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Revision as of 08:39, 27 March 2007

Old Irish

Old Irish seems to be slipping through some sort of crack on this. It is listed in the category for this page, yet is not listed on the main article, or mentioned at all for that matter. From what I have read on the subject, which is by all reasonable accounts very limited, I seem to recall that there is relatively little source material for the language, and that it is mostly in the form of margin scribblings in religious manuscripts. Would that not trump its inclusion as a Classical language? Does anyone know of independent and reputable confirmation that Old Irish meets the criteria for a Classical language? Wachowich 17:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Greek

Why Attic Greek and not just Greek, especially when koine Greek redirects to the latter and Attic Greek is a stub? I understand that modern Greek is a different language from Attic Greek, but are Attic and koine so different that the Greek Christian Scriptures (and the Septuagint, for that matter) cannot be considered part of the Greek literary canon? Arkuat 06:09, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)

Aye, especially given that limiting oneself to Attic means excluding Homer, Herodotus, and the tragedies (all of which are neither Attic nor koinè). "Ancient Greek" is what classicists study. jc Thu Apr 14 2005 08:41 AM

Not to mention Procopius and other late Classical/Early Byzantine authors. And if we're going to include the monolithic Tamil which lumps modern and classical Tamil together, then we may as well allow the same for Greek.--Jpbrenna 22:08, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Edit

Some of the links on the list didn't even lead to the language proper -- they went to a disambig page. I corrected that, I changed the Greek and Persian entries to "Classical" -- rather hard to define, but as the justice once said about pornography: "I know it when I see it." Procopius and Ferdowsi can probably pass muster as "Classical" but Hafiz and Digenes Akrites would be pushing it. It's hard to draw bright lines, but you have to at some point. I totally reject the inclusion of only Attic Greek as constituting the "Classical" corpus for that language, pace Prof. Hart. --Jpbrenna 17:37, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

what of ge'ez...that certainly will qualify...

Pali?

Classical languages are supposed to have arisen somewhat independently of one another, yet according to the wikipedia article on Pali it is very closely related to Sanskrit, much more so than Greek and Latin. Can Pali really be considered an independent, classical language? eeesh 20:53, 15 May 2006

Criteria for being a Classical Language

It's very ambiguous for whdfdfat the criteria of a classical language really is, even with the insightful declaration that Tamil is a classical language in his report here http://tamil.berkeley.edu/Tamil%20Chair/TamilClassicalLanguage/TamilClassicalLgeLtr.html. Pali is close to Sanskrit yes, but the historical roots are probably different. For that, we must find a historia to verify if Pali is a classical language or not and find the absolute criteria of a classical language.

If we're going to discuss Tamil, what about Classical Mayan? Or Sumerian? Or Ancient Egyptian? They have all (as far as we know) independent literary traditions which span centuries and which influenced several cultures since. In fact, there should be probably a whole legion of ancient languages which can claim classical status. --Wtrmute 22:11, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Not really -- Egyptian culture was somewhat influential in a way (though Egypt borrowed from outside as much as gave to other societies), but there was not a borrowing of a large number of Egyptian words into any other attested language, and no other language was written directly with the Egyptian writing sytem (though Egyptian writing did influence the development of the Proto-Sinaitic and Meroitic alphabets). To make a classical language, you need general cultural influence PLUS broad language-specific influence (see next subsection). AnonMoos 02:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If you bothered reading the article you would have noticed that there was a wide array of criteria for a language having the classical status thus you should try to even skim over the last few paragraphs before trying to assert such statements. If what you said then practically every ancient language would be classical but there is a different from CLASICAL and ANCIENT

This is a problem. It does seem like there should be a distinction between "ancient languages" and "classical languages," but Ancient language redirects to Classical language. It seems to me that there are a lot of ancient languages that ought not be classified as classical languages. Also, the definition of "classical language" used in the article was constructed specifically to justify listing Tamil as a classical language, which makes the article look POV. If Prof Hart got that definition from somewhere else, surely we should cite another source. The above justification for not including Egyptian as a classical language is the lack of "broad language-specific influence." But the article on the Tamil language doesn't discuss the influence of Tamil on other languages. Is influence (also discussed in the next section) a criterion or not? PubliusFL 17:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Criterion is not "literature" as such

The main criterion is not having a great body of literature, it's influencing a significant number of other languages over a significant period of time. If language A "naturally" uses roots from language B to form coin new technical terms (as English used Greek roots to coin the word "telephone" etc.) then that's one piece of evidence that language B might be a Classical language. AnonMoos 02:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I would have to say that literature is a criteria imo. What you state is correct as well but having a wide amount of quality literature is important to have a language being a classical language over just an ancient one. We refer to many books such as classics and these classics are usually written in Classical Languages thus it is easy to see which languages are not in that aspect of literature only.

Sanskrit is not completly dead.

It has a considerable amount of native speakers.

Although very less(Last survey results showed it around 5000),But still it cannot be considered as a dead language.

Any suggestions on it is welcome.

List_of_Indian_languages_by_total_speakers -- User:Nrupatunga 03:31, 12 March 2007

Sanskrit is being revived. "Dead" means that it used to be extinct. Living languages change, and if Sanskrit revival should really succeed, "Neo-Sanskrit" will not be a classical language any more, just like Ivrit isn't ancient Hebrew. You can't have your cake and eat it. Either your language is classical and fossilized, or it is alive and changing. dab (𒁳) 20:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Sanskrit is niether my language and niether i am intrested in promoting it.Its the fact that there are few villages in karnataka where people's native language is sanskrit.If language of strength 5000 is considered to be dead then i doubt nearly 3000 languages in the today's world list to be declared as extinct.Anyhow you can remove that whole paragrapgh of living classical language as it is irrelevent here.User_talk:Nruptunga

Dubious reference and misinterpreted claims

I have serious concerns over this article. The whole article has only one reference to support it. This one]. This reference is but a personal email that Mr. Hart has written to somebody. While I certainly agree that Mr. Hart is a scholar of the language, I am not so sure that a personal mail written by him can carry the same weight as say a peer reviewed article written by him in a journal.

Also, the reference provided talks only about Tamil and doesnt certify the other languages that are named in the article as classical. So how did the other languages named in the article make it to the article? What references were used? Are there any other references at all that define classical languages the way that Hart defines it. Are there any other references at all that make the same claims that Hart makes? I think without these questions being answered the article is dangerously close to being original research. Sarvagnya 09:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

What about the referenced quote from Edward Sapir? AnonMoos 13:42, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I made a similar point in a comment above, from 21 Feb, which apparently went unnoticed. The problem I see is that the two references apparently contradict each other about Tamil (which is not one of Sapir's "five languages") and the Hart one seems a little polemical and really ought to be backed up with something from someone more disinterested, or it makes the article look POV. Like I said above, if Tamil comes in, I don't see how you keep Egyptian out. PubliusFL 14:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I'm sorry I'd missed the Sapir ref. But then refs are atleast meant to be in the External links if not under "References" itself. Now that I've taken a cursory look at Sapir's ref., I have another even more important question. I did a Ctrl-F for "classical language" on that Sapir ref and there is nowhere that he uses that term. In other words, I am now beginning to suspect that the article title itself is a neologism. I am beginning to suspect that there is no proper scholarly definition for "Classical language". In other words, I do not think(atleast going by the evidence we have now) that this "Classical language" has any scholarly sanction. If we were to go by the dictionary meaning of the word "Classical" I'm sure that not just Egyptian but Kannada and Telugu and Malayalam and loads of other languages too will be able to make the claim. Sarvagnya 16:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Prof. Hart is a highly respected scholar and a professor at a well-known University (UC Berekely) and it is mindboggling to note that his categorical statements and the official declaration of the govt. of India are ignored and some 'opinions' of some individuals are circulated here! Is this all a wikipedia can do?! Sapir died a long time before much about Tamil works are widely known in the west. None of you have POV and but Prof. Hart does?! Wake up guys!--Aadal 02:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The government of India and its babus isnt an authority on linguistics and as for Prof Hart, nobody is questioning his credentials. All I am saying is, since Hart is an academic himself, you should point to some book or journal that he has written where he has explained what classical languages are. And then, you should demonstrate that mainstream scholarship agrees with Prof Hart. Instead of that, what we have here is a personal snail mail that Hart has written to somebody. Sorry. Sarvagnya 03:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

You have no right to make such derogatory statements about the declaration of the President of India nor dismiss Professor Hart's statement. --Aadal 05:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Much as I respect the president of India, for all your whining it might not be out of place for me to point out that the President is a Tamil himself. And DMK the allies of the ruling Congress party are well known Tamil fanatics from Kumari kandam. So you'd do well to stop whining and bring better sources to the table. Thanks. Sarvagnya 08:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

My point is twofold. First, since Prof Hart is specifically a professor of the Tamil language, he has a vested interest in claiming that Tamil is a classical language. I'm not saying he is incorrect, but at least for appearance's sake we should be able to point to something to show that this claim is accepted by the broader community of classical language scholars. Second, assuming that Tamil is a classical language (which I believe to be a reasonable claim), the question of why Classical Egyptian is not listed as a classical language was raised earlier on this talk page. The reason given is that Egyptian did not have influence on a significant number of languages over a significant period of time. Either we need to show how Tamil had this kind of influence on other languages and other literatures, or in fairness we ought to include Egyptian (and possible a few other languages) as classical languages. PubliusFL 05:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)