Is it worth it to learn an ancient language? If so, what language

>>507727
It really depends on what interests you. For example, if you are a Westerner who wants to dive into Western literature and Western Ancient culture. Greek and Latin is best.

If you are interested in South Asian culture, Pali and Sanskrit is best.

Follow what you are interested in, or you will never find the motivation to move forward in an ancient language. Do you want to read the words of the Buddha? Words of the Bible? Words of the Quran? Words of Greek plays? Words of the Roman thinkers, historians, and philosophers? Greek Philosophy in there original form?

Think about it before you get started.

Go with Latin, easy to learn, still useful, and you can be fancy with it. Same applies for Turbo Pascal

>>507832
>and you can be fancy with it.
This actually very true. I sometimes spice up my writings and talk with a little latin, my Professors seem to love it.

>>507832
Might as well ask here. How useful is knowing Latin in regards to learning the other Romance languages? I was wondering if Latin would speed up the process of learning multiple Romance languages at a time.

>>507867
Ask any linguistics major and they will tell you that learning Latin will help you in learning multiple romance languages. Latin, of course, is the root to all these languages. I have heard that Italian is the closest languages to latin, and takes the least amount of time to learn after learning Latin. Spanish/Portuguese may fall into a close second. But I'm not sure.

How "ancient" do you want the language to be? MSA (Arabic) has been practically the same for hundreds of years, and it is still used. It's like learning latin among romance language communities, except that people still study it.

>>507867
Fuck, don't do this. I'm sick of this question. If you want to learn a language, learn THAT language. If you want to be good at romance languages, learn one, then the rest will be significantly easier. As a spanish speaker who can speak a reasonable amount of portuguese, I suggest you to start with french. Then, either italian or spanish, and if you learn spanish, portuguese will be easy as fuck.

>>507727
Greek, because Greece is still a country.

Been studying Latin since I was 12. It greatly eases the curve to acquire Romance languages, from Catalan to Romanian. Also helps with the grammar of Germanic and Slavic languages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50By01L7uzY

>>509273
yes, and Modern Greek is completely different from Ancient Greek. But you were probably joking or something.

>>507925
I've heard spanish and italian speakers converse, so they must be incredibly similar

>>509989
It's not "completely different" if you're talking about Attic/Ionic. Things like Seikilos Epitaph are perfectly understandable.

The only worthwhile reason for learning an ancient language is to improve your modern language skills. Latin and Ancient Greek seem worthwhile as they have ties to English (along with other European languages).

>>507832
>turbo pascal
ayy lmao

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