Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by Telemakhos on Sunday September 26, 2021 @04:31PM
(#28664396)
A more interesting knowledge-hole is Neo-Latin, Latin written from the Renaissance to today. Surviving from the sixteenth century alone are 10,000 times more different books in Latin than survive from all of antiquity (at least according to Jurgen Leonhardt's "Latin: Story of a World Language"). People think about the Romans when they hear Latin, but they forget that it was the international publishing language for academia into the nineteenth century (people were still writing dissertations in STEM in Latin at some European universities in the early twentieth century). Since the nineteenth century, fewer and fewer people have been learning Latin, and of those few care about anything except the Romans, so there is a vast and barely known volume of Latin out there waiting to be explored. Google Books is full of stuff that nobody has read in centuries.
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Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by dr_dshiv on Sunday September 26, 2021 @05:13PM
(#28664721)
Yes! I was shocked when i learned this.
I'm currently working on a Neo Latin translation from Marsilio Ficino. He is famous for catalyzing the Italian Renaissance by translating Plato (and many other Greek works) into Latin, making it available in the west after about 1000 years. He also restarted "the Academy." He was a prolific philosopher himself.
The book I'm helping to translate is "De Voluptate", or "On Pleasure." In it, he integrates Epicurean hedonism and Platonic virtue. I mean, after translating all those works himself, I feel like Ficino deserves having his works available to scholars today.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by Causality1 on Sunday September 26, 2021 @11:36PM
(#28666815)
Plato wasn't translated into Latin until the middle ages?
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by dr_dshiv on Monday September 27, 2021 @02:27AM
(#28667674)
Until c.1450, the only Plato was the Timeaus and some scattered partial translations.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by hihihihi1234 on Monday September 27, 2021 @02:53AM
(#28667824)
Modern philosophy courses tend to give equal weight to Aristotle and Plato (with a side order of Socrates), but for most of Western history the only pre-Christian philosopher that anyone cared about was Aristotle, who was often simply referred to as "The Philosopher". Plato was largely ignored and forgotten until there was a burst of scholarly interest in him in the 19th century.
Source: some random thing I read online somewhere; I might be wrong in the details.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by dr_dshiv on Monday September 27, 2021 @07:43AM
(#28669492)
This is really not true, sorry. Plato was huge in the Renaissance and his academy ran in Athens (not continuously) from about 400BC-550AD. Platonism had a major influence on the formation and reception of Christianity and Islam, as well.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by hihihihi1234 on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @06:10PM
(#28688096)
You may be right, I'm very far from
being an expert. Was just repeating something I read somewhere.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by cheese_van on Sunday September 26, 2021 @06:27PM
(#28665243)
I picked up my first Latin dictionary at 19 after I found Kraft-Ebbing's "Psychopathia Sexualis" in a used book store. Kraft-Ebbing was one of the first, if not the first to academically discuss homosexuality, among other sexual practices. All the real naughty bits were in Latin so I needed that dictionary. And put it to good use.
It was assumed, at the time of the writing, 1894, that his audience was Latin fluent.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by thwave on Monday September 27, 2021 @04:31AM
(#28668383)
There are still some scholarly work written in Latin. For example see Terence O. Tunberg's book from 2013[0].
I highly recommend this[1] blog post about contemporary Latin knowledge.
[0]https://www.amazon.com/rationibus-colloquendi-Supplementa-Hu... [1] http://blogicarian.blogspot.com/2019/03/argumentum-ad-ignora...
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by quotemstr on Sunday September 26, 2021 @04:49PM
(#28664559)
To be fair, wasn't a lot of that Latin just the endless navel-gazing of Medieval Scholasticism?
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by umanwizard on Sunday September 26, 2021 @06:00PM
(#28665051)
No, Latin was the main international lingua franca among educated people in Europe for about a millennium after it stopped being spoken natively. As such, scientific and otherwise intellectual works of all kinds were primarily written in Latin, for the same reason they’re primarily written in English today.
In fact, the US, UK, and every other culturally Anglo country could sink into the ocean tomorrow and I suspect English would still be a dominant international language for the foreseeable future.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by moftz on Sunday September 26, 2021 @09:56PM
(#28666340)
The lingua franca comes from the dominant culture of the time. The massive colonial empire of Britain move things from latin to English and the rise and control of the US has perpetuated English even more so. If the Anglo countries all sank into the ocean, I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language. China would be the major trading power and without the need to work with America, there would be little need to continue with English as years progress.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by tablespoon on Monday September 27, 2021 @01:35AM
(#28667408)
> I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language.
I kinda doubt that, given its writing system.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by jazzyjackson on Monday September 27, 2021 @01:55AM
(#28667506)
There have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by tablespoon on Monday September 27, 2021 @02:06AM
(#28667562)
> There have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified.
I don't speak or read Chinese, but my understanding is there are a lot of homophones (and a culture of homophonic puns) that would make that undesirable (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonic_puns_in_Standard_Ch...).
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by jazzyjackson on Monday September 27, 2021 @04:51AM
(#28668495)
There are lots of homonyms but they are disambiguated by context. Look at it this way: you don’t need the characters when you’re listening to someone speak, so why wouldn’t you be able to sound out the phrase from pinyin and understand its meaning?
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by tablespoon on Monday September 27, 2021 @11:41AM
(#28672053)
> There are lots of homonyms but they are disambiguated by context.
But wouldn't that lose something? My understanding is a lot of the puns specifically rely on the characters to force a different reading than the context would imply (or to evade censorship by having many ways to write the same sounds).
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by Goety on Sunday September 26, 2021 @11:47PM
(#28666893)
Well I would still say French would be dominant over Mandarin for several reasons. Technological advantages include current nuclear collaboration on the vast coast of China. China still does not have key infrastructure to self support.
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newschina-and-france-sign-s...
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by thaumasiotes on Monday September 27, 2021 @12:05AM
(#28666989)
A big joint project between China and France does not constitute an argument for learning French in preference to learning Chinese.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by umanwizard on Monday September 27, 2021 @01:40AM
(#28667422)
Nor does it constitute an argument for learning Chinese, assuming both parties already know English.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by thaumasiotes on Monday September 27, 2021 @02:27AM
(#28667679)
The question was "if every Anglophone country sank into the sea, would people learn Mandarin Chinese, or would they learn French instead?"
You seem to be answering some other, unrelated question.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by wizard-beta on Sunday September 26, 2021 @05:50PM
(#28664986)
Not necessarily - it was literally anything. Any publication whatsoever in Europe up to about 1800 was apt to be in Latin. Science, history, geography, correspondences, laws, records of all kinds, etc.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by JJMcJ on Sunday September 26, 2021 @06:28PM
(#28665253)
For example, the career of the great German mathematician C. F. Gauss. His early works, written around 1800, were in Latin. By the end of his career in the 1840s, he wrote in German.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by ARandomerDude on Monday September 27, 2021 @12:43AM
(#28667155)
True, though I suspect this probably has more to do with the rise of German nationalism in the 1840s, including a few revolutionary unification attempts. The German language itself was a major political issue of the day.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by coldtea on Monday September 27, 2021 @03:39AM
(#28668080)
No, that's what the navel gazing of modern facice dismissal thinks of it.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by dr_dshiv on Sunday September 26, 2021 @06:26PM
(#28665228)
Galileo, Decartes, Spinoza, Newton, Leibniz, Locke... All wrote in Latin.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by quotemstr on Sunday September 26, 2021 @06:30PM
(#28665262)
Yes, of course. I was mostly joking. That said, hasn't much of the post-classical output in Latin already been translated repeatedly? How much worthwhile stuff is left to be translated?
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by dr_dshiv on Sunday September 26, 2021 @06:40PM
(#28665328)
So much. It is surprising, I know. For instance, how about Descartes' very first book? Or Baumgarten's "Aesthetica", where he introduced the idea of "Aesthetics"? I talked to a scholar recently who said that it will probably never get translated, because there isn't the interest.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by ARandomerDude on Monday September 27, 2021 @12:46AM
(#28667168)
This. Even in Christian circles, many major works remain in Latin because publishers know they can't profitably commission the effort. This creates a situation in which for-profit publishers occasionally fund non-profit translation efforts to preserve the history.
For example, a shockingly small amount of John Calvin's works are translated into English. Regardless of what a person thinks of his theology, his influence on the rise of democracy in post-Reformation Europe and the Americas is staggering.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by rsj_hn on Monday September 27, 2021 @01:01AM
(#28667230)
> For example, a shockingly small amount of John Calvin's works are translated into English.
You can find "the essential works of John Calvin" (51 volumes, in English) here: https://www.logos.com/product/145428/the-essential-works-of-...
All of John Calvin's commentaries, letters and 'The Institutes' here (109 volumes, in English): https://www.logos.com/product/5170/calvin-500-collection
Calvin's tracts and treatises (8 volumes, in English) here: https://www.logos.com/product/5165/tracts-and-treatises-of-j...
I'm curious as to what you think hasn't been translated into English.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by ARandomerDude on Monday September 27, 2021 @01:21AM
(#28667330)
Most of his sermons and letters are still not in print in English, as well as a treatise on the Trinity, off the top of my head. Granted, as you point out, a large number of his works are in English but given his influence, it's surprising how many remain inaccessible.
There was a Latin collection that contained some of these works called the Corpus Reformatorum published in the 1800s.
Re:Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?
by throwawaygal7 on Sunday September 26, 2021 @08:22PM
(#28665848)
If they have gone unread for centuries how can they be so easily dismissed?