Founder · Teacher · Language historian
Nigel Dickey
I have spent my adult life studying ancient languages — not because it was my job, but because I could not stop. This school exists to share what I have found.
- MA — University of Auckland
- Seven years attending classes across the Indo-European language family
- 15+ ancient languages studied in depth
- Over 20 years teaching English as a foreign language
- Teaching students worldwide via Microsoft Teams
The story
My fascination with ancient languages started at secondary school, so that by my final year my 5 subjects were all languages, including Latin and Greek. I developed a deep interest in etymology — the stories behind words. That curiosity never left me.
At university I took Latin and Greek to master’s level, then switched to French and Spanish, graduating with a full MA. The classical languages stayed with me though. If anything, the more I learned about language, the more I wanted to understand the bigger picture — not just individual languages, but the extraordinary story connecting them all.
In 2004 I moved to Oxford in the UK. Over the seven years I lived there, I took the opportunity to study representatives of every branch of the Indo-European language family, attending degree-level classes at Oxford University with the permission of the lecturers. It was one of the most intellectually remarkable periods of my life.
The languages I studied during those years included Old English, Old Norse, Gothic, Old Irish, Oscan and Umbrian, Mycenaean Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Tocharian, Hittite, Classical Armenian, Avestan and Sanskrit. I also looked at Sumerian, Hungarian, Finnish and Kabardian — languages connected to or illuminating the Indo-European family from the outside. Of all of them, I spent the most time on Sanskrit — about two years, completing most of the requirements to Honours Moderation level.
What drove me was not the pursuit of credentials. It was the growing realisation that all of these languages are pieces of one extraordinary puzzle.
Living in Europe made it easy to visit many of the places associated with the ancient literatures I was studying — including archaeological sites in Ukraine, often considered the homeland of the Indo-Europeans. Those visits made the history tangible in a way that books alone never quite can.
I was a teacher of English as a foreign language for over 20 years, working in New Zealand and various European cities. That experience gave me something that pure academic study does not always provide: an understanding of how people actually learn languages, what confuses them, what excites them, and how to make complex ideas feel accessible rather than intimidating.
I now live in Auckland, New Zealand, where I grew up — and I teach the languages and language history I spent my adult life studying, to students all over the world.
More recently I have moved on to Semitic languages: Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, taking university level courses in some of them.
Why ancient languages matter
Every word you use connects you to people who lived thousands of years ago. When you say mother, you are using a word whose ancestor was spoken on the Eurasian steppe around 4000BC — the same word that became Sanskrit matar, Latin mater, Greek meter, and Old Irish mathair. Language is the longest unbroken thread running through human history.
Studying ancient languages changes how you see the modern world. You start to notice connections everywhere — between English and Persian, between Welsh and Sanskrit, between the alphabet you are reading now and the Phoenician script it descended from. Once you see those connections, you cannot unsee them.
Ancient languages also give us direct access to some of the greatest minds in human history. Reading Plato in Greek, the Rigveda in Sanskrit, or the Icelandic sagas in Old Norse are not just linguistic exercises. They are conversations across millennia. I find that endlessly exciting — and I have never met a student who did not come to feel the same way.