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> ...something that had any cultural relevance at all. My high school was heavily focused on Latin and ancient Greek. We spent the first two years grokking gra

> ...something that had any cultural relevance at all. My high school was heavily focused on Latin and ancient Greek. We spent the first two years grokking grammar and semantics. Then, in liceo (the last 3 years) we would study history by translating and studying poems, speeches, plays... Teacher and students used to discuss for hours about the meaning and context of this or that sentence. It was a wonderful way to understand our ancestors' mindset. Dead languages are the best tools for a deeper appreciation of history.

sanoli 11y ago
I upvoted you for your last sentence alone. What high school did you go to, and is it still heavily focused on Latin and Greek?
- riquito 11y ago
  Probably is a common Liceo Classico in Italy, where Latin and Greek are teached each for 5 and 4 hours a week during the first two years and 4 and 3 hours during the following three years.
  - riffraff 11y ago
    which highlights the point that choice of subjects should very much be culture-specific. Picking up latin as an italian seems far simpler (and probably more useful) than as an english, as you can guess large part of the lexicon and you will be exposed to "volgare" (transitional latin-italian) when studying early italian literature. But would studying Old English be of any use for italians? I am not sure.
  - Red_Tarsius 11y ago
    Yes, I attended an experimental classico.
agumonkey 11y ago
And current languages too. A while back I found this diagram http://imgur.com/ZNlwDUZ http://imgur.com/ZNlwDUZ, to me it shows how logical greeks were. Terms are symmetrical, well organized, forming a tiny core of combinators.
- schoen 11y ago
  That diagram is great, but I'm not sure this sort of preposition inventory is that specific to ancient Greek. When I studied German, I feel like we had rather similar charts. German has specific prepositions I recognize as equivalent to each main Greek preposition as defined in that chart, except maybe the distinction between εις and εν, which German would handle by a noun case distinction (ancient Greek εις την θαλασσαν → German ins Meer (accusative, < "in das"), ancient Greek εν τῃ θαλασσῃ → German im Meer (ablative, < "in dem"). German breaks up some meanings differently -- "among" is unter (shared with "beneath" rather than "between") -- but anyway there are other languages with a pretty nice set of prepositions!
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Thanks, I'm all for finding similar structures in other languages.

sanoli 11y ago

I upvoted you for your last sentence alone. What high school did you go to, and is it still heavily focused on Latin and Greek?

riquito 11y ago
Probably is a common Liceo Classico in Italy, where Latin and Greek are teached each for 5 and 4 hours a week during the first two years and 4 and 3 hours during the following three years.
- riffraff 11y ago
  which highlights the point that choice of subjects should very much be culture-specific. Picking up latin as an italian seems far simpler (and probably more useful) than as an english, as you can guess large part of the lexicon and you will be exposed to "volgare" (transitional latin-italian) when studying early italian literature. But would studying Old English be of any use for italians? I am not sure.
- Red_Tarsius 11y ago
  Yes, I attended an experimental classico.

agumonkey 11y ago

And current languages too. A while back I found this diagram http://imgur.com/ZNlwDUZ http://imgur.com/ZNlwDUZ, to me it shows how logical greeks were. Terms are symmetrical, well organized, forming a tiny core of combinators.

schoen 11y ago
That diagram is great, but I'm not sure this sort of preposition inventory is that specific to ancient Greek. When I studied German, I feel like we had rather similar charts. German has specific prepositions I recognize as equivalent to each main Greek preposition as defined in that chart, except maybe the distinction between εις and εν, which German would handle by a noun case distinction (ancient Greek εις την θαλασσαν → German ins Meer (accusative, < "in das"), ancient Greek εν τῃ θαλασσῃ → German im Meer (ablative, < "in dem"). German breaks up some meanings differently -- "among" is unter (shared with "beneath" rather than "between") -- but anyway there are other languages with a pretty nice set of prepositions!
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Thanks, I'm all for finding similar structures in other languages.