[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek Wikipedia

[SlimVirgin]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 3:20 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  As I have argued before, an extinct language that is of relevance only
>  because of its historic value should be confined to its vocabulary. When you
>  start to expand the meaning of words, when you start to add words to the
>  language it is no longer true to say that a text written with such
>  innovations helps you understand the original texts in that language ...
>
>  When an extinct language is brought back from extinction, the technicla term
>  is re-constructed, it is essentially a different language ...

Gerard, I suppose the issue is what harm it would do to have an
Ancient Greek Wikipedia.

Latin is a dead language, but that didn't stop the educated classes
using it for thousands of years after the decline of the Roman empire,
and the same is true, although to a much lesser extent, with Ancient
Greek. It continues to be used to discuss and convey certain
philosophical and literary ideas. It is also changed to a degree to
allow it to be taught in schools. One problem with teaching it has
been that a great many of the original texts have been unappealing to
girls, because they're often about war and preparations for it, so
classicists teaching it have been modifying texts in an effort to
extend its appeal.

Languages continue to evolve even after "dying," if they're in any
kind of use, even minimally. I think if we were to follow your
argument, we would never be allowed to utter a single word of Latin or
Ancient Greek, because we don't know what the original pronunciations
were.

Sarah