages which touch it so nearly as the Latin and the Greek. ”

“ The living Latin for all the higher forms of composition, both prose and verse, was a far nobler language than the living Greek. During the long period of Grecian pre-eminence and literary glory, from Homer to Demosthenes, all the manifold forms of poetry and prose which were invented one after the other were brought to such exquisite perfection that their beauty of form and grace of language were never afterwards rivalled by Latin or any other people. ”

“ There were some who despaired of the French language altogether, who thought it naturally incapable of the fulness and elegance of Greek and Latin—cette élégance et copie qui est en la langue Greque et Romaine—that science could be adequately discussed, and poetry nobly written, only in the dead languages. ”

“ Nay, if they be thine, how canst thou show that we have no part in them, according to thy legislation and unreasonableness? Whose property are the words of the Greek language? And how must that language be spoken and conceived? Let me define the meaning of the term to thee, O thou man that busiest thyself about synonyms, and meanings, and things of different signification under one name, or the same under different names, and so forth----for thou must either assert that they belong to the religion, or else to the nation which first invented the meaning of the language. ”

“ There is a very good reason for the hard words and sometimes whole sentences of unpronounceable Greek and Latin, often used to describe a single little animal—the Greek and Latin language is studied and understood by scholars of every other language. ”

“ Modern languages seem to attempt to win their way at once to the understanding without dwelling in the ear; while the classical languages of antiquity seek at the same time to produce a corresponding effect on the outward sense, and to assist the mind by previously filling the ear, as it were, with an imperfect consciousness of the meaning sought to be conveyed by the words. ”

“ At the utmost our men read them. We were taught these languages because long ago Latin had been the language of civilisation; the one way of escape from the narrow and localised life had lain in those days through Latin, and afterwards Greek had come in as the vehicle of a flood of new and amazing ideas. ”

“ The affluence, and fullness, and flexibility, and sculpture-like finish of the language of the Attics, which leaves far behind not only the languages of antiquity, but also the most cultivated of modern times, is an enduring monument of the patient industry of the Athenians. 37 Language is unquestionably the highest creation of reason, and in the language of a nation we can see reflected as in a mirror the amount of culture to which it has attained. ”

“ In the infancy of our tongue, when the learning of the past was locked up in Greek and Latin, and the key to these languages, as well as the care of education, was in the hands of ecclesiastics, the study of the ancient classics became in some sort a necessity, the teachers being unable or unwilling to move in any other direction, and the learners having no choice but to follow. ”