Assuming this person would be part of the upper class and would have the time to study properly. How would studying even work when there’s no language to translate to and from?
Assuming this person would be part of the upper class and would have the time to study properly. How would studying even work when there’s no language to translate to and from?
This is one place where I think modern schools categorically fail, is teaching languages. They teach languages in ways that are easy to create multiple choice tests for because those are easy to grade. In reality, you don’t teach an Anglophone French by speaking English to him, you teach French in French. It can be practical to have a common language to fall back on but you learn a language by speaking it.
Now, “Ancient Egypt” refers to a knee bucklingly long span of time; There were pharaohs who employed archaeologists to study the Giza pyramids, because by the time anyone named Ramses was around, the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre were already thousands of years old. If you were to end up as a Connecticut Yankee in King Djoser’s Court, some 5500 years ago, none of the languages English evolved from have emerged yet. You’re going to be operating at the level of holding up a basket with a quizzical look on your face until your host says “nb.” Then you’ll try to say it back, and so forth. Your vocabulary will build and eventually you’ll be talking just like one of them.
Land in Ptolemaic times and you can do the same exact thing but in Greek or Latin.
Currently learning a third language as an adult, with my first two being from childhood. This rings true. I took 2 years of it in middle school and got nowhere, but now that I’m actually putting effort into it I’m picking it up super quick.
I’m using Duolingo for regimented practice, but supplementing it with music I enjoy, podcasts, and even Pokemon Go. Middle school mostly just gave me rote memorization of vocab that I barely remember, but nearly no immersion
I took two years of French in high school, I can say ai as a avons avez ont. Because that’s most of the french I actually spoke aloud in that class. Two years I “studied” this language, I’m not sure I’d be able to safely spend a week in France, I’d be hit by a train because I didn’t understand the warning sign.
That’s not how they taught me English. In second language classes, they’ll try to teach you rules like adjective order; like how we always say a wonderful big red balloon. If you said a red wonderful big balloon you sound broken. ESL students will be taught that their first semester, a native English speaker will follow that rule perfectly without consciously knowing it exists for 30 years until it is pointed out by that linguist tiktok guy.