[B-Greek] dead languages

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Thu Mar 10 08:15:33 EST 2011


On Mar 9, 2011, at 9:26 AM, Ed Walkwitz wrote:

> Came across this from Thomas Paine:
>  
> The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for the 
> Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist...As there is now 
> nothing new to be learned from the dead languages, all the useful books being 
> already translated, the languages are become useless, and the time expended in 
> teaching and in learning them is wasted...It would therefore be advantageous to 
> the state of learning to abolish the study of the dead languages...
>  
> Thomas Paine in, "The Age of Reason." He goes on to describe how the study of 
> dead languages in schools is a plot by Christians to suppress science. I, of 
> course, do not agree with Thomas Paine. But I was amused enough by this quote 
> that I thot I'd post it for yall's amusement. Note to Mark Lightman if you're 
> reading this: You realize that Paine wrote before the invention of cell phones. 
> Otherwise he would have realized how useful a knowledge of ancient Greek is.

This is really sort of off-topic, but there is indeed a wonderful (in the sense of
the Greek adjective δεινός [DEINOS] naiveté to the early rationalist era: only
facts are useful and any text can be converted into a new language without loss
of anything valuable. Charles Dickens' late novel, "Hard Times," is a nice
commentary (among others) on this mentality.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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