Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 August 21

= August 21 =

Ancient Greek and Germans
In a scene in H. G. Wells's novel The Time Machine, the Time Traveller proposes his idea for a time machine to a group of friends. Reacting with incredulity, one of them says "One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." Another jokingly responds "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much."

I was initially baffled by these last two sentences. After some research I have learned that "the Little-go" was an examination at the University of Oxford, which tested knowledge of Ancient Greek among other things, and "plough" was (or is?) a word in British English meaning "to reject a candidate for not passing an exam". So the speaker is saying that the language currently being taught in universities as Ancient Greek is so unlike the language that was actually spoken in ancient Greece that a speaker of the latter would fail a modern exam on the subject.

That mostly clears things up, except for one thing -- what do Germans have to do with it? Was Germany known for its Ancient Greek studies in Wells's day? Or is he referring to some specific German work or scholar? CodeTalker (talk) 17:07, 21 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't know the history of their studies either, but see https://www.britannica.com/topic/classical-scholarship/Modern-classical-scholarship and for some historical contexts that I was able to find. Modocc (talk) 17:52, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
 * In Wells's time, the literature of linguistics (and mathematics) was predominantly in German, I believe. —Tamfang (talk) 00:47, 22 August 2022 (UTC)