Other languages for classicists

[Apogeee]

Hello everyone. Looking ahead, I am wondering whether to begin my study of German first, or French? I have some prior study of French and Spanish, but not enough to do more than puzzle out what I am reading or carry on half of a conversation in either of those languages, and no prior study of German. I have already run into trouble trying to read secondary sources and finding that most of the ones I should read but haven't are written in German. How would you suggest I proceed?

[ciistai]

15 hours ago, Agrippina said:

Hello everyone. Looking ahead, I am wondering whether to begin my study of German first, or French? I have some prior study of French and Spanish, but not enough to do more than puzzle out what I am reading or carry on half of a conversation in either of those languages, and no prior study of German. I have already run into trouble trying to read secondary sources and finding that most of the ones I should read but haven't are written in German. How would you suggest I proceed?

This is my personal, biased opinion (because I am Canadian and once was fluent in French, and because I have experience with Romance languages since birth)) - but I'd say go with German. It's a bit trickier to master and in my opinion the earlier you get the basics down, the better. I took two years as an undergraduate so my grammar is okay, but reading academic German is such a trip. Many people can get by okay puzzling through French (or Spanish or Italian) but German is really hard to break through if you don't have previous experience with it or any other similar languages (like Dutch I guess?).

[ἠφανισμένος]

I agree with Ciistai. An additional consideration: most PhD programs in classics require German and either French or Italian. You'll need all three eventually, of course, but learning German first will keep your options open in case Italian happens to seem more immediately useful than French down the road.

[Apogeee]

Thank you both for this advice. So far, most of what I need to read is either in French or German, but I suppose that I could switch gears and need Italian. It's looking like German is next. 

[ciistai]

4 hours ago, Agrippina said:

Thank you both for this advice. So far, most of what I need to read is either in French or German, but I suppose that I could switch gears and need Italian. It's looking like German is next. 

Viel Glück!

[Jimleko]

The good news is that after Latin and Greek, German is nothing.  It's an inflected language, but with an actual word order, which makes it easy to understand once you get the hang of it.  Good luck!

[Apogeee]

Thank you for the encouragement! The "sharp letter s" if that's what it is called, ß (that looks to me like a B and gave me trouble for a long time before I considered studying German) makes a lot more sense when I compare the English long ſ next to a round s, even if that's not where it actually originated. And of course the Greek forms of sigma should have helped. Really, it was reading earlier manuscripts in Latin that got me over that difficulty. 

I do appreciate everyone's encouragement. No news this week.