Ancient language scholarship
~detritus
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As I keep mentioning in all my posts, I like to learn languages,
and I have been studying Chinese, modern and classical, for the
better part of 5 years. I have also dabbled in a number of other
languages, such as German, Russian, and Latin.
Recently I've been getting more and more into the ancient world,
the history of it's sciences and religions, among other things. By
the ancient world I mean mostly the Hellenic period down to the
flourishing of Islam. Actually that's closer to the medieval period
than the ancient one proper, but of course, nothing is as
fragmentary as our conceptual delimitations suggest, and to have a
more or less complete picture implies going back all the way to
archaic Greek, Perisa, and even India (I have long been interested
in the Sanskrit language as well). Just outlining this scope of
study comfronts me with a very wide variety of languages to
consider. I've already mentioned Sanskrit, and that one is at the
fringes of the region that I've set myself to learn about. Latin,
though at the western extreme of the (geographical) continuum, is a
lot more present since we have inherited much through them and I
have the advantage of speaking a romance language as well as my
previous, albeit far from complete, study of it.
Greek enjoys pride of place, even though I haven't studied it
beyond some very basics, and I am not very well versed with it's
vocabulary, though I am acquainted with very many words with greek
etymologies. It is, however, probably the most relevant language
for me, it's presence and influence never fails to manifest itself
across a whole range of forms of thought. It is a difficult
language for me due to it's unfamiliarity, something you wouldn't
expect coming from a person who's enthusiastically embraced Chinese
and Russian; the latter being so heavily influenced by Greek.
And at the far eand, besides the already mentioned Sanskrit, there
are a number of other languages for which I would at least want to
develop some level of familiarity, if only with their alphabet. I
am talking about Hebrew (probably biblical), Egyptian, and some
Arabic or Persian language. I don't think I am going to go and
learn something like Aramaic, Akkadian or Ugaritic, though I must
admit they all have their merits.

~bartender, I think today I'll have a beer.

I just found the writings of a man named Frithjof Schuon, and even
though I have barely just started to read him, I find his whole
persona very interesting. He is a scholar of comparative religion
who actually does manage a number of these languages, and cites a
great variety of mystical and religious traditions. This is a whole
great field that I find irresistible.
I like to study and take notes, and I like it so much when my
notebooks are filled with scribblings in very many different
writing systems: chiense, cyrillic, greek, and then and there some
mathematical and functional-programming notation. I must admit part
of the reason I want to learn all these alphabets is for the vanity
of having a lot more of that. Well, I may use them when the
internet collapses and I have nothing but my notes to entertain
myself with.