I am studying both Greek and Latin using textbooks from the 1890’s and 1940’s, respectively. They take the attitude that Latin should be learned before Greek, and that gave me the vague notion that Latin was somehow “easier,” the stepping-stone to the harder language. I no longer think that it is true. Latin is as intricate, but the Greek books suppose knowledge of this to make comparisons and relate to Greek. It seems to be the happenstance of traditional education that Greek seems harder. Are there any other opinions on this? I have been wondering about it for quite a while.
As a native english speaker, I do find latin to be “between” greek and english. Latin vocab is like english, but the grammar is (more) like greek. Greek grammar is fairly foreign at first.
Octavia, I’m inclined to agree with you.
Latin has been a mainstay of education in Western Europe for a long time. Latin was to some degree an international language, and every educated person had to know it, and so it would have been studied first. Greek was only really reintroduced to the Western world after the fall of Constantinople, and has always been an extra. Greek books teach with respect to Latin because for a long time it was unimaginable that someone learning Greek wouldn’t already know Latin.
I would consider them of comparable difficulty. Yes, Greek has the optative, but Latin has four conjugations, etc.
I have only just started learning Greek (now in my 3rd year at Uni with Latin). They seem to be at the same level of difficulty but having learnt one, the other seems a lot easier. The main problem is getting your brain around an inflected language rather than a word order language, once that part is mastered all the rest falls into place.
Now a question for all you clever people who speak many languages - after Greek I want to tackle Arabic. (Having gotten over the shock of learning a new alphabet I might as well try a different alphabet AND writing from right to left!). Is Arabic an inflected language or a word order language, also, can any of you give some hints as to how you went about learning it? As this is a little off-topic you can reply as a private message if you like.
Is Arabic an inflected language or a word order language
I think Arabic, like Hebrew, does inflect but does so largely with vowels - the meaning being carried by the consonants. For example, the consonant structure k-t-b expresses the idea of writing. kitab means book, muktab means office etc.
and that gave me the vague notion that Latin was somehow “easier,” the stepping-stone to the harder language. I no longer think that it is true. Latin is as intricate, but the Greek books suppose knowledge of this to make comparisons and relate to Greek. It seems to be the happenstance of tradtional education that Greek seems harder.
I’d respectfully disagree with annis. Having looked through the Greek textbooks, I think there are many things that would make Latin easier than Greek - alphabet (easy to learn of course but does slow down your reading), six principal parts to verbs, more complicated verbal system, a vocabulary which has roots related to more obscure words in the English language than does Latin. The four conjugations in Latin are really quite similar to each other. They do mostly share the same endings after all.
Arabic is inflected (three cases, verbs conjugate) but in general is also particular about word order. The freedom of Latin and Greek word order will not be found in Arabic, but it makes up for this with trickiness of its own.
As for learning it, I’m not sure there’s anything special to say. Would you be taking this in a class? There is no way to get several consonant sounds right without someone to copy. But beyond that, I approach it like Greek: vocab cards for bus stop reading and lots of reciting paradigms.
I appreciate all the opinions on the complexities of these two languages. I want to add that in the autobiography of John Stuart Mill he says that his father taught him Greek starting at the age of three and Latin starting at the age of eight. I wondered why Mill, Sr., educated his son in that order, but he possibly felt that the level of difficulty of the languages was different, not necessarily greater for one over the other.
I found Latin to be far more regular than Greek, which I would consider to be the number one factor when determining facility.
Also, since you seem interested in classical languages thus far, why not learn Hebrew and/or Egyptian instead of Arabic. Hebrew has almost everything Arabic has, though Arabic is much more difficult.
I think Greek genuinely is harder, for several reasons:
- Different alphabet, plus accents, which have some tricky rules around them. Imagine Greek with no diacriticals – that’s what Latin is like.
- Latin has no augments and few reduplicated forms.
- Latin just has the perfect tense, while Greek has both perfect and aorist.
- Greek has a middle voice and more deponent verbs. In Greek deponents come in two flavors, middle and passive. And often Greek verbs are deponent only in certain principle parts.
- Greek has optative forms in addition to indicative and subjunctive.
- Latin has four principle parts, Greek has six. Regular Greek verbs also have a lot more variation and more variant forms. I don’t remember having to spend too much time memorizing Latin principal parts, but in Greek this is a real chore.
- Greek declensions have more variation than Latin declensions, for sure. Greek may have fewer nominal “declensions” but Greek has more forms than Latin.
- Greek has more contracted vowels and elisions. Greek has a larger variety of vowels and dipthongs, and it uses them liberally in inflections. This combines with the large variation in declensions and conjugations to make things quite tricky.
- Greek prepositions have a lot of different and subtle meanings.
In spite of saying this, I agree with the idea that “all languages are equally hard,” because nobody knows every detail about any language, and you can spend the rest of your life devoted to any particular language and sill learn new things all the time. All languages are infinitely hard, for all practical purposes. But if you want to select some kind of practical yardstick for measuring difficulty, I think Greek is very likely to beat Latin.
It is mainly because of being interested in studying history via classical languages, and I would like to learn a lot more about the era around about 1000 CE from a different perspective (this is all very much a project now only existing on the drawing board - it’s going to take me years!)
One thing I can say about learning Latin and Greek - I really feel that I have discovered far more than merely being able to read another language. The additional knowledge of history, philosophy, poetry and language construction, not to mention the mental exercise, has really changed my life. Certainly worth all the hard work!
That’s quite a list Democritus posted.
Ok! I give in! Greek is harder.
I know exactly what you mean by this–in the book “The Man in the Roman Street” by Harold Mattingly he writes: “It has been well said that, when you learn a new language, you gain a new soul: the outward expression reacts on the inner life.” I discovered that and I am interested in linguistic theory, but there is something very special to me about those two languages. Egyptian hieroglyphs were my first love (when I was five), and it wasn’t until high school that I discovered Latin and Greek.
Something I noticed that inflected languages have done for me is to make my mathematics work easier if I spend some time conjugating and declining before I tackle math. I have really enjoyed that and I enjoy the logic and precision of Latin. I love the look of Greek, as well as its fascinating intricacy. I still wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s harder, though!
Um, fix the quote?