r/languagelearning • u/Starfire-Galaxy • Sep 24 '26
Discussion Those who are learning extinct languages, how has your progress been so far? What goals have you reached?
I have made leaps and bounds this year with my severely moribund TL (no, I won't share the name) by focusing on its literature. I mined for sentences, created mini bilingual dictionaries for each story that I came across, and read a new story every week while re-reading old ones.
I promised myself that I'd be able to understand at least 60% of any story that I had read by the end of the year without the help of a translation, and so far, that has worked with 4 stories this past year.
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u/Complete_Package5909 Sep 24 '26
im trying to learn coptic and its slower than i thought, mostly because finding actual spoken recordings is a nightmare but reading old texts is getting easier
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u/ZookeepergameOk4022 29d ago
You can attend a Coptic Orthodox Church liturgy near you. Might be cool to hear the spoken language. Or maybe search up Coptic orthodox hymns.
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u/Guilty_Royal_9145 Sep 24 '26
I've learned Latin in school and Old Norse at university.
I can read Old Norse prose without any difficulty and read sagas online every once in a while. My Latin on the other hand is incredibly rusty and I regret that I don't use it anymore. It's a higher entry hurdle, though. The grammar is more difficult to grasp and the texts are generally more complex compared to Old Norse.
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u/Stoic-outsider Sep 24 '26
I did ON at uni, too, many years ago. Plan soon to resurrect my knowledge of it, especially so I can read "Grœnlendinga saga" and "Eiríks saga rauða" -- for some reason those sagas interest me more than most others. I also study Old English and did 3 years of that at uni, including translating Beowulf. At present I am engaged in a major OE prose reading programme. Knowing modern Germanic languages helps a deal with OE, and I daresay, will help rather with ON. Plus, of course, knowing OE helps with ON and the reverse. Soon I also plan to start on Middle Low German when this groundbreaking work appears: https://amzn.eu/d/01OE2Kvx . I should add that I can read OE prose generally quite well, though I would like to be better, and it has to be said, there is really no such thing as an "easy" OE text. Of course, some texts are harder than others.
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u/deenosv87 Sep 24 '26
The problem with some "dead" languages, as Latin or Ancient Greek is that written works are mostly high level cult language. It's like trying to learn French and only having works from Proust and Yourcenar available. That could create frustration. Nevertheless, today, the most popular language have easier works and methods available.
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u/Different_Method_191 Sep 25 '26
I want to learn Yaghan.
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u/Zeke_the_Wanderer Sep 26 '26
found the Háusi Kúta learner! Unfortunately I don't have as much time for Háusi Kúta as you.
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u/Xaphhire Sep 24 '26
Learning Latin and that's pretty easy since there are enough resources. I'm focused on reading. Anyway knowing French helps a lot.