Ancient language and Jack

[Arwis]

In 4.06(Windows of opportunity) Jack and Teal'c were forced to learn ancient to help Daniel. However in later episodes Teal'c shown on multiple occasions that he can read and understand ancient language, while Jack did not, even though they both should have known it.

To say that Jack simply forgot is bad excuse. My self had Russian courses from 6th to 8th grade and 10 years later I was able to pick up text in Russian and read it as it should be read. I couldn't do it fast, but I could read it and understand what was written(not everything obviously). So why he was portrayed like he didn't knew it.

[Ergomac]

its jack where talking about remember in the episode Right of passage Cassandra said ''he always pretends hes not as smart as he really is'' so i don't think he forgot he just doesn't like people knowing that he knows stuff like that because he thinks they would expect more from him then he wouldn't have time to goof off.

[destiny khan]

Well memory is tricky. I am an electronic engineer who completed his bachelors degree about 8 years ago(30 now) and i remember nothing... i don't even remember basic mathematics like simple differential equations and i was awesome at it. What i want to say is that not everyone can remember stuff(maybe smoking hash caused it to me). I have found that you remember stuff better if you repeat them over time rather than repeating them the same number of times in a much shorter time as our brain would file it better in a long term.

[thekillman]

In 4.06(Windows of opportunity) Jack and Teal'c were forced to learn ancient to help Daniel. However in later episodes Teal'c shown on multiple occasions that he can read and understand ancient language, while Jack did not, even though they both should have known it.

To say that Jack simply forgot is bad excuse. My self had Russian courses from 6th to 8th grade and 10 years later I was able to pick up text in Russian and read it as it should be read. I couldn't do it fast, but I could read it and understand what was written(not everything obviously). So why he was portrayed like he didn't knew it.

Two years is slightly more than the couple of classes O'neill and Teal'c had.

[neverendingimagination]

It was more than a couple of classes. They were trapped in the time loop for over three months (the length of time the Tok-ra had been trying to contact them) and other than several sessions of goofing around, they had at least 70 10hr sessions, most of which would be spent translating with Daniel (give or take an hour or so for explaining and being poked by Fraiser).

I do agree though, unless they looked at it regularly they would forget it. I haven't studied french for years, I did 5 years at school, over 6 years ago and was able to pick up some very basic conversational language on a facebook post.

It also depends how interested you are in something as to whether you retain it well or not. I recently started studying Mechanics Mathematics for pleasure, alongside some physics texts. I haven't studied maths since I was at school, and picked it up within minutes. The difference is I loved maths, and therefore it stuck with me better than the french.

We know Jack is not a fan of linguistics or foreign languages, so its likely he would ignore texts in Ancient, and the knowledge would slip away. Plus his desire to seem less intelligent than he is. I would imagine he could pick up a few words if he tried, but not anything of much use.