I can imagine there were learning books for languages close to the borders (eg. I'm Dutch, so I imagine there was plentiful material to learn French, English and German properly). I'm learning Japanese now, and I feel like without all the modern spaced repetition learning systems on the web I wouldn't have gotten so far (so quick).
How did the average scholar (I'm assuming only scholars would do this) go about learning a language that was not particularly close to their border? How long did it take to learn a language? Was this something someone ever did as hobby, even?
I'm not sure in what time frame to place my question, but definitely before electricity existed, I suppose.
Thanks!
A Roman who wanted his children to learn Greek, bought a native greek pedagogue on the slave market. Another useful institution was letting one of your children be fostered by an associate or friend in a neighbouring country. Also, many truces included exchange of hostages, normally sons or relatives of the king.