"Were ancient languages as sophisticated as..." Topic

…modern languages?

"Reading some dialogues from Socrates, it struck me how eloquently the people seemed to speak from those times thousands of years ago. (Although this might be a result of the translation.)

And yet this was a time when philosophy, logic and science was being invented…"
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Amicalement
Armand

They had to express all the sophistication of human experience, emotion etc that we do. While they would have had less vocabulary in some areas, like science, they would possibly have had more in other areas than the average urbanite has now in, say, agriculture.

Old Assyrian tablets reveal a high level of sophistication in language and the Epic of Gilgamesh waxes quite philosophical at times. Of course parts of the Old Testament far predate Socrates and co too. And then there are the Hittite treatises on, well, toileting, unusual interactions between people and various livestock . . .

cheers,
John

While English, which is said to have twice as many words as French which in turn apparently has more than Spanish. Yet, for example, English has one word for love.

Yet, Greek has more:

Eros: Love of the body. Eros was the Greek God of love and sexual desire.
Philia: Love of the mind.
Ludus: Playful love.
Pragma: Longstanding love.
Agape: Love of the soul.
Philautia: Love of the self.
Storge: Love of the child.

"Reading some dialogues from Socrates, it struck me how eloquently the people seemed to speak from those times thousands of years ago. (Although this might be a result of the translation.)

This caused me to actually laugh out loud. I decided I did not need to read any more. Bless the internet. It gives true equality in that anyone can write anything & not need the elitist qualities of logical thinking and/or a good education.

Having studied ancient Greek in university, i can attest is actually a very complex language- it wasn't easy to learn, and I was never better than a B student in it. It's complex in its noun and verb endings letting it be extremely specific about what the speaker wants to talk about, saying in a word what takes English a sentence. That's not dissimilar to Latin and Germanic languages, but it retained a lot more of the complexity from Indo-European that other languages (and eventually Greek itself, as it evolved from its ancient forms) would drop. Among other peculiarities.

If you ever wondered why ancient Greece had so many geniuses, its because it takes a genius just to speak ancient Greek!

We've got precision here--the ability to express shades of meaning, largely a function of vocabulary. We've also got writing, cases, tenses and inflection.

Modern English usually does quite well in vocabulary: just ask someone trying to translate out of English. But even our cheerful willingness to steal from every language we have contact with hasn't filled in all the gaps yet.

What I find interesting in writing is that the Alphabet was so radical a simplification that ever since we've been gradually re-complicating it--adding vowels, spacing and "special characters"--still trying to find that elusive point at which it is easiest both to learn to write and to read without misunderstanding. The process in Hebrew I gather is similar.

But in cases, tenses and inflection, if languages weren't "born" complicated--well, we just don't know. In those senses, no language seems to get more complicated than our earliest known form of it, and most of them--Hebrew to Aramaic and Classical Greek to koine, for instance--get simpler over time. I knew a native-level modern Greek speaker, who after university-level study felt she could read Classical Greek, but never felt that she could speak or write it with confidence.

Would someone from a different language family care to contribute a perspective?

Quite interesting… thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

You don't start a language withlots of rules so thinking its basic.

Having studied classical Greek to the point of reading some of Thucydides in the original, I can attest that it's a complex and sophisticated language.
OTOH, there was published, a couple of years ago, a translation into classical Greek of the first Harry Potter book. Read an interview with translator, said biggest problem was that classical Greek has very small vocabulary for colors.

Most ancient languages have small vocabularies for colours; large ones seem to be a feature of industrial societies were lots of different paints and dyes are available.

I've looked into translating one of my short stories into a Viking "saga". That's going to be some interesting (and hard) work… ;-)

You bet!… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Philia: Love of the mind.

Not really. Philo means love. Philia literally means love of, or affection for. It is the opposite of phobia. So necrophilia means love of, or affection for, the dead. Not affection for the mind of the dead.

Philautia: Love of the self.

But that is not a separate word really. It's still a contraction of the word philo meaning love and the root term auto meaning ones self. It literally means self love.

One could just as well say there is another form of love for the Greeks: Philip, from Philippus from philo and lippus or lover of horses. Or how about philosophy, the contraction of philo and sophos, so the love of wisdom? See what I mean?

Didn't the Romans have something to say about 'Greek love'?

Some comments by the translator of _Harry Potter…_ into classical Greek at:
link

Hope you find it of interest, apologies for wasting your electrons if not.

Thanks!

Amicalement
Armand