[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek Wikipedia

[SlimVirgin]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 4:01 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  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.

Yes, this is true. It is taught to keep it alive to some extent, so
that the concepts it conveys, and knowledge of Ancient Greece, don't
die. But no one would argue that it is being taught in anything like a
"pure" form, whatever that would mean. No one even knows whether
anyone from Ancient Greece would understand a single word that a
contemporary speaker uttered. So the idea that, as taught in schools
and universities, it is not already "reconstructed" to some degree is,
I would say, to misunderstand the way ancient languages are studied
and passed on.

Sarah