Firstly, allow me to show you some examples
1 Old English> Middle English> Early Modern English> present-day English
Iċ lufie sprǣċa> I/Ich loue languages> I love language
2. archaic Latin> Classical latin> Medieval> Vulgar> french, portuguese, espanol, italian and so on
Linguas amo> {I don't know much about modern romance languages}
3. Old high german> middle high german> modern standard german
4. old franconian/old dutch> middle dutch> modern dutch/afrikaans
....etc
In China, we have textbooks for learning Ancient Chinese but we never learn the re-constructed phonology of Ancient Chinese at school, which means when we read our ancestors' articles or poems, we usually use standard mandarin/dialectal phonetics instead.
So my question is, do you {friends from different countries} learn older languages at high school/any stage of education? Like do English-speaking folks learn Old English? Or do japanese people learn classical japanese? or do arabic-speaking friends learn classical arabic?
Yes, I had to study classic Arabic but they didn't teach us the etymology of the colloquial words we use today.
I am in gymnasium and I had Latin in first and second year because I am in social and linguistic direction. Students from science direction has Latin just one year.
My teacher was not so good in her profession so she did not teach us a lot. I used to dislike this subject because of it but when new teacher came I change my mind. Unfortunately new teacher came a month before end of second year, so I did not have chance to know Latin perfect.
You are right, Morana, we pronounce ancient articles/poems in contemporary offcial language/dialect. No schools{except universities} offer courses on the reconstructed phonology.
For example> the pronunciation of 骁 in 骁勇[brave, aggressive] in contemporary official language(that is, Putonghua) should be [syiau]; but our ancestors might read it as [kieu], however, when teachers deliver classes, they never use ancient pronunciation.
6 years of Latin study, 3 years of Ancient Greek study, 2 years of Anglo Saxon study.
I went to a traditional grammar school (of which there are now very few in England). Most English schools focus on modern European languages (predominantly French and German).
Nicolaus, let me see if i got this right.
The characters haven't changed through time, right? Let's say, the character for "water" is still the same as it was years or centuries ago?
So, when reading ancient Chinese poetry, you basically pronounce the characters in contemporary language?
