Mikrodidymologia

Mikrodidymologia, n. from Greek μικρός "small" + δίδυμος "a twin" + λόγος "speech".

Here will be posted small vignettes, updated semi-regularly, of content in a more informal style than the articles.

2021-01-06

अमरहास (Amarahāsa)

As someone who has been trying to learn Sanskrit on and off (emphasis on trying), I have been enjoying these "baby's first readings" style passages as exercise.

I'm not sure I buy into the whole "modern secondary language acquisition theory" thing, though, especially as it has been gaining adherents among Latin teachers (where it is still usual to offer the language in high schools). Certainly, the old grammar-and-translation style instruction is outdated; but I am skeptical to the more extravagant promises of proponents of the "new way".

Basically, without going into details, I find it problematic that too many people elide the gap between a classical written language (which is, yes, elitist and intentionally so) and a living spoken language. A linguist would certainly know the difference. I wonder how much of the "new way" is really sound science, and how much of it is simply ideology of our democratic age misapplied to the ancients.

I think, in the end, if the modern method does help – and I do believe it helps, having enjoyed working through the Ørberg books a while ago – it nevertheless in no way obviates the hard work of mastering a classical written language. The blood with which we must feed these writings, in order to truly understand them in their own world, as Wilamowitz told us, was as necessary then as now.

That being said, one might say that Sanskrit does have much more vitality than a language like Latin and Ancient Greek, making the "spoken approach" a bit more justifiable. But I remain firm in my assessment that any language which is not allowed to change according to the usage of its speaker community – and this obviously applies to languages like Latin, Ancient Greek or Sanskrit, since there would be no point to them unless we learn them exactly as they were used in the classics – must be treated as a fundamentally different sort of thing from a language like English or French.

2021-01-04

So the funny thing is, a couple of years into graduate school I only just learned that there is an "American Philosophical Association". Always assumed that APA stood for the more famous psychology thingamadon (And "thingamadon" shall be the official term as far as I'm concerned).

Well, there you have it. "American Philosophical Assocation": an ὀξύμωρον if you ever need one!

kyrenaios at envs dot net