Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Another aspect of this scenario that's been on my mind is how the Greeks and Romans might learn today's languages? I'm sure it's possible for their more linguistically inclined constituents to learn in principle, though the fact that they have no scholars or universities who know about them from the get-go means that they'll need uptimer help to get started.
This also assumes they're even willing to take it, which is debatable thanks to conservative backlash on the part of more moralistic, culturally "purist" elements of the Greco-Roman population. Knowing them, our languages will at least peripherally skirt into their line of attack, and probably for misguided reasons like how learning them allows their people to make sense of "degenerate" uptimer media and will lead to lots of "strange" foreign loanwords worming their way into their "undefiled" Greek/Latin. Even if for whatever reason they don't put up much of a fight in that respect, the fact that they maintain a cultural superiority complex probably means that they'd mourn how Greek/Latin don't command the same prestige as was once the case (continued legal, religious and scientific usage notwithstanding).
If, however, more than a handful of Greeks and Romans were in a position to learn, then I think it'd prove a much more interesting experience than a typical case of "native speaker of Language A is currently learning Language B". Because I don't know much about the other major trade languages there are to master--Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, etc.--most of my initial thoughts here will cover English. In that case, some of the first key points that come to mind for me are grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.
Latin being an inflected language where words change depending on how they're being used in different contexts, I imagine that sticking to English's more analytic word order would be rather foreign. As would its definite/indefinite articles, distinct lack of grammatical gender, and a tense system that acts in rather interesting ways sometimes. How much experience they have with those sorts of linguistic conventions heading into this scenario (due to my unfamiliarity with whatever Germanic languages they'd have known about), I'm not sure.
English vocabulary also strikes me as a mixed bag for them. There's plenty of English words with Latin and Greek roots, but English has also borrowed words from all over the world thanks to British (and maybe to some extent American) exploration, vastly increasing the array of words that there are to memorize. Plus, there are plenty of terms and concepts that the Romans had no straightforward equivalent for, such as airplane or television; those would prove hard to explain for reasons other than simply being easily lost in translation, I'd think. Nonetheless, I imagine that English's uniquely "open" and "innovative" tendencies will be of great notice to Greco-Roman linguists who bother studying it, though whether they'd see it as largely positive, negative or not really give a damn may depend on the linguist in question, as I don't know whether Latin and/or Greek ever cultivated similar reputations while they were still the great lingua francas of their heyday.
For those Greeks and Romans who do successfully learn it, I wonder how their accents might sound? I know less about Greece, but I'm fairly certain that over ninety-nine percent of Anglophonic Romans won't speak with conspicuous British accents (much to the surprise of the average uptimer, unfortunately).
Perhaps the rather silly Open University video below will provide beginners with some useful (though nonessential) context. As will The History of English Podcast, for those who want something more comprehensive.
History of English (combined)
...Then again, it's also been pointed out to me elsewhere that most of them are more likely to learn modern Greek and Italian, with some of them picking up more global languages like English and Spanish as third languages.
This also assumes they're even willing to take it, which is debatable thanks to conservative backlash on the part of more moralistic, culturally "purist" elements of the Greco-Roman population. Knowing them, our languages will at least peripherally skirt into their line of attack, and probably for misguided reasons like how learning them allows their people to make sense of "degenerate" uptimer media and will lead to lots of "strange" foreign loanwords worming their way into their "undefiled" Greek/Latin. Even if for whatever reason they don't put up much of a fight in that respect, the fact that they maintain a cultural superiority complex probably means that they'd mourn how Greek/Latin don't command the same prestige as was once the case (continued legal, religious and scientific usage notwithstanding).
If, however, more than a handful of Greeks and Romans were in a position to learn, then I think it'd prove a much more interesting experience than a typical case of "native speaker of Language A is currently learning Language B". Because I don't know much about the other major trade languages there are to master--Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, etc.--most of my initial thoughts here will cover English. In that case, some of the first key points that come to mind for me are grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.
Latin being an inflected language where words change depending on how they're being used in different contexts, I imagine that sticking to English's more analytic word order would be rather foreign. As would its definite/indefinite articles, distinct lack of grammatical gender, and a tense system that acts in rather interesting ways sometimes. How much experience they have with those sorts of linguistic conventions heading into this scenario (due to my unfamiliarity with whatever Germanic languages they'd have known about), I'm not sure.
English vocabulary also strikes me as a mixed bag for them. There's plenty of English words with Latin and Greek roots, but English has also borrowed words from all over the world thanks to British (and maybe to some extent American) exploration, vastly increasing the array of words that there are to memorize. Plus, there are plenty of terms and concepts that the Romans had no straightforward equivalent for, such as airplane or television; those would prove hard to explain for reasons other than simply being easily lost in translation, I'd think. Nonetheless, I imagine that English's uniquely "open" and "innovative" tendencies will be of great notice to Greco-Roman linguists who bother studying it, though whether they'd see it as largely positive, negative or not really give a damn may depend on the linguist in question, as I don't know whether Latin and/or Greek ever cultivated similar reputations while they were still the great lingua francas of their heyday.
For those Greeks and Romans who do successfully learn it, I wonder how their accents might sound? I know less about Greece, but I'm fairly certain that over ninety-nine percent of Anglophonic Romans won't speak with conspicuous British accents (much to the surprise of the average uptimer, unfortunately).
Perhaps the rather silly Open University video below will provide beginners with some useful (though nonessential) context. As will The History of English Podcast, for those who want something more comprehensive.
History of English (combined)
...Then again, it's also been pointed out to me elsewhere that most of them are more likely to learn modern Greek and Italian, with some of them picking up more global languages like English and Spanish as third languages.
