@tonybe @yebellz this kind of things are for me irresistible. What a interesting place OGS…
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If anyone wants to go further down the Wikipedia rabbit hole (and see how I wasted my afternoon):
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This is amazingly similar then! — Thank you!
Old High German, more than a thousand years less old than ancient Greek, would definitively not be as similar to modern German — partly, because of the different orthography (in fact they had none then).
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The only relevant one I know in Greek is “ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ” (wash your sins, not only your face), which people used to inscribe on fountains/ basins in churches.
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You know now why I become crazy with Japanese? They imported in the ages characters from China but they maintained more than one On (Chinese) reading and more than one Kun (Japanese) reading for the same character. Only the context and the experience can teach you which one must be used in a specific case.
This is definitively the last fire wall I cannot surpass. My memory is no longer so good.
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I suspect that many words were often used recklessly in those days.
Most of the time probably even without bad intentions, just habitually thoughtlessly.
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Honestly, I think it was just coincidence, though 
For example, this is form Sophocles (?, never could get the names in Latin right), Antigone:
Έρως ανίκατε μάχαν, Έρως, ός εν κτήμασι πίπτεις, ός εν μαλακαίς παρειαίς νεάνιδος εννυχεύεις, φοιτάς δ” υπερπόντιος εν τ” αγρονόμοις αυλαίς· καί σ” ούτ” αθανάτων φύξιμος ουδείς ούθ” αμερίων σέ γ” ανθρώπων. Ο δ” έχων μέμηνεν. Σύ καί δικαίων αδίκους φρένας παρασπάς επί λώβα, σύ καί τόδε νείκος ανδρών ξύναιμον έχεις ταράξας· νικά δ” εναργής βλεφάρων ίμερος ευλέκτρου νύμφας, τών μεγάλων πάρεδρος εν αρχαίς θεσμών. “Αμαχος γάρ εμπαίζει Θεός, Αφροδίτα. Νυν δ” ήδη “γώ κ’αυτός θεσμών έξω φέρομαι τά δ” ορών ίσχειν δ” ουκέτι πηγάς δύναμαι δάκρυ τόν παγκοίτην όθ” ορώ θάλαμον την δ” Αντιγόνην ανύτουσαν…
It’s one of the most known parts (it’s about love and it’s taught at teens, so…).
Parts that I would think are difficult/ unknown are in bold. Someone might get words here and there, but the meaning, as well as in Platon above, is mostly lost.
Note: I don’t know about people who are taught Ancient Greek in other countries (please chime in ), but here, in exams we are supposed to translate a part that we were taught at school and also a part that is not taught (known us “unknown” text, which can be anything).
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Funny… What about Russian?
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RUSSIAN: “Articles? We don’t need to stinkin’ articles!”
Seriously, Russian has no articles of any kind.
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Russian has no articles, but 6 different cases for 3 grammatical genders, singular as well as plural! That can give you a pretty hard time as a student.
However, I found Polish to be much harder. 7 cases, of course also 3 grammatical genders, and soooo many exceptions. -.- After learning some Polish (not mastering it, though 
), I’m quite confident that nothing can shock me anymore in terms of grammar. 
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http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2013/09/revolving-dictionary.html#.XlBPxGgzbIU
One of my personal favorites, and also one I can relate to.
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Oh yeah, I agree that Russian is a VERY difficult language to learn. Having tutored Russian students before, the thing that I’ve seen the struggle with most is getting all the prefixes and suffixes to agree.
Change one thing about the subject (gender, plural, etc) and you have to rewrite every word in the sentence.
The other thing that Russian does more than just about any other language is take one single word, and offer 12 flavors of diminutive for that word. Here’s an example with the word CAT:
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I’ve similarly wasted the past couple of afternoons. I still haven’t managed to climb out of the conlang rabbit hole on YouTube.
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This is too good.
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Are those really Russian variation of the same word? Can you do the same for any word?
In Italian we have only four variations. Following the same example:
Gatto (cat)
Gattino (little cat = diminutive) - always ending in _ino
Gattone (big cat = augmentative) - always ending in _one
Gattuccio (nice cat = term of endearment) - always ending in _uccio
Gattaccio (bad cat = derogatory) - always ending in _accio
you can do that for any noun or adverb.
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Yes, that’s it exactly - Russian just has more options that one can add to that word (you listed 4 above - Russian would have 12+)
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Obviously, multilingualism often means that one has to master several scripts or even several writing systems.
I find the situation in Japan remarkable in this respect.
There is so much they have to learn! What a complexity!
In Germany, many (not necessarily less educated) young people now fail to be able to read a hundred year old text fluently if it is set in a Fraktur font that was still commonplace at the time.
Interestingly enough, Hitler himself banned the use of Fraktur typefaces and the associated Kurrent scripts (handwriting) in general in 1941, which most people no longer know.
He believed that the Fraktur typeface was invented by Jews, which for him justified destroying fivehundred years of mid-European typographic development.
In fact, artists like Albrecht Dürer and some professional calligraphers were involved in developing this type of writing within a few years.
I find the stories about characters and writing systems very exciting.
How many and which do you use?
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You are among friends, keep it coming. 
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Maybe this is the main reason why I started learning Japanese.
Shodo - even if not written in my native language - has been for few years in the past a passion of mine. I also like calligraphy (Spencerian and Italic). Gothic is too much “hard” for my tastes.
I collected also some fountain pens that are used by me every day or so.
Another big passion is the typeface (font design essentially) that I studied a lot. The beauty of latin characters engraved on many monuments in Rome are masterpieces which maintains their beauty still today. The tons of fonts today available thanks to the DTP explosion is really interesting.
The same is happening for Japanese kanji and kana and i suppose for other alphabets too. It is really amazing to see how the shapes, serifs, and other geometries of the typeface are changing leaving the same letter/character still recognizable.
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