Language Learning in Times Past

[Sam Jer]

Hello,
Sometimes when hearing of saints of old (from as early as the reformers to as late as the 19th century), their'e biography comes with details such as a list of 20 languages they knew, how they taught their'e kids Hebrew, how they could converse in Latin at a very early age, how they learned a language to the point of preaching in it in the matter of a few months and so on.
On the other hand today, highly educated people don't know so many languages. I recall hearing of a study that says even most Greek Proffesors can't speak Greek.

How did they go about learning a language? Where would they focus their'e study? What methods, resources? How much time woukd they spend?

 

[Solparvus]

Hello,
Sometimes when hearing of saints of old (from as early as the reformers to as late as the 19th century), their'e biography comes with details such as a list of 20 languages they knew, how they taught their'e kids Hebrew, how they could converse in Latin at a very early age, how they learned a language to the point of preaching in it in the matter of a few months and so on.
On the other hand today, highly educated people don't know so many languages. I recall hearing of a study that says even most Greek Proffesors can't even speak Greek.

How did they go about learning a language? Where would they focus their'e study? What methods, resources? How much time woukd they spend?

Who did the emboldened? I'd like to know.

Very interested in replies to the rest of the inquiry too.

 

[Sam Jer]

Who did the emboldened? I'd like to know.

Very interested in replies to the rest of the inquiry too.

The specific examples are not my point in the post, but it was mentioned In this lecture on Jewish Ministers in the Free Church in the 19th century

 

[Solparvus]

The specific examples are not my point in the post, but it was mentioned In this lecture on Jewish Ministers in the Free Church in the 19th century

About where in the lecture is it?

Something of interest on how to study language (source here)... Robert D. Wilson, who mastered 26* languages and dialects which had some bearing on his study of the OT:

---------------------------
"By the time he was 13, Robert was ready for college, but had to defer entrance for two years due to illness. During that time, he amused himself in learning French, Greek, German, Spanish, and Italian. In college, he studied language, psychology, and mathematics. He was embarrassed to admit “in such Bible courses as he then studied he says that he got ‘a very low grade of 90, which pulled down my average.’”"

"By the time he entered seminary, he was able to read the NT in nine languages. Prior to entering seminary, an old gentleman gave him a Hebrew-Latin dictionary, a Hebrew grammar, and an old Hebrew Bible. He learned Hebrew on his own and, going into seminary, took all the prizes in Hebrew. When asked how he did it, he replied, “I used my spare time.”5 He would take a Hebrew grammar with him when he went for walks and would read for about 15 minutes, or until he completely understood everything taught on that page. He described the process as being “unconscious of the labor, as a man is interested in his roses, and doesn’t think of the thorns.”6 He utilized this method to master Latin, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, biblical Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, and others, twenty-six languages and dialects in all.
------------------------

*Resource says the number of languages that Wilson mastered depends on how you count and classify them. Philip Howard says it's 45, Walter Kaiser says 26.

 

[Andres]

People just don't have the desire to learn like they used to. Convenience is a big factor. Why memorize and learn things when you can just Google anything you need to learn on your phone? If we commit to learning languages (or anything really) we can learn them.

 

[Solparvus]

People just don't have the desire to learn like they used to. Convenience is a big factor. Why memorize and learn things when you can just Google anything you need to learn on your phone? If we commit to learning languages (or anything really) we can learn them.

Native English speakers are also generally hardened monolinguists. We may go almost anywhere and expect the people to speak our language. We don't have much incentive to learn theirs.

 

[Deleted member 13458]

Hello,
Sometimes when hearing of saints of old (from as early as the reformers to as late as the 19th century), their'e biography comes with details such as a list of 20 languages they knew, how they taught their'e kids Hebrew, how they could converse in Latin at a very early age, how they learned a language to the point of preaching in it in the matter of a few months and so on.
On the other hand today, highly educated people don't know so many languages. I recall hearing of a study that says even most Greek Proffesors can't speak Greek.

How did they go about learning a language? Where would they focus their'e study? What methods, resources? How much time woukd they spend?

I have had these exact thoughts. Even thought about framing my children’s education to give them an opportunity to gain such proficiency in Latin, Greek & Hebrew if God gave them the ability.

 

[Andres]

I have had these exact thoughts. Even thought about framing my children’s education to give them an opportunity to gain such proficiency in Latin, Greek & Hebrew if God gave them the ability.

I would encourage you to do so. I was convicted in a sermon about not teaching my own children any other languages because the church should have an eye toward Kingdom advancement and reaching all people groups both foreign and domestic. I can attest that even knowing Spanish now would be abundantly helpful in our church's outreach/evangelism. With that said, I committed to learn Spanish and Latin and to teach my children. My 3, 6, 8, and 12 year olds are all learning Latin and they love it. I also hope that, Lord willing, the Lord should call any of my boys into ministry someday, a Latin foundation will help their education and preparation for ministry.

 

[Solparvus]

I've seen for myself... it means a lot to a non-English speaker if you say even just a few phrases in their own language. I wonder if it feels like a little taste of home to them. There's something special about that language in which they feel and think. It's almost a channel to their own soul.

 

[johnmo]

How did they go about learning a language? Where would they focus their'e study? What methods, resources? How much time woukd they spend?

I found this podcast fascinating: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/stay-classical/id1557560666?i=1000525411604

Michael Lynch argues

1. Early modern students learned Latin for a reason: because it was the lingua franca of the academy, not to improve their English vocabulary (the common argument for Latin nowadays). The implication could be that it makes less sense to push Latin instruction today, unless you really think they are going to carry out academic discourse in Latin.
2. Early modern students actually studied a much narrower curriculum. They would spend a longer amount of time mastering a smaller number of carefully selected texts. The purpose of education was more about reading and writing well than learning a diverse range of subjects. So perhaps it was easier to become fluent in classical languages when it wasn't just one more subject among many.
3. Scatalogical humor can be used to keep boys engaged.

 

[Deleted member 13458]

I would encourage you to do so. I was convicted in a sermon about not teaching my own children any other languages because the church should have an eye toward Kingdom advancement and reaching all people groups both foreign and domestic. I can attest that even knowing Spanish now would be abundantly helpful in our church's outreach/evangelism. With that said, I committed to learn Spanish and Latin and to teach my children. My 3, 6, 8, and 12 year olds are all learning Latin and they love it. I also hope that, Lord willing, the Lord should call any of my boys into ministry someday, a Latin foundation will help their education and preparation for

Thank you for the encouragement. I have two boys as well and pray for the same thing, and that is the reason for the interest in languages. I also hope and envision a future where those languages are central to our education again, so it’s just as important for my girls to learn them as well since their future sons could be ministers as well. BTW my family attends the FCC church in St. Louis and have heard about Rev. Prakashpalan’s becoming the stated supply at the preaching station in Fredericksburg and we have been praying for your church in Texas.

 

[Andres]

Thank you for the encouragement. I have two boys as well and pray for the same thing, and that is the reason for the interest in languages. I also hope and envision a future where those languages are central to our education again, so it’s just as important for my girls to learn them as well since their future sons could be ministers as well. BTW my family attends the FCC church in St. Louis and have heard about Rev. Prakashpalan’s becoming the stated supply at the preaching station in Fredericksburg and we have been praying for your church in Texas.

Amen to daughters learning as well. My 6 year old calls me "pater" and will ask me "quid agis?" And thank you for your prayers! It is our joy to pray for the brethren in the FCC as well so we pray for you all too! One advantage of a smaller Presbytery is we can pray for all the FCC congregations!

 

[ZackF]

Well, <raspberry> !!!!!

I had a nice long and thorough post on the way until I accidentally deleted it and the undo failed. I don't feel like recreating now but maybe later. That's why I sometimes prepare longer responses in Word and then copy.

English is big and native anglophones are not often pressed to learn another language in their daily lives. I'm a language hobbyist and have come across stories where English is the lingua franca of romantic relationships. Situations like where she is from Germany and he is from Spain. They both went years without speaking anything other than English until they learned each other's native language. This ends up being wonderful for their relationship with each other and their extend families.

Sufficed to say, Paleo-Conservative historian and retired professor Paul Gottfried lamented in an interview how hard it was becoming to convince students to learn foreign languages. As I recall he does not understand how you can delve deeply into a culture's history in a precise and professional way without learning the language. This on top of all of the historical scholarship that is in closely related languages to English like French and German. He does read and speak several. Sometimes all is needed is a reading knowledge of a language.

We homeschool and our daughters are learning Spanish. My oldest has expressed some interest in French and I said she could learn whatever languages she wants when she gets to an intermediate level in Spanish. We'll see. I'm not that fluent, merely conversational, but I try to pop in Spanish with them when I think to.

There is also the "Star Trek technology is here" argument as AI translators improve by the day. This will no doubt prevent many from learning languages.

Maybe I'll (re)write more later.

 

[Solparvus]

Well, <raspberry> !!!!!

I had a nice long and thorough post on the way until I accidentally deleted it and the undo failed. I don't feel like recreating now but maybe later. That's why I sometimes prepare longer responses in Word and then copy.

English is big and native anglophones are not often pressed to learn another language in their daily lives. I'm a language hobbyist and have come across stories where English is the lingua franca of romantic relationships. Situations like where she is from Germany and he is from Spain. They both went years without speaking anything other than English until they learned each other's native language. This ends up being wonderful for their relationship with each other and their extend families.

Sufficed to say, Paleo-Conservative historian and retired professor Paul Gottfried lamented in an interview how hard it was becoming to convince students to learn foreign languages. As I recall he does not understand how you can delve deeply into a culture's history in a precise and professional way without learning the language. This on top of all of the historical scholarship that is in closely related languages to English like French and German. He does read and speak several. Sometimes all is needed is a reading knowledge of a language.

We homeschool and our daughters are learning Spanish. My oldest has expressed some interest in French and I said she could learn whatever languages she wants when she gets to an intermediate level in Spanish. We'll see. I'm not that fluent, merely conversational, but I try to pop in Spanish with them when I think to.

There is also the "Star Trek technology is here" argument as AI translators improve by the day. This will no doubt prevent many from learning languages.

Maybe I'll (re)write more later.

Ah, a fellow language hobbyist!

What languages do you know, and at what level?

 

[ZackF]

Ah, a fellow language hobbyist!

What languages do you know, and at what level?

LOL.

English - can barely speak and read. Writing is worse.
Spanish- middle intermediate - speaking, reading and listening. Lower intermediate - writing.
Portuguese, German and French. All beginners. Portuguese a little higher than the other two due to recent attention to it.

Three semesters of ancient Greek and one semester of Latin from 30 years ago.

You?

 

[83r17h]

Early modern students actually studied a much narrower curriculum. They would spend a longer amount of time mastering a smaller number of carefully selected texts. The purpose of education was more about reading and writing well than learning a diverse range of subjects. So perhaps it was easier to become fluent in classical languages when it wasn't just one more subject among many.

Does he give sources on where to learn more about this? Like, what were the texts they used, and the practical method by which they used the languages in their interaction with those texts?

 

[johnmo]

Does he give sources on where to learn more about this? Like, what were the texts they used, and the practical method by which they used the languages in their interaction with those texts?

It was an informal discussion and I don’t remember any. It was about an essay he contributed here and that might have more. I haven’t bought it yet: https://davenantinstitute.org/reforming-classical-education

 

[ZackF]

It was an informal discussion and I don’t remember any. It was about an essay he contributed here and that might have more. I haven’t bought it yet: https://davenantinstitute.org/reforming-classical-education

It must also be said languages were (and still are) often only learned for reading/write purposes and not speaking.

 

[Theoretical]

I think we also need to account for significant survivorship bias. Every era has their top-of-the-line intellects that also get educated, and they end up standing out because they get noticed and written about by others. There were plenty of top-IQ folks with lots of high brainpower who ended up being just clever and maybe a touch bookish or unusually sharp tradesmen, farmers, or the like, to say nothing of many women who would have never had that opportunity.

There's also a greater concentration of resources for the intellectually and economically elite in past eras such that what would be a $250K+ per year top-of-the-top-tier private education with private tutors in our world (say where you have 2-3 PhDs teaching a handful of students from elementary onwards - I'm talking way past anything resembling upper middle class ability to pay) might be closer to the norm for the "highly educated" and more available for the upper crust simply because you had education concentrated in the comparatively fewer.

Our modern world is much smaller than the less populated but much more spread-out Europe of the Western past. For those in the said elite, being multilingual would often be of even greater advantage and necessity then. Latin worked as a written lingua franca but since it had long died out as a broadly spoken language, one had to be comparatively conversant in their region's languages.

Regarding Romance Languages, a deep knowledge of Latin is basically a massive shortcut to the entire swath of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian. My 3 years of high school Spanish was already rusty and I remember largely understanding the gist of a Romanian friend's phone conversation in college - we were in the same computer lab and she was just chatting with a friend. If you're steeped in Latin like the classically educated (not just as a course but where large swaths of your classwork and books were also in Latin), then it would be an extremely easy jump to build out the derivative languages.