I speak English, Russian, modern Greek, Spanish, French, German, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and some Italian and Swedish. This method is essentially how you learn. Massive input, hours and hours of audio and reading input, translating as you go. Very effective even though it can feel “messy” in the beginning. The brain adapts to the mess and starts to make sense after enough time reading. Great video.
I am learning Ancient Greek using Pharr's Beginning Greek. It is doing this with the Iliad, providing grammatical scaffolding as needed. I like it! Advantages: - starting with poetry emphasizes syllable length from the beginning - immediate contact with real literature; this helps with motivation - you are doing what this video advocates Disadvantages: - it is a steeeeep climb - Homeric Greek is idiosyncratic in many ways (I am learning)
There’s a method called “Listening-Reading” that suggested using a TL Audiobooks along with parallel texts, listening to the TL audio and translation then TL audio and text, and it can also be used with language laddering going L2 -> L3. Alexander Arguelles also suggested doing the reverse which he called “Reading-Listening” having an English or other fluent language audiobook while looking at a TL text, which is certainly more accessible for some ancient languages. I’ve tried this a bit and I’d say the Gospel of John is an especially good starting text for the ease of sentences, repetition of vocab, an availability of audiobooks. For other books it can be a bit tricker to start, but for learning related languages it’s easier to start with more advanced texts.
I have done this with parallel texts by Penguin in Italian and German and with a few translated books while reading the original in English. The only thing one has to keep in mind is that translation is an art and doesn't always match exactly word for word, especially the more distant the languages and cultures are the more artistry the translator has to use to convey the original meaning ie. the vagueness and hidden context in Japanese or Chinese to English.
Since I'm unable to post this on the Patreon, allow me to say in response to the post in memory of your late father that he could only have been immensely proud of you. With all the diligent and fine work you do you are a credit to his memory. Requiescat in pace.
That’s very kind, I appreciate the comment very much. His own work stands monumentally in my own psyche, and I will be very happy if one day I live up to his memory.
One of the things I've been doing is using a Greek-English interlinear New Testament. The one I have has an English gloss underneath every Greek word, and in the margins, it has an NRSV English translation. It also has the Strong number for each Greek word (Strong's numbers are a numerical code that identifies the root word, so you can tell if two similar seeming words really are the same word). I don't use the Strong numbers very often, but it is occasionally handy. There is a downloadable Greek NT, the Robinson and Pierpont edition, which has a version that has Strong's numbers and a grammar code for each word, telling you if it's a verb or a noun, singular or plural, what case, what mood, what tense, etc. The downloadable version is in CSV format, which is human readable, but isn't quite as convenient a format as an interlinear. I may end up using that at some point to help work out the grammar of sentences, once I have a good handle on how Greek grammar works. Another thing I've been doing a lot has been going over a few specific short videos from the Found in Antiquity: Ancient Greek channel. One in particular has Genesis chapter 1 from the Septuagint. She reads the text at full speed, with the text in Greek on the screen, with doodles representing what's happening in that particular section. If you turn on closed captions, you get the English translation as subtitles. I rewatch that video repeatedly, but I do different things each time. Sometimes I let it run at full speed with subtitles off, to work on reading faster, or to pick up the accent, or to see how much I comprehend. Sometimes I let it run full speed with the subtitles on, and try to understand everything, and look down at the subtitles when I get lost. One time I went through with subtitles on, pausing at every phrase to try to figure out which Greek word matched up to which English word. Different methods are good for different things. Listening and attempting to read at full speed, regardless of whether you understand anything doesn't give you new vocabulary, but does help you read and listen. Slowly going over it with subtitles, or an interlinear, or a translation of the passage to refer to will have a good chance to give you new vocabulary, but is not fast. I've also used the Alpha with Angela series, and your Ancient Greek in Action series. There, there's no English, which has the advantage of directly exposing you to the language, and the disadvantage that sometimes the concept behind the word isn't clear. It's very good at helping an absolute beginner get somewhere, but at the same time, once you've gotten past a certain point, repetition no longer helps because it's too basic. I'd kind of like to have something that combines all of the above at once, but I'm not sure it's possible. Pictures can be put in videos to help comprehension, though there's a limit to how much you can get across that way. Subtitles in English could help, but could also get in the way of learning the new language. Having an English version of the story before or after or in between repetitions of the story could help. Reading and hearing the new language at the same time works very well. You can either do things fast or slow. Both help, but in different ways, and they're incompatible. One of the things that I think helps a lot is toleration of not knowing parts of what you're reading and hearing. People on the internet push for 98% comprehension, but I've gotten a lot out of things where I understood 50% or less of what's going on.
I think you could find plenty of literature for Coptic like the Gnostic texts with their translation, but they are mostly in the Sahidic dialect, which isn't that different from the Bohairic one, however you need to get used to the differences first of course, great video, thank you, and Merry Christmas!
Great suggestion! Yes, for a number of reasons I wanted to start with Bohairic, but then I’ll use Allen’s book to learn the other dialects like Sahidic
@@polyMATHYplus Could you please make a video later sharing with us your adventurous journey with Coptic and how far you have got. Thanks. Mario Bishara.
@@polyMATHYplus Mainly Latin; I'm at least B2 in most of my other languages, so it's not that relevant in those cases. With more difficult works, it works best to go through them sentence by sentence. With works that one is familiar with or are less demanding, reading larger passages is more convenient. I usually start by reading in Latin, then read the translation. If there were many unknown words, I go back and read the Latin sentence again, but I don't think it's a good idea to be too pedantic about minor details until one reaches an upper intermediate level. This works better with digital texts, as the sentences might not be in exactly the same place when one is reading a physical book. I try to find stuff I actually want to read as well, so I've been reading Seneca, Ludvig Holberg, William of Ockham and other such texts.
I recently started learning Hebrew using the Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible. I was able to read a few verses and after 3 or 4 readings I learned a lot of new words.
You really should pick up the Aleph with Beth videos again. Even just watching one video a week would help you make huge advances with Hebrew. The other advice I would give to this would be to check out the Logos software with its translation feature. It translates any book into any number of languages (including Latin) quite well, and you have the added advantage of having the languages side-by-side.
I second the recommendation of Logos Bible software. With the right features installed (this can be expensive though), one can simply hover with the mouse over a Greek or Hebrew word and instantly get the corresponding word in the English translation highlighted, as well as get multiple dictionary definitions and a full morphological analysis. This renders it possible to read large amounts of Greek/Hebrew text at a stage when this would still be impossible in any other way. It accomplishes that what Luke is trying to get at in this video, only much more efficiently. I'm a beginner/early intermediate in Greek, and I just read the entire Greek NT in a few months, using Logos. 💜🖤
Reminds me of the old Medical School Maxim: "How do you get through Medical School? Butt in chair. Face in book".......this has never changed and never will.
Hey Luke. This was very interesting. Is it possible to let us know what translation youre using? Id like to source that Coptic - English side by side New Testament document. I tried looking myself, but what i found was not as clear as what youre using. Thanks.
I can sight-read about 75% of the GNT, and so I bought the Grk-Latin diglot put out by the German Bible society and just started reading the gospels this way. It has helped me begin to get the feel for Latin and learn a lot of vocab, while I supplement with Latin grammar instruction when I get time. it's great.
This is the difference between reading/writing a language and speaking it. One really has nothing to do with the other. You can learn to read any language in about 12-18 months, but becoming truly "Fluent" with native speakers, takes years, and can be learned via immersion alone, if need be.
Alexander Murray, first editor (creator) of the Oxford English Dictionary, taught himself multiple languages by reading the Bible in translation. It’s like immersion, isn’t it? I have Harry Potter in French and in Latin, for the same purpose. I really struggle with trying to find easy things to read in Japanese - I do watch anime, but they often speak casual Japanese, and I mostly have learned formal Japanese. Anyway, I totally agree with this technique and thank you for suggesting Bible Gateway - I will try looking at the Bible in Japanese, French and Latin.
I think it would be cool to have a side by side translation that is many translations to one source. For example, each sentence could have 3 translations, including a word for word ungrammatical-English translation. I find the many examples helpful when looking up individual English words or phrases I don't know. Example: if you look up "moor" and do an image search, you see many pictures of a moor. So this would be a similar idea at the sentence level.
I think the gospels all together are great for starting vocab but also grammatical forms. They also have the advantage of being composed of fairly small segments (miracle stories, teachings, parables and happenings). This could be good for any language you are learning. I am guessing other texts could be used if the New Testament is not suitable.
My main experience with gospels is Koine Greek (in which they were composed) and Latin Vulgate. I particularly find the juxtaposition of verbal forms in a small segment really helpful - one is exposed to so much of the verb system by this account (past, future, present, passive, active, imperative, 1st, 2nd and 3rd person all met in context) which makes meaning relatively intuitive) Sentence structure tends to be simple though Luke may be more elaborate..
I'm currently trying this with the Septuagint, using Brenton's English translation in my bilingual edition, as well as very slowly with the Hebrew Old Testament. I hope to do this with more translations, especially either the 1999 or 2022 Loeb Classical Library translations of The Iliad.
The first letter of John (as I reckon you know) has the simplest Greek in the New Testament, and it tends to translate into the simplest English, the simplest Spanish, etc., etc. There's a lot of repeated key vocabulary. The letter might make an even better place to start than John's Gospel.
I agree, though John 1, in spite of some conceptual complexity is simpler. Maybe 1 John should follow John ch1. 1 John has a number of advantages. Vocab is simple and some sentences are very simple (God is love) and there is a lot of repetition. Another advantage is that 1John is quite short so you can repeat it fairly quickly.
For those interested, although not for Latin, Green or Coptic, there is a good 5 volumes reader for "Polyglots" in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. th-cam.com/video/ve4JbEvtJvU/w-d-xo.html
Awesome demonstration!! I'm sorry, but the way you said "to die" a few minutes near the end of the video reminds of me of how Harrison Ford says it in "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom" when yelling at Willie Scott to save him and Short Round from the booby trap chamber, lol. "WE ARE GOING......TO DIIIIIIIIE!!!!!"😅
You mentioned that you took time to go from an advanced level in Greek (Attic) to being able to just sit down with some Plato and read it comfortably. You started to talk about the way you did that but I'm not sure if you every totally answered how you bridged that gap (unless it was just by using the method in the video). Is it just that you used this method, or is there more to it? I would love a video about how to go from more or less able to read advanced material to being able to read it fluently, comfortably, without constant reference to dictionaries, etc.
If I am understanding correctly, would you be able to use the Loeb Classical Library for this in Greek and Latin? Would that be too advanced? Thank you!
Right! That’s the idea. In theory, as long as you understand the English, you force the target language into a state of comprehensibility through recursive reading. It’s something like getting an immersion experience.
Dear luke, I really like your methods for learning obscure languages. I think a language will never truly be "dead" as long as it can give us so much information. By the way, do you perchance know some good, ørberg like books for learning hungarian?
4:58 Пісахі - looks like a Russian "Писать" or Ukrainian "Писати" (to write) I immediately knew it has to do something with writing whatever the language it is, so I believe the true translation for that word might be "written word", not just word, or more like just "written", пісахі, which already Filled with meaning, what else can be written, of course the word, so I believe that it is just "written". 33:45 iwannис (John) sounds like a name in Ukrainian Bible "Иоанн", (Johann) so I bet the name Jesus should be similar in coptic "іісwc"? Idk which one is U and J to use in coptic, , but it should be similar to ієсоyс, ієсус, iisoos, e-e-s-oo-s. Иисус, іісус. "Evaггеліоп ката іwaппеп" 3:40 The first 3 words after long line in the middle of the page, - Evangeline (Gospel), similar to russian Евангелие or Ukrainian Євангеліє, looks exactly like coptic, - kata, looks like Russian or Ukrainian "как" (how), or I feel like it should mean that word, because two words around it I do understand GOSPEL * JOHANNES, John, so gospel of John, or according to John's Gospel? Something like that, it should be. In Ukrainian it would be "Євангеліє по Іоанну" (по - also means как but it is more old church Ukrainian version of this word, how, according to) I don't know coptic and never seen it before, looked at the page for the first time and seems like I can read and understand about 20% of words, alphabet kinda Cyrillic, Greek like, it's crazy how it is similar to what I know. I speak Russian, Ukrainian, English, a bit Italian and Latin. Coptic feels like an old church Cyrillic language to me, if I learn a bit more of I might see more similarities with old Church Ukrainian that is inscribed in the capital of Ukraine in Kyiv's Church in 980s, saw it with my eyes. It is crazy. Also the word Coptic sounds so similar to Коптить, to fade away, decay in Russian or Ukrainian, seems like the name of the language is its state - fading away. I came to learn how to learn and found out I already know a bit of ancient coptic, 😂 thank you
@@polyMATHYplus well considering I knew almost 0 Latin before yes I learned a lot. I will say if you talk about this again emphasize the importance of having a firm grounding in pronunciation before reading even more than you did here. I was basically just using the pronunciation I learned from Spanish and that developed some bad habits that I fortunately overcame, but it could've been a big problem.
At this point it is just (unsupervised )machine learning. The point is machine learning needs reasonable parameter settings, which is the target language's similarity with your mother tongue.
Interesting, so you think this method is comparable to what machine learning does, where lots of data and semantic correspondence is given, and it eventually makes sense of it?
@ Yes you know I never pushed myself to learn Japanese, I just read a lot of texts, and eventually achieved reading/conversational level. I tacitly learnt the verb conjugations even though I didn't remember the rules.
I think it would be just as effective, if you know Greek. In reality, I used this very technique years ago to acquire the Greek in the Gospel of John. I recorded the English, then the Latin, and then the Greek in my audiobook, which later I made public: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/gospel-of-john-english-latin-greek-trilingual-audiobook-text But I used the Latin as my primarily teaching language to study the Greek. As long as you understand the teaching language, it will work.
From what I've heard, it was the primary method, along with memorization (such as of Homer's epics). I'm sure many other methods could have been effective. In the case of Latin and Greek, these ancient speakers lived amongst each other, and so could immerse thermselves in the environment and the language, so that counts for a lot in addition.
Having examined both their books in detail, the answer is, I believe: probably yes. Those books are rife with crimes against paedagogy - I’m being hyperbolic, but each in their own way subtly frustrates the student (I’ve seen this dozens of times) to the point of not wanting to continue with the language. I regard that as a failure. Even pushing oneself through both texts “successfully” may be less effective than doing something like this *first*, then returning to them to glean knowledge on grammar and other vocabulary. You’ll in a sense already know the language and thus be somewhat inoculated to the poor organization and writing in those readers.
I know that you laid out a plan for ancient greek on your channel. I would love for you to revise it to include this method I have been doing latin for the last 5 months with familia romana and the legentibus app as well as latin by the natural method I was going to start greek at some point but Osweald Bera hàs changed my plans.
The title here is really a little too clickbait-y. This is not true fluency, nor is it possible to become fluent in one day ("TODAY"). What is being described here is rather one of the many things one can do while engaged in the struggle of learning a dead language. Fluency in a dead language, which does not even need to be a goal (being able to haltingly read Coptic, or even just to decipher it, can be a great skill to have for a scholar who mainly studies, say, Greek, Syriac and Arabic texts), is something that only even comes in sight during a much later stage, when one does indeed already have the necessary skills to read large amounts of native text. True fluency is a result of massive input, and perhaps (this is controversial among experts in second language acquisition) also some output. This method rather describes how to get some very minimal input at a stage when otherwise any significant amount of input would still be impossible. 💜🖤
There are people who are able to write and speak ancient Greek without having read large amounts of original text in that language. I believe that what is acquired is not only vocabulary but rather that the brain creates a grammatical scheme of that language and modifies and expands it as new words are learned and the syntax is polished.
Plus, we should distinguish fluent reading from fluent speaking, especially for dead languages. Some (like Latin) are easier to become a fluent speaker in, while others are much harder. Meanwhile being able to fluently read or write a dead language (or even living) is an ability distinct from speaking it fluently.
th-cam.com/video/QoXe_9fsPOM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=iBJWFLP9BcerAfQ5 my thoughts went to this song Still it will take at least tree months to learn a new language of your choice
I speak English, Russian, modern Greek, Spanish, French, German, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and some Italian and Swedish. This method is essentially how you learn.
Massive input, hours and hours of audio and reading input, translating as you go. Very effective even though it can feel “messy” in the beginning. The brain adapts to the mess and starts to make sense after enough time reading. Great video.
No you don't.
Luke struggles, too, sometimes. Who knew. Thnk you for this. It is really helpful.
I find the Rosary good for this. Learn 50-100 of the most common words by memorising it in English and then learning it in your target language.
I am learning Ancient Greek using Pharr's Beginning Greek. It is doing this with the Iliad, providing grammatical scaffolding as needed. I like it!
Advantages:
- starting with poetry emphasizes syllable length from the beginning
- immediate contact with real literature; this helps with motivation
- you are doing what this video advocates
Disadvantages:
- it is a steeeeep climb
- Homeric Greek is idiosyncratic in many ways (I am learning)
There’s a method called “Listening-Reading” that suggested using a TL Audiobooks along with parallel texts, listening to the TL audio and translation then TL audio and text, and it can also be used with language laddering going L2 -> L3. Alexander Arguelles also suggested doing the reverse which he called “Reading-Listening” having an English or other fluent language audiobook while looking at a TL text, which is certainly more accessible for some ancient languages. I’ve tried this a bit and I’d say the Gospel of John is an especially good starting text for the ease of sentences, repetition of vocab, an availability of audiobooks. For other books it can be a bit tricker to start, but for learning related languages it’s easier to start with more advanced texts.
Soon enough Luke will take that method and slap "Ranieri" in the title and claim he improved it somehow. He has a track record of doing that.
I have done this with parallel texts by Penguin in Italian and German and with a few translated books while reading the original in English. The only thing one has to keep in mind is that translation is an art and doesn't always match exactly word for word, especially the more distant the languages and cultures are the more artistry the translator has to use to convey the original meaning ie. the vagueness and hidden context in Japanese or Chinese to English.
Since I'm unable to post this on the Patreon, allow me to say in response to the post in memory of your late father that he could only have been immensely proud of you. With all the diligent and fine work you do you are a credit to his memory. Requiescat in pace.
That’s very kind, I appreciate the comment very much. His own work stands monumentally in my own psyche, and I will be very happy if one day I live up to his memory.
One of the things I've been doing is using a Greek-English interlinear New Testament. The one I have has an English gloss underneath every Greek word, and in the margins, it has an NRSV English translation. It also has the Strong number for each Greek word (Strong's numbers are a numerical code that identifies the root word, so you can tell if two similar seeming words really are the same word). I don't use the Strong numbers very often, but it is occasionally handy.
There is a downloadable Greek NT, the Robinson and Pierpont edition, which has a version that has Strong's numbers and a grammar code for each word, telling you if it's a verb or a noun, singular or plural, what case, what mood, what tense, etc. The downloadable version is in CSV format, which is human readable, but isn't quite as convenient a format as an interlinear. I may end up using that at some point to help work out the grammar of sentences, once I have a good handle on how Greek grammar works.
Another thing I've been doing a lot has been going over a few specific short videos from the Found in Antiquity: Ancient Greek channel. One in particular has Genesis chapter 1 from the Septuagint. She reads the text at full speed, with the text in Greek on the screen, with doodles representing what's happening in that particular section. If you turn on closed captions, you get the English translation as subtitles.
I rewatch that video repeatedly, but I do different things each time. Sometimes I let it run at full speed with subtitles off, to work on reading faster, or to pick up the accent, or to see how much I comprehend. Sometimes I let it run full speed with the subtitles on, and try to understand everything, and look down at the subtitles when I get lost. One time I went through with subtitles on, pausing at every phrase to try to figure out which Greek word matched up to which English word.
Different methods are good for different things. Listening and attempting to read at full speed, regardless of whether you understand anything doesn't give you new vocabulary, but does help you read and listen. Slowly going over it with subtitles, or an interlinear, or a translation of the passage to refer to will have a good chance to give you new vocabulary, but is not fast.
I've also used the Alpha with Angela series, and your Ancient Greek in Action series. There, there's no English, which has the advantage of directly exposing you to the language, and the disadvantage that sometimes the concept behind the word isn't clear. It's very good at helping an absolute beginner get somewhere, but at the same time, once you've gotten past a certain point, repetition no longer helps because it's too basic.
I'd kind of like to have something that combines all of the above at once, but I'm not sure it's possible. Pictures can be put in videos to help comprehension, though there's a limit to how much you can get across that way. Subtitles in English could help, but could also get in the way of learning the new language. Having an English version of the story before or after or in between repetitions of the story could help. Reading and hearing the new language at the same time works very well. You can either do things fast or slow. Both help, but in different ways, and they're incompatible.
One of the things that I think helps a lot is toleration of not knowing parts of what you're reading and hearing. People on the internet push for 98% comprehension, but I've gotten a lot out of things where I understood 50% or less of what's going on.
Underrated comment.
I think you could find plenty of literature for Coptic like the Gnostic texts with their translation, but they are mostly in the Sahidic dialect, which isn't that different from the Bohairic one, however you need to get used to the differences first of course, great video, thank you, and Merry Christmas!
Great suggestion! Yes, for a number of reasons I wanted to start with Bohairic, but then I’ll use Allen’s book to learn the other dialects like Sahidic
@@polyMATHYplus Could you please make a video later sharing with us your adventurous journey with Coptic and how far you have got.
Thanks.
Mario Bishara.
I've done this for a while, and it's pretty efficient.
Great! Tell us more: what languages, and how have you done it exactly?
@@polyMATHYplus Mainly Latin; I'm at least B2 in most of my other languages, so it's not that relevant in those cases. With more difficult works, it works best to go through them sentence by sentence. With works that one is familiar with or are less demanding, reading larger passages is more convenient. I usually start by reading in Latin, then read the translation. If there were many unknown words, I go back and read the Latin sentence again, but I don't think it's a good idea to be too pedantic about minor details until one reaches an upper intermediate level. This works better with digital texts, as the sentences might not be in exactly the same place when one is reading a physical book. I try to find stuff I actually want to read as well, so I've been reading Seneca, Ludvig Holberg, William of Ockham and other such texts.
I recently started learning Hebrew using the Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible. I was able to read a few verses and after 3 or 4 readings I learned a lot of new words.
Very cool!
You really should pick up the Aleph with Beth videos again. Even just watching one video a week would help you make huge advances with Hebrew.
The other advice I would give to this would be to check out the Logos software with its translation feature. It translates any book into any number of languages (including Latin) quite well, and you have the added advantage of having the languages side-by-side.
I second the recommendation of Logos Bible software. With the right features installed (this can be expensive though), one can simply hover with the mouse over a Greek or Hebrew word and instantly get the corresponding word in the English translation highlighted, as well as get multiple dictionary definitions and a full morphological analysis. This renders it possible to read large amounts of Greek/Hebrew text at a stage when this would still be impossible in any other way. It accomplishes that what Luke is trying to get at in this video, only much more efficiently. I'm a beginner/early intermediate in Greek, and I just read the entire Greek NT in a few months, using Logos. 💜🖤
Luke has already admitted that Aleph with Beth inspired his comprehensible input videos.
Reminds me of the old Medical School Maxim: "How do you get through Medical School? Butt in chair. Face in book".......this has never changed and never will.
Hey Luke. This was very interesting. Is it possible to let us know what translation youre using? Id like to source that Coptic - English side by side New Testament document. I tried looking myself, but what i found was not as clear as what youre using. Thanks.
I can sight-read about 75% of the GNT, and so I bought the Grk-Latin diglot put out by the German Bible society and just started reading the gospels this way. It has helped me begin to get the feel for Latin and learn a lot of vocab, while I supplement with Latin grammar instruction when I get time. it's great.
This is the difference between reading/writing a language and speaking it. One really has nothing to do with the other. You can learn to read any language in about 12-18 months, but becoming truly "Fluent" with native speakers, takes years, and can be learned via immersion alone, if need be.
Alexander Murray, first editor (creator) of the Oxford English Dictionary, taught himself multiple languages by reading the Bible in translation. It’s like immersion, isn’t it? I have Harry Potter in French and in Latin, for the same purpose. I really struggle with trying to find easy things to read in Japanese - I do watch anime, but they often speak casual Japanese, and I mostly have learned formal Japanese. Anyway, I totally agree with this technique and thank you for suggesting Bible Gateway - I will try looking at the Bible in Japanese, French and Latin.
This is essentially how Richard Burton the famous orientalist learned languages. If I am not mistaken
I think it would be cool to have a side by side translation that is many translations to one source. For example, each sentence could have 3 translations, including a word for word ungrammatical-English translation.
I find the many examples helpful when looking up individual English words or phrases I don't know. Example: if you look up "moor" and do an image search, you see many pictures of a moor. So this would be a similar idea at the sentence level.
Great ideas
I think the gospels all together are great for starting vocab but also grammatical forms. They also have the advantage of being composed of fairly small segments (miracle stories, teachings, parables and happenings). This could be good for any language you are learning.
I am guessing other texts could be used if the New Testament is not suitable.
My main experience with gospels is Koine Greek (in which they were composed) and Latin Vulgate. I particularly find the juxtaposition of verbal forms in a small segment really helpful - one is exposed to so much of the verb system by this account (past, future, present, passive, active, imperative, 1st, 2nd and 3rd person all met in context) which makes meaning relatively intuitive) Sentence structure tends to be simple though Luke may be more elaborate..
Your back wall is really reassuring to me for some reason, looks study-able to be in ( I live with a noise infested family )
Yes, I’m blessed with a lovely office. Here is a closer look: th-cam.com/video/5bJnpFe3IH8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=x0Q4TNyqDgQlwopa
@ Aiming for something like that when I get my own place for sure!
I'm currently trying this with the Septuagint, using Brenton's English translation in my bilingual edition, as well as very slowly with the Hebrew Old Testament. I hope to do this with more translations, especially either the 1999 or 2022 Loeb Classical Library translations of The Iliad.
The first letter of John (as I reckon you know) has the simplest Greek in the New Testament, and it tends to translate into the simplest English, the simplest Spanish, etc., etc. There's a lot of repeated key vocabulary. The letter might make an even better place to start than John's Gospel.
I agree, though John 1, in spite of some conceptual complexity is simpler. Maybe 1 John should follow John ch1.
1 John has a number of advantages. Vocab is simple and some sentences are very simple (God is love) and there is a lot of repetition.
Another advantage is that 1John is quite short so you can repeat it fairly quickly.
For those interested, although not for Latin, Green or Coptic, there is a good 5 volumes reader for "Polyglots" in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
th-cam.com/video/ve4JbEvtJvU/w-d-xo.html
Great suggestion
Awesome demonstration!! I'm sorry, but the way you said "to die" a few minutes near the end of the video reminds of me of how Harrison Ford says it in "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom" when yelling at Willie Scott to save him and Short Round from the booby trap chamber, lol.
"WE ARE GOING......TO DIIIIIIIIE!!!!!"😅
Haha good memory! Nice scene.
Luke, you're awesome!
Go Army, beat Navy 2025!!!!
You mentioned that you took time to go from an advanced level in Greek (Attic) to being able to just sit down with some Plato and read it comfortably. You started to talk about the way you did that but I'm not sure if you every totally answered how you bridged that gap (unless it was just by using the method in the video). Is it just that you used this method, or is there more to it? I would love a video about how to go from more or less able to read advanced material to being able to read it fluently, comfortably, without constant reference to dictionaries, etc.
If I am understanding correctly, would you be able to use the Loeb Classical Library for this in Greek and Latin? Would that be too advanced? Thank you!
Right! That’s the idea. In theory, as long as you understand the English, you force the target language into a state of comprehensibility through recursive reading. It’s something like getting an immersion experience.
Dear luke, I really like your methods for learning obscure languages. I think a language will never truly be "dead" as long as it can give us so much information. By the way, do you perchance know some good, ørberg like books for learning hungarian?
4:58 Пісахі - looks like a Russian "Писать" or Ukrainian "Писати" (to write) I immediately knew it has to do something with writing whatever the language it is, so I believe the true translation for that word might be "written word", not just word, or more like just "written", пісахі, which already Filled with meaning, what else can be written, of course the word, so I believe that it is just "written".
33:45 iwannис (John) sounds like a name in Ukrainian Bible "Иоанн", (Johann) so I bet the name Jesus should be similar in coptic "іісwc"? Idk which one is U and J to use in coptic, , but it should be similar to ієсоyс, ієсус, iisoos, e-e-s-oo-s. Иисус, іісус.
"Evaггеліоп ката іwaппеп" 3:40 The first 3 words after long line in the middle of the page,
- Evangeline (Gospel), similar to russian Евангелие or Ukrainian Євангеліє, looks exactly like coptic,
- kata, looks like Russian or Ukrainian "как" (how), or I feel like it should mean that word, because two words around it I do understand GOSPEL * JOHANNES, John, so gospel of John, or according to John's Gospel? Something like that, it should be. In Ukrainian it would be "Євангеліє по Іоанну" (по - also means как but it is more old church Ukrainian version of this word, how, according to)
I don't know coptic and never seen it before, looked at the page for the first time and seems like I can read and understand about 20% of words, alphabet kinda Cyrillic, Greek like, it's crazy how it is similar to what I know.
I speak Russian, Ukrainian, English, a bit Italian and Latin.
Coptic feels like an old church Cyrillic language to me, if I learn a bit more of I might see more similarities with old Church Ukrainian that is inscribed in the capital of Ukraine in Kyiv's Church in 980s, saw it with my eyes. It is crazy.
Also the word Coptic sounds so similar to Коптить, to fade away, decay in Russian or Ukrainian, seems like the name of the language is its state - fading away.
I came to learn how to learn and found out I already know a bit of ancient coptic, 😂 thank you
I did this with caesars commentaries before i even decided to learn latin.
How did that go? Did you acquire any Latin from the experience?
@@polyMATHYplus well considering I knew almost 0 Latin before yes I learned a lot. I will say if you talk about this again emphasize the importance of having a firm grounding in pronunciation before reading even more than you did here. I was basically just using the pronunciation I learned from Spanish and that developed some bad habits that I fortunately overcame, but it could've been a big problem.
At this point it is just (unsupervised )machine learning. The point is machine learning needs reasonable parameter settings, which is the target language's similarity with your mother tongue.
Interesting, so you think this method is comparable to what machine learning does, where lots of data and semantic correspondence is given, and it eventually makes sense of it?
@ Yes you know I never pushed myself to learn Japanese, I just read a lot of texts, and eventually achieved reading/conversational level. I tacitly learnt the verb conjugations even though I didn't remember the rules.
What website do you use to see both texts? I feel like you said it in the video, but I couldn't find the part
The Bible is always the best text or set or texts for this sort of thing!!
What would happen if you use the Greek original as a tool instead of English translation?
I think it would be just as effective, if you know Greek. In reality, I used this very technique years ago to acquire the Greek in the Gospel of John. I recorded the English, then the Latin, and then the Greek in my audiobook, which later I made public: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/gospel-of-john-english-latin-greek-trilingual-audiobook-text
But I used the Latin as my primarily teaching language to study the Greek. As long as you understand the teaching language, it will work.
When is polyMATHY PLUS PLUS gonna be a thing?
Haha. I think I have enough channels.
Do you think that this is the method of language learning used to good success in past ages?
From what I've heard, it was the primary method, along with memorization (such as of Homer's epics). I'm sure many other methods could have been effective. In the case of Latin and Greek, these ancient speakers lived amongst each other, and so could immerse thermselves in the environment and the language, so that counts for a lot in addition.
Would this be more effective than the textbooks like Athenaze or Logos?
Having examined both their books in detail, the answer is, I believe: probably yes. Those books are rife with crimes against paedagogy - I’m being hyperbolic, but each in their own way subtly frustrates the student (I’ve seen this dozens of times) to the point of not wanting to continue with the language. I regard that as a failure. Even pushing oneself through both texts “successfully” may be less effective than doing something like this *first*, then returning to them to glean knowledge on grammar and other vocabulary. You’ll in a sense already know the language and thus be somewhat inoculated to the poor organization and writing in those readers.
I know that you laid out a plan for ancient greek on your channel. I would love for you to revise it to include this method I have been doing latin for the last 5 months with familia romana and the legentibus app as well as latin by the natural method I was going to start greek at some point but Osweald Bera hàs changed my plans.
Which Bible is this? Horner?
I've never seen the Coptic script before. It looks like a really cursed Greek font.
Haha yeah, it’s just Greek uncials of the 3cAD-4cAD. It’s actually how I write Greek by hand anyway, so I’m used to it.
The Gospel of John is currently my favorite of the gospels.
Hey you look just like that guy from ScorpioMartianus
I am the same person. I have a few different channels.
@@polyMATHYplus You might want to collab with that PolýMATHY guy, I heard he's friends with Luke the Pilot, the air force pilot!
/s
The title here is really a little too clickbait-y. This is not true fluency, nor is it possible to become fluent in one day ("TODAY"). What is being described here is rather one of the many things one can do while engaged in the struggle of learning a dead language. Fluency in a dead language, which does not even need to be a goal (being able to haltingly read Coptic, or even just to decipher it, can be a great skill to have for a scholar who mainly studies, say, Greek, Syriac and Arabic texts), is something that only even comes in sight during a much later stage, when one does indeed already have the necessary skills to read large amounts of native text. True fluency is a result of massive input, and perhaps (this is controversial among experts in second language acquisition) also some output. This method rather describes how to get some very minimal input at a stage when otherwise any significant amount of input would still be impossible. 💜🖤
There are people who are able to write and speak ancient Greek without having read large amounts of original text in that language. I believe that what is acquired is not only vocabulary but rather that the brain creates a grammatical scheme of that language and modifies and expands it as new words are learned and the syntax is polished.
It’s TH-cam. Luke’s gotta eat.
Plus, we should distinguish fluent reading from fluent speaking, especially for dead languages. Some (like Latin) are easier to become a fluent speaker in, while others are much harder. Meanwhile being able to fluently read or write a dead language (or even living) is an ability distinct from speaking it fluently.
th-cam.com/video/QoXe_9fsPOM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=iBJWFLP9BcerAfQ5 my thoughts went to this song
Still it will take at least tree months to learn a new language of your choice