3 ms·
"some version of Latin" is right. Because, really, Latin is not Latin is not Latin. For a language that had such wide use for such an extended amount of time, l
by teilo 14y ago
"some version of Latin" is right. Because, really, Latin is not Latin is not Latin. For a language that had such wide use for such an extended amount of time, learning one form of Latin, such as ecclesiastical, does not necessarily help much in understanding Ovid or Plutarch.
This is much the same as with ancient Greek. Knowing New Testament Greek is almost useless in understanding Plato or Homer. Even Classical Greek from extreme ends of the period differs substantially.
- StavrosK 14y agoThat said, a modern Greek can understand quite a bit of the New Testament, even though it's been around 2,000 years since it was written.
- tragomaskhalos 14y agoI think someone who had learned Koine would be able to have a decent go at Plato at least, the grammar is not so different. The biggest difference I can see is that the word order in the NT is a lot more regular - classical authors (in Latin as well as Greek) played around with word order a lot more than ordinary joes speaking the languages day to day, whereas the NT is a lot closer to how people would actually have spoken.
- teilo 14y agoActually, when koine Greek was first being critically examined, it was theorized that it was hardly Greek at all, but more of a hellenization of Aramaic. That was, of course, found not to be the case. Yes, it is true that there is much structure in common between Koine and Classical, use of conjunctions, general grammar constructs. But for any real use of the language you quickly get into vocabulary domains that just do not intersect, or where they do intersect, the usage is quite different.