How Dead Languages Work

De: Coulter H. George

Narrado por: James Cameron Stewart

This volume celebrates six such languages - Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, Old Irish, and Biblical Hebrew - by first introducing listeners to their most distinctive features, then showing how these linguistic traits play out in short excerpts from actual ancient texts. It explores, for instance, how Homer's Greek shows signs of oral composition, how Horace achieves striking poetic effects through interlaced word order in his Latin, and how the poet of Beowulf attains remarkable intensity of expression through the resources of Old English. But these are languages that have shared connections as well. Listeners will understand how the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda uses words that come from roots found also in English, how turns of phrase characteristic of the Hebrew Bible found their way into English, and that even as unusual a language as Old Irish still builds on common Indo-European linguistic patterns.

Very few people have the opportunity to learn these languages, and they can often seem mysterious and inaccessible: Drawing on a lucid and engaging writing style and with the aid of clear English translations throughout, this book aims to give all listeners, whether scholars, students, or interested novices, an aesthetic appreciation of just how rich and varied they are.

©2020 Coulter H. George (P)2021 Tantor

Surprisingly fun

This book was more fun than it had any right to be, given how dry the subject matter is often treated.

Excellent overview of key ancient languages

Very broad, interesting selection of ancient languages: including Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, Old Irish (with a little Welsh), Sanskrit, and Hebrew.
Because of the many charts and the many pieces of morphology and phonology, the book is an odd one to enjoy as an audiobook. It is probably better read than listened to. That said, James Stewart handled the many readings quite well. I will say, though, that the book was enjoyable largely because I am already well versed in both linguistics and in several ancient languages; the book is likely to be a difficult one to enjoy as audio for a novice or for someone totally unfamiliar with linguistics.
Having said that, I recommend the book to everyone who shares an interest in ancient languages.

Enjoyable for lovers of linguistics

I found this book fascinating. The author goes through Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, Old Irish and Hebrew giving examples of what makes each language unique.

There are some parts that get tedious like when dictionaries of words or word forms are read. I think these sections lend themselves better to print than in audio form but on the whole it didn't detract enough for me to stop listening.

The flip side is that it is nice having the narrator pronounce the words which can be difficult to tell strictly from reading.

All in all I would recommend this book to all English speakers who want to know more about these languages and language in general.

Useless but interesting

So this book is completely useless, but it is interesting-ish. It took the writer of this book a full ten minutes just to say that the only reason you should learn a dead language is to read it. No shit dude. It honestly teaches you absolutely nothing about how to actually read anything, but it does bring up some interesting points about language in general that make it still worth listening to.

Opinions that got awkward

I’m all for understanding linguistically and etymology… how languages go together with particularly dead languages because that’s what I translate from Hebrew, Latin, German , Gaelic, French and Spanish. I mean AI is reading Pompeii burnt scrolls that he did not discuss or the dead sea scrolls again ones that he did not discuss. Anyone who translates languages knows that there are multiple ways to understand, cultural, historical, context and is incredibly subjective sad to say. With that in mind one has a lot of biases —-his job as an author was to make his points make sense to the readers. He did a disjointed job with Celtic language with the 4th century Irish saying that they are useless so Latin is better. Of course it’s an opinion but his opinion was not expressed well with the cultural context. Saying that the Irish is bad because of the poetic medium in which they chose to write in. I questioned how intelligent he was.
He mocked the culture of Irish but never explain how Irish and Latin work together for centuries in Ireland. Lame!! We already know that many Empires through the centuries and world hailed to Latin. Nothing new there! National Geographic is more informative them this author.
Then him bring up Ancient biblical text was a snooze feast with him mocking Joseph Smith Mormonism…boring. Quoting Mark Twain in Roughing it, as if he was a linguistic mastermind. Laughable and he tried to prove that the gold plates that Joseph Smith were in accurate he never addressed Egyptian just the a wee bit of Hebrew. Anyone who translates Biblical Hebrew would know that. It was blah! Then he attacked the new translation version of the Bible. Please you are selling a book on dead languages and you writing that you hate ancient languages. Oh goodness! Not even touching on Egyptian, slight Aramaic, Irish( more modern then ancient), not even telling the difference between modern Hebrew and biblical Hebrew. Sheesh and then lecturing that you have to learn how to read biblical Hebrew to understand the Bible ridiculous. Even though I’ve translated the Bible. Hebrew is not the only language in there. It was ridiculous that his bias of the Celtic Irish text and the Bible translations showed his hatred. He definitely made his opinion that English is king in being correct and being pompous. He spoke little of dead languages in ancient text, which was a colossal waste of my time.

How to ensure dead languages remain dead

The combination of the author's numbing approach to how dead languages work, together with the equally numbing voice of the narrator, make this book impossible to listen to. I cannot imagine reading it. I love learning the origins of different fields of human endeavour. As a student of Latin with an instructor who excels in teaching Classical languages I thought this book might throw light on the origins of ancient Greek and other languages that are now confined to academia. But instead of making an already dead text bearable, the droning voice of the narrator only highlights the author's inability to bring a text about the origins of languages to life.