Spring Bulletin 2012 - The Park School

of the differences between idea clusters aren’t
that big. Every language has its quirks, but
‘untranslatables’ aren’t all that common. I
believe that every new language we learn
teaches us to think a little differently about
the world, but no modern western language
can cause headaches the way ancient ones can.
The differences in cultural worldview just
don’t compare.
This is part of what I find so interesting
about studying ancient languages and cultures.
The linguistic lenses through which, for
instance, the Ancient Greeks viewed the world
bring into focus objects and ideas that seem,
from our modern perspective, quite far apart.
Take the Ancient Greek word deinós, which
can be translated as ‘fearful’ ‘wondrous’
‘strange’ or ‘clever.’ The point is not that deinós
means each of these things in different contexts,
but rather that, to the Ancient Greek, all
of these related ideas were expressed in a single
word (which anyone who has stood in awe
before the fossilized remains of a dinosaur can
appreciate). Similarly, where English and most
modern western languages have one word for
love, the Greeks have at least three: agápē, deep
and true love; érōs, sensual desire, or passion;
and philía, the love of companions, encompassing
both affection and loyalty. Just as illuminating
are cases where a language describes
new or foreign things or ideas with words it
already has. The Old Norse word vindauga, a
compound of the words vindr (wind) and auga
(eye), is a classic example of this, giving a vivid
picture of the Viking world. Because the
Anglo-Saxons borrowed the metaphor, we in
the Anglophone world are still looking
through that same ‘window.’
These groupings and oppositions aren’t
just to be found in language, of course. These
are how we humans conceive of the world, and
it’s often not until we’re exposed to different
ways of slicing up reality that we realize how
we’re doing it ourselves. One of my current
projects involves prayer and cursing, religion
and magic in Archaic and early Classical
Greece. These are sets of practices and ideas
that we, today, divide fairly neatly into separate
categories, though they’ve clearly always been
very closely connected. I’m far from the first
person to address the topic, but it’s provided a
very interesting framework for looking at
ancient Greek society.
My current program focuses on ancient
Greek history, so I certainly read a lot of
Greek. Because my interest is in very early
writing, most of my sources are inscriptions,
and it’s often as much a project of decipherment
as actual reading. I’m fortunate to have
access, here at Oxford, to the Centre for the
Study of Ancient Documents (CSAD). While
it’s true that the British made off rather
well when it came to bringing actual inscribed
stones (and bronze plaques, etc.) back to
Britain, most epigraphers work from photographs
and what are called “squeezes” — paper
or latex impressions of the original inscriptions.
CSAD has the largest collection of
squeezes in the world, including a large number
taken from stones that have since been
destroyed, lost, or damaged by pollution or
exposure to the elements. In fact, not only
are some of the squeezes invaluable, but many
are themselves over a century old.
This long tradition of scholarship is
another place where languages factor. When
Latin ceased being the international language
of scholarship, academics were free to focus on
other subjects and write in their native languages.
The result is that scholars today have
to learn all these different languages. In
Ancient History, this means not just reading
Greek and Latin, but also German and French,
at least. For instance, in an edited volume on
Greek religion, it’s commonplace to find about
five essays in English, four in German, two in
French, and usually one in Italian or Modern
Greek. It’s still expected that serious scholars
will simply learn the languages. Of course, it
does make for some very peculiar vocabularies,
not to mention pronunciation.
So yes, many of the languages I’ve studied
are applicable to the work I’m currently doing.
But I’m clearly not just working with classical
and scholarship languages. I’ve spent two summers
now studying Germanic languages and
linguistics in Holland and Iceland, and I’ve
gone out of the way to study ancient languages
of Anatolia and Mesopotamia. When I return
to Leiden this summer, I’ll hopefully be able
to pick up some Old Swedish and a little bit
of Aramaic. Why? Well, I really do believe that
learning new languages (even ancient ones)
teaches me to think differently. The more I
train my brain to consider different ways of
describing experience, the easier it is to make
sense of how new and different languages do
it. This is important to me because I work so
much with different languages, but I’d also
like to believe it has a positive effect on my
scholarship. The more I study languages and
cultures — similar in certain ways and different
in others—the better I understand not just
each of them individually, but also all of them
as a whole.
GLOSSARY
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in
ancient Mesopotamia from 2500 BCE — 100 AD.
Hittite was spoken in north-central Anatolia (modern Turkey)
from 1700 BCE to 1100 BCE.
Luwian was spoken between 1400 BCE to 700 BCE in central
and western Anatolia and northern Syria.
Old Frisian is a West Germanic language spoken between the
8th and 16th centuries in the area between the Rhine and
Weser on the North Sea coast.
The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2012 25