This is a bit old discussion, but one of the few over internet about a matter of learning languages thru the Bible. So there’s my few (euro)cents.
Some time ago I devoted myself to learning Dutch language. After a period of time, I decided to switch to Afrikaans. Most beatiful and logical language in the whole world. I can watch Charlize Throne speaking Afrikaans on Youtube over and over After few visits in Amsterdam my goal is to be able to talk in understadable - for Dutch people - Afrikaans and be able to understand spoken Dutch. Dit is my gek plan Of course I still keep learning pure Dutch, but let’s say in 10% of time.
Anyway, I’ve been struggling with finding a literature. And suprisingly it came out that the only book virtually available in ANY language is THE BIBLE. Even Shakespear is not translated in every language. I believe there is a lot of benefits for using the Bible for learning purposes. First at all - most of people is familiar with some quotes. I doubt is there anyone on the forum that had never heard Genesis 1:1 in his/her own language. I think that whatever language you’re learning, you should be able to say similar sentence (that sometime in the past some person created this or that). I would say that the Bible is full of great grammar patterns, and having any knowledge of them in your own language is a great benefit too.
There is a lot of websites having a full text of the Bible. Some of them let you see two different translations at the same time (in parallel). This is so great, isn’t it? But I think the very important thing is to find a good, modern translation. I was surprised how many versions of the Bible exists in English, German, Dutch. Shocking!
As for Afrikaans, there are three only. Two of them (1953 and 1983) are in old fashioned language. But the last one - DIE BYBEL VIR ALMAL - is very modern, and very clear. It follows all regular grammar rules in Afrikaans. I am under impression that it has been translated for the audience that they may not know Afrikaans as theirs mother language (for example Zulus or any other background). And they might be listening to the Bible for the very first time in their live. I’ve noticed that most of the text has been re-edited and do not literally follow the original. But in a good way. Also contains a lot of explanations for words and idioms.
I’m not saying that everyone should read the whole Bible, but to read the whole chapter or two - along with intense dictionary checking for all worlds - would benefits a lot for you studying.
I have heard alot of urban legends of people learning how to read by reading the Bible as their first book: Prisoners, and natives of a country learning English or another language through missionary schools, or even that this is supposedly how most Westerners traditionally learned how to read. I believe it that it does happen, and you can do it, learn a foreign language through the Bible, especially if you are already very familiar with it in your own language and are enthusiastic about it.
I tried it with my Chinese wife. She knew enough English to get by, but was far from fluent. So I decided to test this Fundamentalist urban legend that the King James Bible is easy to read and learn English from if you read it from beginning (Genesis) to end (Revelation). She could do it but with alot of difficulty. She read the first 11 chapters of Genesis before switching to Chinese.
Why read a version that uses English that is no longer used in popular speech? There are many versions of the Bible in modern colloquial English. One example is the Good News Bible.
Hamilcar: urban legend, you say? No, it’s not an urban legend. It’s just a very same issue you (or your wife, or any other person) would face by reading any other book too. For example I know all Grisham’s books, I enjoy them reading in my native language. But still - to read any of them in English is a big challenge. I usually give up after page or two and go back to translated one. On the other side I can spent hours on reading news, articles, tutorials, or comic books in English. Any book that contains less pictures than words is a challenge. The Bible is not an exception. Also some might be not interested in actual content at all which makes things worst. So if your like Tolkien, try to read Hobbit. But as I stated before - for some languages, like Afrikaans - the Bible is the only available book to read for free on internet. Maybe the best is to start with kids stuff, like illustrated biblical stories for kids or so. The days I’m not in the mood for any Bible stuff, I just go to Wikipedia starting page in selected language.
My wife and I made significant progress studying Pennsylvania German (Pennsylfannie Deitsch) by reading ES NEI TESHTAMENT: Pennsylvania Deitsh un English Mitt di Psaltah un Shpricha.
We spent a winter reading a chapter each evening. One of us would read the english and the other would read the deitsh. The reading helped tune our ears and our tongues, It was extremely helpful when we read passages that we were already familiar with such at Matthew chapter one with all that begetting (!) That chapter has become the gold standard
when surveying a new language to get a feel for what is going on because the text is simple and repititious
We have also played with the German Luther Bible. We would listen to the audio german reading and read along with our german/english translation to get pronounciation right, then read it out loud ourselves.
I believe you cannot go wrong with this method to build a solid foundation before venturing into more contemporary bodies of work. Indeed, for obscure languages like Mennonite Plaut Deitsch it might be your only option for the written word.
The original question was:
“Has there been anyone that strictly learned a language by studying the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible in that language translation?”
My answer is: probably yes. Someone has probably learned a language by strictly(!) (important word there) reading a translation of the Bible in the target language. It would most certainly have to have been someone who either was not aware of, or was not interested in, or otherwise did not have access to any other available literature in the target language. It would also most likely have to have been someone who was already familiar with and/or had a version of the Bible in their own language.
There is a website http://www.biblegateway.com/ which has versions of the Bible in at least 60 different languages, with numerous versions in some languages. (There are 46 English language versions alone.)
I would assume the difficulty and how outdated the language is would depend on what translation you are trying to read. For the most modern of modern language, I would not recommend, for example, the King James version to someone who is trying to learn English.
The first three lines of the Dutch (Nederlands) version (simply called Het Boek) reads:
1 In het begin heeft God de hemelen en de aarde gemaakt.
2 De aarde was woest en leeg en de Geest van God zweefde boven de watermassa. Over de watermassa lag een diepe duisternis.
3 Toen zei God: “Laat er licht zijn.” En toen was er licht.
I could not determine how old this translation is, but I have been learning Dutch for about 4 years now, and this is very easy for me to read. The language is not only modern Dutch but, just glancing through the first 30 verses or so, it also does not appear to be too outdated (but even the most famous piece of Dutch literature, Anne Frank’s diary, which was written between 1942 and 1944, contains outdated language.)
@Bruce: The only word that is not used in modern Dutch is “hemelen”. A strange plural, since normally Christians do assume, imo, that there is only one “hemel”. The world can also be translated as sky, and Englied “skies” is not abnormal. Am I wright?
@kwibus: You’re right, “fly the friendly skies” is the slogan for United Airlines, but in everyday speech, we generally refer to the sky in the singular. But one can “look to the skies.” I think of “the sky” as what is immediately above us here on earth: part of the atmosphere; whereas “the heavens” refers to everything beyond: the universe from our perspective here on earth; whereas the singular ‘heaven’ refers to an imaginary place where supernatural entities: gods, angels, spirits, what-have-you are believed to reside.
In the Bible, however, the way ‘heaven,’ ‘the heaven’ and ‘the heavens’ is described, it is all essentially the same thing: everything that is above and beyond us (the great beyond), including the sky. There is something called the firmament, and of course clouds, but then water and dew, even stars, drop from “the heavens.” Heaven even has windows, like a house, through which water can fall, and from which water can be stopped, and then the Bible also refers to “the heaven of heavens,” apparently meaning the place in the heavens where God lives. That’s why I’m not a big fan of mythology. None of these concepts have a distinct meaning, they all just kind of meld together in a vague jumble.
When you say ‘modern Dutch,’ I assume you mean today’s Dutch. In Dutch ‘de hemel’ can refer both to the abstract ‘heaven’ or the very real ‘sky.’ Am I right?
Without giving it much thought, I assumed then that ‘de hemelen’ in Het Boek has the same meaning as ‘the heavens,’ meaning basically ‘the great beyond.’
@bruce: I only ment to say that “de hemelen” is not used in everyday speech, outside of the bible. “de hemel” can mean heaven, or just the sky above us. And when people say to be in heaven, it does not have to have a religious connotation.
According to my classicist roommate, this is how everyone learns Ancient Greek. Makes sense to me.
I’d do it to learn rare languages, maybe. I was not raised Christian, so I don’t really have the familiarity with it that would make it worthwhile. I’ll stick to reading all 7 books of Harry Potter in every language I learn.
I am actively learning both Ancient Greek and Latin by reading the New Testament in the original and in the Vulgate (and portions of the Old Testament in the LXX). For the moment I’m much further along in Greek, I can read more or less fluently with the help of a glossary. The Latin Vulgate is newer to me, but also somewhat easier from a vocabulary and grammatical perspective from my previous experience with Romance languages.
I suppose I’m the opposite of Davidjvl, I’d rather read one of the most important works in human history in various languages than novels written for adolescents. But to each his own.
You might be interested to know that Professor Alexander Arguelles sings the praises of “Faith Comes By Hearing” (Hosana Ministries) on his webpage http://foreignlanguageexpertise.com/museum1.html - since this not-for-profit organisation have Bible audio available in hundreds of languages. It’s easy to see why he’s excited – they currently have audio recordings in 835 languages now - and many rare or ‘exotic’ ones have been documented & preserved, especially. No doubt for someone like Arguelles, having access to previously scarce/non-existent audio of any kind must be heaven.
I have the advantage of being familiar with Bible text (like several other LingQ members), so it’s great to have foreign language audio to download.
Many are available at: http://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com/ , and their companion website: http://www.bible.is has text and/or audio, including Apps – I have one on my iPad. You may have to search online elsewhere for matching text and vice-versa, as not all versions on the site even come with both text and audio, and even then they don’t necessarily match. Languages are generally listed alphabetically, but you will have to scroll to the bottom to find Japanese & Mandarin etc.
I find it really fun to listen to foreign language NT gospels with dramatized audio, as opposed to non-drama, if available. Last year I imported dramatized Mandarin Bible audio into LingQ with matching text for personal use, & it was fantastic – before my laptop died)~
I am currently supplementing Japanese with Bible.is App audio (non-drama unfortunately) that matches my paperback New Testament.
Arguelles recommends (as do I) to start with the gospel of John in the New Testament, as other gospels can sound dry when reading all those Zerubbabel begat Jeconiah or whatever.
You definitely need your own native translation to refer to for making your lingQs: the LingQ dictionary can’t handle every Bible name & place name as you can expect – especially in Chinese – as it naturally attempts to split to known word meanings rather than recognising phonetic spelling of archaic names. You need your native language translation also as Google Translate does some strange things~
@kimojima: I like this resource very much! All the languages I’m studying are there with text and audio. One can read and listen to the same article in multiple languages. Well, you’ve already explained this… In any case, very cool! Thank you for the info and link.
~~with the exception of Spanish audio. Oh well, I’m certainly not complaining.
I work with a group of teachers and we help anyone with English using Bible subjects from the jw.org website, it’s free. You can contact me at 2terEnglish@gmail.com if you want to know more about it.
After few visits in Amsterdam my goal is to be able to talk in understadable - for Dutch people - Afrikaans and be able to understand spoken Dutch. Dit is my gek plan 