tldr; 1:00 1) You're probably not spending enough time learning the language. 2:18 2) You're probably not reading enough. 3:02 3) You likely won't feel your progress as you go. 4:51 4) Rereading is your friend. 6:55 5) Benefits of a guide programme. 7:44 6) Know when to make the transition to authentic texts. 10:30 7) Include extensive and intensive reading. 12:18 8) What makes a text easy or hard is primarily vocabulary. 13:35 9) Read with audio if you can find it. If you can't find it, make it. 15:52 10) Become okay with different pronunciation systems. 17:43 11) Keep your reason for learning the language close.
I adore Hebrew in all forms but especially in its Biblical and post-Biblical forms. Jews read the weekly Torah portion twice a week as well as the haftorah ( non-Pentateuch portion provided weekly). We read out loud and then chant in the synagogue on Saturday. We do this for our entire life, rereading the same text so that we eventually are very familiar with it and all the vocabulary. In addition, we use the commentaries written over many centuries to go deeper and reinforce our learning. The Babylonian ( Aramaic) and Jerusalem ( Hebrew) Talmuds are essential. They also reinforce the above learning as well as provide discussions in colloquial language of the first few centuries of our era ( 200-400 CE) with a lot of cool vocabulary and concepts. Of course, they also have amazing commentaries. I am 75 and have been doing this for over 50 years. Having lived in Israel I enjoy how this language has now become the daily language of a vibrant and developed land. I feel so blessed.
Nicely done. I made a similar video within the context of studying Literary Chinese for the reading of Buddhist texts. It's good to know that my experiences are common across the board.
Colin, nice. As someone who majored in Ancient Greek and continued study in a PhD program (which I voluntarily terminated), the single biggest mistake I made was not re-reading texts. I naively thought that after reading the text (Homer, Plato, Thucydides, Aristotle, Euripides, Sophocles, etc.) I was done. Foolish, foolish me. Years later I've immigrated to German speaking Switzerland and spend my days in German. I read and listen several hours a day. I still don't re-read texts enough, but I make up for it a bit by quantity. Quantity is your friend.
I need to make a second comment (apologies). This is the best collection of advice for any learner of ancient languages (and put concisely). Anyone thinking of learning an ancient language should read this several times and keep coming back for a refresher. Definitely read more. Definitely be multimodal. That is read and get audio. Pronunciation model isn't important, so long as you can relate to it. I intend to revisit your video many times and look forward to the book!
หลายเดือนก่อน +3
Great points. For Latin, Legentibus has an amazing collection of readings (with texts) with beautiful clear pronunciation. Alsop a lot of amazing Internet resources, like Satura Lanx, and MusaPedestris. Way harder to find good Greek audio, with a pleasing pronunciation... When it comes to reading authentic materials, it would have been interesting to hear you discuss a bit various ways of "bridging the gap", from bilingual readers, to heavily annotated readers, to things like Dolphin-editions which are annotated in the source language.
Those are great Latin resources -would that we were so spoilt for choice with any other ancient language. Bridging the gap is tough - probably worth a video of its own!
Cool. First time on the channel. I am a Latin teacher and I try to incorporate most of your tips to my students. We track their minutes read and recommend a minimum of 100 minutes a week. I have a wide variety of free reading books in Latin and send them videos and audio in Latin. Sadly tip 11 is the hardest to implement since it is a mandatory class.
Amazing! Even that small habit of tracking can make a huge difference in motivation and in consistency. And after reading 100 words a week after a year, those students will be doing so well - and who knows, they may find their motivation in one of those texts
What a fabulous video! Stumbled onto this channel by accident (have studied Biblical Hebrew and am currently in my 5th year of Russian). So much good advice here delivered very smoothly and with just the right amount of gentle humor. Very impressive! You earned a new subscriber.
I’m currently learning modern French, not medieval or ancient French, and have a lot of free time. I’ve been learning French for 3 months and according to multiple tests I’ve taken online for free I’m b2, which is good for 3 months. Et moi aussi, je le crois ! Je suis bonne en français en si peu de temps grâce au temps que j'y ai consacré. I write notes on French textbooks and say sentences aloud and watch videos daily. If I was a busy person I wouldn’t have progressed so far so fast. In English I’m a great speller and while French is notoriously difficult to spell, I do it well if I do say so myself. I struggle with pronunciation since it’s not straightforward
We appreciated the first couple of pages of Ōsweald being made available on the website, but could more resources be made available in advance of publication? Since vocabulary is so important (agreed!), maybe the vocabulary from the first chapter or two could be offered so that we can hit the ground running when Ōsweald becomes available? Thanks again!
You are correct, vocabulary trumps grammar and pronunciation, and pronunciation is easy to adjust once you become comfortable with the language. One thing that would not have occurred to you, since you are approaching from reading, which is the correct way, is that 'cheating' by using an app with vocabulary lists is not a great way to introduce vocabulary. Take 'sword' or 'shield'. The English words have very broad meanings, while the target words probably have more specific ones. Thus, those two words will have several translation possibilities. If you do not know the language, you may have to reform your image when you encounter the words in a text. Better to learn vocabulary, with or without an app, as you encounter it in a text as then it will have context. The reading will also give you memory reinforcement. One thing that can be done is to create a vocabulary list of all the terms in a target text before reading it, memorise the appropriate ones, (Entry level students don't need to memorise a word encountered only once in that text and in no other text.), and then read the text instead of reading/translating it and then learning the vocabulary as recognition in context helps to fix words in memory. Perhaps an 'Oh, this is useful,' response.
I just tried the new ChatGPT voice feature with the new updated model and apparently it can speak old English, I can’t speak to the accuracy or grammar since I don’t now any old English but it spoke some nonsense that sounded like some Viking language. So apparently yes, you can practice speaking at least one of these old languages now with an AI speaker… They even gave me a short transcription: Hwæt! We gað on geardagum, þeodcyninga, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon! Some background, I’ve been using the voice feature for the past six months to practice French, and it’s amazing! New updated voice model is at a whole new level.
You’re back! Are you gonna continue with conlanging because I really enjoyed them videos. Well, any video you do I’d enjoy. Your videos are different than a lot of other language channels and I like that!
I think #10 is particularly important. There is quite a bit of good audio for reconstructed Latin that I have failed to take advantage of because I prefer ecclesiastical myself. There is a real shortage of audio material for Ancient Greek though, in any pronunciation.
A rare useful and honest video on language learning on TH-cam. I still think but that 10 hours per month won't cut it, especially for Latin, not to mention Greek (you need at least 1h every day). And you need to have a firm grasp of grammar to read synthetic langages, otherwise instead of sentences you will see a string of words. "Omnes homines natura scire desiderant." - do men want to know nature? or they want to know by nature? And it's a simple, very short sentence! Imagine your brain when it has to deal with a typical Latin sentence. But otherwise, great video which relevant for modern languages as well.
I've been doing Classical Chinese for a while and your description of getting bored because of the pedagogical texts but trying to read real material and not being able to go through it is really true for my modern Chinese. I made the switch because I will be learning hanzi either way and there are more texts I'm interested in reading in Classical that don't feel completely out of reach. I was using the Vogelsang textbook and reading the example sentences there but as good as the book is the book is very dry as it is very grammar focused. I'm going through a textbook designed for reading poetry and it is definetly not as intense? But I'm also reading the three character classic on the sidelines, because I also wanna actually read. I think Vogelsang helped me a lot with that because a lot of vocab and historical context to make sense of the book is explained there. Sadly I can't find an audio recording that is read by an adult and the version of the text I own (there are several variations that were passed sown). It is cool that due to the character system this language has a tradition of authentic texts for teaching children how to read it, it could be considered an authentic text since it was written when Literary Chinese was employed in literature.
2 questions. Would you ever make a playlist of good TH-cam videos that are good for old English pronunciation. And given that old English has a clear set of original material would you make a free reading order sheet? Say starting with Oswald, Sweets, etc. like the Greek list you are using.
I would like to return to my Latin I'd been learning back in the days of first year of uni, but it feels like I already have some decent level and need to choose some course that does not repeat all the things AND with it does not assume for me to know much which I don't know. What to do with it?
I'm having trouble finding pedagogical texts for Old English (apart from the obvious textbooks). Does anyone have recommendations of readers or easier poetry books?
the title of the video nails it. I am an linguist that specializez in ancient language. hope that I can get a reply from you after this reach out of mine. hope that we can find a way to do things together.
I would suggest one more tip: don't look down on using translations. Old languages are very inconvenient to learn because say what you will, there just isn't that much learning resources on average. Sure, there are 500 graded readers for Latin, but only 1 or 2 for Medieval French and German. Even less if you aren't well-acquainted with grammar concepts, like "noun case" and don't have a good grasp on phonetics concepts. Human interaction is, again, limited. You can ask a German how you translate a bizarre idiom or if you parsed correctly an odd grammar structure, but not an Anglo-Saxon. So use an accepted translation as an aide. The texts you know about are probably mainstream ones anyway. Stuff like "The Green Knight", "Havamal" and Chretien de Troyes, not an obscure sir William Marshal's biography or Blind Harry's poems. Translation can be your teacher. Giving you a hand when you aren't sure and providing back up to make advanced texts accessible
Read and learn first the real history about languages,, and then try to learn an ancient language !!! Greek ancient language dated at list 10.000 years ago !! That’s why is so perfect !!!! Dasaaaaaa!!!!!
Hi John, Colin mentions my own recommendation in a video of mine linked in the description of the above video, called the Ranieri-Roberts Approach to Ancient Greek. All of books mentioned there, with the partial exception of Logos, Alexandros, and Mythologica, aim to teach you Attic Greek. Definitely see that video to get an idea of what the issues are with answering your excellent question in a clear and decisive way. They're all good to start with, though. Once you get to be more than just a beginner, Reading Greek is great to take you through intermediate level stages of reading.
It's only special compared to Latin in its lack of cognates, so the Orberg approach won't work. The answer is to use the old John Locke/Hamiltonian approach instead of relying on cognates.
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Εὖ γε!! Great job, mīn freond!
Whattttttt. I didn’t know these two worlds overlapped
Ave Lucie!
tldr;
1:00 1) You're probably not spending enough time learning the language.
2:18 2) You're probably not reading enough.
3:02 3) You likely won't feel your progress as you go.
4:51 4) Rereading is your friend.
6:55 5) Benefits of a guide programme.
7:44 6) Know when to make the transition to authentic texts.
10:30 7) Include extensive and intensive reading.
12:18 8) What makes a text easy or hard is primarily vocabulary.
13:35 9) Read with audio if you can find it. If you can't find it, make it.
15:52 10) Become okay with different pronunciation systems.
17:43 11) Keep your reason for learning the language close.
Gods bless
Thank you.
>youre not reading enough
>(one of the) most liked komments is a "Too Long Didnt Read"
You are a mensch, thank you!
@@ColinGorrie nope, just autistic
I'm learning middle Persian at the moment. It was spoken from 300BC to 800AD.
Beautiful! I may dabble a little in Old Persian next year myself if I can scrounge together the time
What textbook are you using for that? Does it work for you?
I adore Hebrew in all forms but especially in its Biblical and post-Biblical forms. Jews read the weekly Torah portion twice a week as well as the haftorah ( non-Pentateuch portion provided weekly). We read out loud and then chant in the synagogue on Saturday. We do this for our entire life, rereading the same text so that we eventually are very familiar with it and all the vocabulary. In addition, we use the commentaries written over many centuries to go deeper and reinforce our learning.
The Babylonian ( Aramaic) and Jerusalem ( Hebrew) Talmuds are essential. They also reinforce the above learning as well as provide discussions in colloquial language of the first few centuries of our era ( 200-400 CE) with a lot of cool vocabulary and concepts. Of course, they also have amazing commentaries.
I am 75 and have been doing this for over 50 years.
Having lived in Israel I enjoy how this language has now become the daily language of a vibrant and developed land.
I feel so blessed.
כן, למדתי ערמית בבית ספר.
This is one of my dreams to learn Ancient Greek and Latin❤
It’s a pleasure to find quality + kindness + mastery. 👏 Bravo
Nicely done. I made a similar video within the context of studying Literary Chinese for the reading of Buddhist texts. It's good to know that my experiences are common across the board.
I look forward to checking out your video! 文言文 is a longstanding, if currently dormant, interest of mine
Colin, nice. As someone who majored in Ancient Greek and continued study in a PhD program (which I voluntarily terminated), the single biggest mistake I made was not re-reading texts. I naively thought that after reading the text (Homer, Plato, Thucydides, Aristotle, Euripides, Sophocles, etc.) I was done. Foolish, foolish me. Years later I've immigrated to German speaking Switzerland and spend my days in German. I read and listen several hours a day. I still don't re-read texts enough, but I make up for it a bit by quantity. Quantity is your friend.
Se bera giefað to us, colin!
Sē bera cymþ hrædlīċe...
I need to make a second comment (apologies).
This is the best collection of advice for any learner of ancient languages (and put concisely). Anyone thinking of learning an ancient language should read this several times and keep coming back for a refresher.
Definitely read more. Definitely be multimodal. That is read and get audio. Pronunciation model isn't important, so long as you can relate to it.
I intend to revisit your video many times and look forward to the book!
Great points. For Latin, Legentibus has an amazing collection of readings (with texts) with beautiful clear pronunciation. Alsop a lot of amazing Internet resources, like Satura Lanx, and MusaPedestris. Way harder to find good Greek audio, with a pleasing pronunciation...
When it comes to reading authentic materials, it would have been interesting to hear you discuss a bit various ways of "bridging the gap", from bilingual readers, to heavily annotated readers, to things like Dolphin-editions which are annotated in the source language.
Those are great Latin resources -would that we were so spoilt for choice with any other ancient language.
Bridging the gap is tough - probably worth a video of its own!
Cool. First time on the channel. I am a Latin teacher and I try to incorporate most of your tips to my students. We track their minutes read and recommend a minimum of 100 minutes a week.
I have a wide variety of free reading books in Latin and send them videos and audio in Latin. Sadly tip 11 is the hardest to implement since it is a mandatory class.
Amazing! Even that small habit of tracking can make a huge difference in motivation and in consistency. And after reading 100 words a week after a year, those students will be doing so well - and who knows, they may find their motivation in one of those texts
What a fabulous video! Stumbled onto this channel by accident (have studied Biblical Hebrew and am currently in my 5th year of Russian). So much good advice here delivered very smoothly and with just the right amount of gentle humor. Very impressive! You earned a new subscriber.
Thank you very much!
I’m currently learning modern French, not medieval or ancient French, and have a lot of free time. I’ve been learning French for 3 months and according to multiple tests I’ve taken online for free I’m b2, which is good for 3 months. Et moi aussi, je le crois ! Je suis bonne en français en si peu de temps grâce au temps que j'y ai consacré.
I write notes on French textbooks and say sentences aloud and watch videos daily. If I was a busy person I wouldn’t have progressed so far so fast. In English I’m a great speller and while French is notoriously difficult to spell, I do it well if I do say so myself. I struggle with pronunciation since it’s not straightforward
Well done - almost all of these tips should work for modern languages too
I love your old English stuff I am a beginner and am finding it so useful.
We appreciated the first couple of pages of Ōsweald being made available on the website, but could more resources be made available in advance of publication? Since vocabulary is so important (agreed!), maybe the vocabulary from the first chapter or two could be offered so that we can hit the ground running when Ōsweald becomes available? Thanks again!
is Osweald Bera going to have an audio recording of the text available as well?
Not immediately on release but it's planned for next year!
Looking forward to the bear book!!
So much good advice
youre back!
Very useful advices. Thank you very much.
Very interesting video! :)
You are correct, vocabulary trumps grammar and pronunciation, and pronunciation is easy to adjust once you become comfortable with the language. One thing that would not have occurred to you, since you are approaching from reading, which is the correct way, is that 'cheating' by using an app with vocabulary lists is not a great way to introduce vocabulary. Take 'sword' or 'shield'. The English words have very broad meanings, while the target words probably have more specific ones. Thus, those two words will have several translation possibilities. If you do not know the language, you may have to reform your image when you encounter the words in a text. Better to learn vocabulary, with or without an app, as you encounter it in a text as then it will have context. The reading will also give you memory reinforcement.
One thing that can be done is to create a vocabulary list of all the terms in a target text before reading it, memorise the appropriate ones, (Entry level students don't need to memorise a word encountered only once in that text and in no other text.), and then read the text instead of reading/translating it and then learning the vocabulary as recognition in context helps to fix words in memory. Perhaps an 'Oh, this is useful,' response.
This was great. Thank you for the tips!
Rereading is very good advice. Works for me!
Great stuff, thank you.
I just tried the new ChatGPT voice feature with the new updated model and apparently it can speak old English, I can’t speak to the accuracy or grammar since I don’t now any old English but it spoke some nonsense that sounded like some Viking language. So apparently yes, you can practice speaking at least one of these old languages now with an AI speaker…
They even gave me a short transcription: Hwæt! We gað on geardagum, þeodcyninga, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
Some background, I’ve been using the voice feature for the past six months to practice French, and it’s amazing! New updated voice model is at a whole new level.
You’re back! Are you gonna continue with conlanging because I really enjoyed them videos. Well, any video you do I’d enjoy. Your videos are different than a lot of other language channels and I like that!
Great video! Can’t wait for Osweald Bera.
I think #10 is particularly important. There is quite a bit of good audio for reconstructed Latin that I have failed to take advantage of because I prefer ecclesiastical myself. There is a real shortage of audio material for Ancient Greek though, in any pronunciation.
A rare useful and honest video on language learning on TH-cam. I still think but that 10 hours per month won't cut it, especially for Latin, not to mention Greek (you need at least 1h every day). And you need to have a firm grasp of grammar to read synthetic langages, otherwise instead of sentences you will see a string of words. "Omnes homines natura scire desiderant." - do men want to know nature? or they want to know by nature? And it's a simple, very short sentence! Imagine your brain when it has to deal with a typical Latin sentence. But otherwise, great video which relevant for modern languages as well.
Thanks for this. You are giving some solid advice here. 💜🖤
Welcome back!!!! ♡♡♡ You look amazing ❤
You’re back!!
Coliiiiiiiin is baaaaaack!!!
YOU'RE BACK!
thanks for sharing this
Great video, Colin!
Thanks, James!
Good tips👍
I've been doing Classical Chinese for a while and your description of getting bored because of the pedagogical texts but trying to read real material and not being able to go through it is really true for my modern Chinese. I made the switch because I will be learning hanzi either way and there are more texts I'm interested in reading in Classical that don't feel completely out of reach. I was using the Vogelsang textbook and reading the example sentences there but as good as the book is the book is very dry as it is very grammar focused. I'm going through a textbook designed for reading poetry and it is definetly not as intense? But I'm also reading the three character classic on the sidelines, because I also wanna actually read. I think Vogelsang helped me a lot with that because a lot of vocab and historical context to make sense of the book is explained there. Sadly I can't find an audio recording that is read by an adult and the version of the text I own (there are several variations that were passed sown). It is cool that due to the character system this language has a tradition of authentic texts for teaching children how to read it, it could be considered an authentic text since it was written when Literary Chinese was employed in literature.
Huzzah!
2 questions. Would you ever make a playlist of good TH-cam videos that are good for old English pronunciation. And given that old English has a clear set of original material would you make a free reading order sheet? Say starting with Oswald, Sweets, etc. like the Greek list you are using.
Love both of those ideas - they're going on the todo list
Subscribed
I would like to return to my Latin I'd been learning back in the days of first year of uni, but it feels like I already have some decent level and need to choose some course that does not repeat all the things AND with it does not assume for me to know much which I don't know. What to do with it?
“Ancient Greek is a special language”
In the language itself we have a word for that: ἀγανακτῖστος 🥲
My native language is arabic but I believe if I dedicate all my life for learning classic arabic I will be in the tip of iceberg
grma!
I'm having trouble finding pedagogical texts for Old English (apart from the obvious textbooks). Does anyone have recommendations of readers or easier poetry books?
I’m learning French rn and 90% of my time is reading wiki articles on subjects that interest me and watching and listening to French history TH-camrs.
You're living the dream!
@@ColinGorrie
My vocabulary for everyday occurances: 🐣
My vocabulary about 18th century revolutionary Jacobin political philosophy: 🦅
the title of the video nails it. I am an linguist that specializez in ancient language. hope that I can get a reply from you after this reach out of mine. hope that we can find a way to do things together.
זה מספיק!😂
I would suggest one more tip: don't look down on using translations. Old languages are very inconvenient to learn because say what you will, there just isn't that much learning resources on average. Sure, there are 500 graded readers for Latin, but only 1 or 2 for Medieval French and German. Even less if you aren't well-acquainted with grammar concepts, like "noun case" and don't have a good grasp on phonetics concepts. Human interaction is, again, limited. You can ask a German how you translate a bizarre idiom or if you parsed correctly an odd grammar structure, but not an Anglo-Saxon. So use an accepted translation as an aide. The texts you know about are probably mainstream ones anyway. Stuff like "The Green Knight", "Havamal" and Chretien de Troyes, not an obscure sir William Marshal's biography or Blind Harry's poems. Translation can be your teacher. Giving you a hand when you aren't sure and providing back up to make advanced texts accessible
Agree completely! Until someone makes graded readers for Old French etc, reading along with translations can be the next best thing
Need to buy bear book 🥵
Recte docuisti, O Magister doctissime antiquae linguae anglicae!
Read and learn first the real history about languages,, and then try to learn an ancient language !!!
Greek ancient language dated at list 10.000 years ago !!
That’s why is so perfect !!!!
Dasaaaaaa!!!!!
holy hell
Any advice from anyone on what grammar, textbook, etc. to start with Attic Greek?
Hi John, Colin mentions my own recommendation in a video of mine linked in the description of the above video, called the Ranieri-Roberts Approach to Ancient Greek. All of books mentioned there, with the partial exception of Logos, Alexandros, and Mythologica, aim to teach you Attic Greek. Definitely see that video to get an idea of what the issues are with answering your excellent question in a clear and decisive way. They're all good to start with, though. Once you get to be more than just a beginner, Reading Greek is great to take you through intermediate level stages of reading.
@polyMATHY_Luke I concur completely!
Maith thú!
I mean "you hav not read enuf".
This was a really interesting video, but it's surely not accurate to describe Old English as an "ancient" language. It belongs to the medieval period.
I'm sorry but the frequent jump cuts make me dizzy
you're reading not enough
Still works... kind of
I already speak an ancient language its called ancient British or Welsh same thing its about 3000 years older than English 😊
“Ancient Greek is a special language”
In the language itself we have a word for that: ἀγανακτῖστος 🥲
It's only special compared to Latin in its lack of cognates, so the Orberg approach won't work. The answer is to use the old John Locke/Hamiltonian approach instead of relying on cognates.