In a message dated 4/16/2008 11:05:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wknight8111@gmail.com writes:
There must be native speakers of a language in order to read material written in it.
I beg to disagree. I am a native English speaker, but there are many topics I prefer to read in Hebrew, my second language. And it is not just religious texts (though I can't imagine reading the Bible in English; it misses all the word play). When I was in college, I preferred reading Plato and Spinoza in Hebrew (though I read Descartes in English and Kant in both). One of my favorite authors is Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago. I have most of his books, but in Hebrew.
The point is that people who are bi- or multi-lingual often identify specific topics with specific languages, and don't necessarily prefer their native language.
Danny
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On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:24 PM, daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/16/2008 11:05:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wknight8111@gmail.com writes:
There must be native speakers of a language in order to read material written in it.
I beg to disagree. I am a native English speaker, but there are many topics I prefer to read in Hebrew, my second language.
You're right, and I likely shouldn't have used the word "native" in my earlier statement. First, second, or n-th language, there must be people capable of reading that language to play the part of content consumer. Without a sizable reading population, a language project becomes little more then encryption: putting information into a form that cannot be easily accessed.
--Andrew Whitworth
And are you arguing, then, that there is no reading population of Ancient Greek? If that were the case, there would be no reason for them to have published Harry Potter in the language - who would read it? Nobody.
Mark
On 17/04/2008, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:24 PM, daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/16/2008 11:05:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wknight8111@gmail.com writes:
There must be native speakers of a language in order to read material written in it.
I beg to disagree. I am a native English speaker, but there are many topics I prefer to read in Hebrew, my second language.
You're right, and I likely shouldn't have used the word "native" in my earlier statement. First, second, or n-th language, there must be people capable of reading that language to play the part of content consumer. Without a sizable reading population, a language project becomes little more then encryption: putting information into a form that cannot be easily accessed.
--Andrew Whitworth
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Mark Williamson wrote:
And are you arguing, then, that there is no reading population of Ancient Greek? If that were the case, there would be no reason for them to have published Harry Potter in the language - who would read it? Nobody.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is sold in more than 10,000,000 copies and it has 3,000 reviews on Amazon. Ancient Greek version has five reviews, which means that with the same ratio, it sold in 16,000 copies - even if wrong by an order of magnitude, this still shows that a relatively large number of people is interested in Ancient Greek.
Exactly. That is huge. I must admit though that I own both the Latin and Ancient Greek versions of the first book, and while can get a little bit of Latin from my knowledge of Spanish, I can barely even read Greek writing, let alone decipher the words.
Mark
On 17/04/2008, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
And are you arguing, then, that there is no reading population of Ancient Greek? If that were the case, there would be no reason for them to have published Harry Potter in the language - who would read it? Nobody.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is sold in more than 10,000,000 copies and it has 3,000 reviews on Amazon. Ancient Greek version has five reviews, which means that with the same ratio, it sold in 16,000 copies - even if wrong by an order of magnitude, this still shows that a relatively large number of people is interested in Ancient Greek.
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On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 6:41 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
And are you arguing, then, that there is no reading population of Ancient Greek? If that were the case, there would be no reason for them to have published Harry Potter in the language - who would read it? Nobody.
No, I wasn't talking about the case of Ancient Greek at all, I was merely reinforcing the requirement to have readers in a language before a new project should be opened. The existence or non-existence of readers in ancient greek is a demographics issue on which I have no expertise and therefore won't make comment.
--Andrew Whitworth
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