[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek Wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
I do not presume we know how Dutch was pronounced at the time of Vondel
still Vondel is performed on stage. When the pronunciation is done in a way
that makes it better understood for a modern audience, it makes in many ways
for a better stage production.

When teachers write new texts to ease the learning curve, I expect that
still at the end the language is taught with a purpose. I expect that
languages like Latin and Old Greek are taught to teach about the origins of
a society. In the end, the new texts are a means to an end. In the end the
ancient texts and their relevance to our modern society is what is being
studied.

In my opinion, Ancient Greek is extinct, it evolved over time and
consequently there is no one way to write texts in this language. If people
want a Wikipedia in reconstructed Ancient Greek, they can apply for an
ISO-639 code and it will be considered like any other constructed language.
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 10:44 AM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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