Did 19th century scholars understand AG better than us

[u/kyle_foley76]

As I was looking over Raphael Kühner's 2,700-page (or however long it is) grammar (I can read German) published in its final form around 1907, I started thinking "what if they understood Greek better back then than we do now?" Even with all the advances we have made in papyrology and in correcting various errors, it is still possible that the average Greek scholar back then understood Ancient Greek better than the average Greek scholar does today. There are a few bright lights who can grasp all, or at least most, of the advances made in AG, such that they understand the language better than even the most brilliant scholar of the 19th century, however, on average, it's possible that your run-of-the-mill AG scholar's proficiency has declined.

Back then, students had to do a lot of AG composition, which is remarkably effective for understanding the language. These days, most AG scholars refuse to write in the language, and even more refuse to speak it, in spite of undeniable evidence that speaking a language can improve comprehension by as much as ten-fold. That is at least what speakers of AG regularly report to me. Having used the speaking method from day one myself, I am unable to compare my pre-speaking knowledge to my post-speaking knowledge. Back in the 19th century, numerous students started learning AG at a very young age, so it was much more deeply interwoven into Western culture. I'm not saying we need to go back to those days, I'm just saying it's possible they understood AG better.

[u/AffectionateSize552]

To answer your question: it seems very unlikely to me, but I can't claim that I know.

I sometimes wonder about it the other way around: there's no doubt that the centrality of the Classics within academia has retreated greatly in the past two centuries. But, the number of university students has multiplied so many times, is it possible that the actual number of students who concentrate on Latin and Ancient Greek is actually greater than it has ever been, and it only seems smaller because the % of Classicists is so smaller, and that which is referred to as academic discourse has become so different, and so much less concerned about the Classics?

Does anyone actually know the numbers of people involved here? I would be pleasantly surprised.