It's true!! It's true!! Tomorrow I have my Greek final, and then it's officially vacation time!! Although, seeing as I spent most of the day napping, watching Practical Magic on DVR, talking on the phone, and eating Chipotle, I was practically already on vacation. Ironically, I'm less worried about the final than I was about Tuesday's test...it actually seems fairly easy, strangely enough...
In any case, tomorrow I'll be headed off to good ol' Muskogee, Oklahoma for the night, then onward to St. Louis the next day (with a side trip through Springfield for lunch with an old friend). It still feels rather unreal that I'm travelling tomorrow...for one thing, I haven't packed at all. That's on the post-final agenda. It's only 4 hours to Muskogee, and since the only person I plan on seeing there is the Domino's delivery guy, I'm not in a big rush to head out of town.
Still, I can't believe that my Greek experience will be over tomorrow morning! As intense as it has been, I can truly say that it's been my favorite seminary class so far, and while I won't miss the homework, I will miss the class!
Today I discovered how spoiled I have become in my foreign language studies.
Take French and German, for example. For each of these languages, I had a pocket dictionary at my disposal. In the case of French, I also had a bigger Larousse dictionary and a Bescherelle verb conjugation dictionary to reference when working through things. These were all very helpful, but the tool I used the most (much to the chagrin of my professors, I'm sure) was wordreference.com. Unlike online tools like Google Translate, WordReference doesn't translate entire phrases, but just acts as a thorough online dictionary. Type in a word, get several possible translations back. Easy. If you don't understand a word, it takes all of about 5 seconds to figure it out. In fact, I still use WordReference frequently when I'm translating letters and such for my job.
Here's the problem. Ancient Greek doesn't have an online translator.
And that is really, really not cool.
So instead of typing in my query and getting a translated result back in 0.365 seconds, I have to spend anywhere from 5-10 minutes searching for unfamiliar words in the giant lexicon, the back of my textbook, or the back of my Greek New Testament, in the "dictionary." That's 5-10 minutes PER WORD...and the Greek words that I don't understand are plentiful. The time adds up fast.
The problem with all this is that you have to know the "lexical form" to look up the word...which often doesn't look anything like the word you're trying to find, because Greek has like 50 different spellings for practically every word in the language, depending on its usage.
Say you have the word "elelutha" in front of you, for example: to ascertain its meaning, you need to know to look up the word "erkomai." And those don't look the same, now do they? And that's even one of the easy ones to remember...
And of course, you get all the Greek characters involved, so in the time it takes you to find a possible definition you've forgotten which word you were trying to look up in the first place, and have also probably lost your spot on the page. And of course, by the time you find your spot on the page, you've lost your spot in the lexicon. It's a vicious cycle.
So while I was working on Greek for a whopping 11 hours today (to be continued for another 1-2 hours after I post this), it dawned on me how truly spoiled 21st century language-learners have become. We can have everything on modern languages at the click of a button, and it's REALLY nice. Even the magical analytical Greek lexicon, which lists words in all their forms (and which I discovered in the library today), still takes awhile to get through, and really only adds another book to the pile.
And so I admit it. I've become spoiled in my foreign language pursuits.
So now, three days from the end of the course, I've begun to realize why the nickname around seminary for my summer Greek intensive course is "Suicide Greek." As I told my friend T.Wes in the library today, if something goes wrong with my salvation and I wind up in hell, I'm pretty sure you'll find me at a dimly lit library table, under a stack of Greek lexicons and scattered with scratch paper.
Only three days, two tests, one quiz, and translating all of 1 Thessalonians to go!
I have my first Greek 2 exam tomorrow, and all I want to do is sit around and watch French versions of Disney songs on YouTube.
(Don't worry, I've already finished studying.)
As the summer has progressed, I've noticed that the more Greek I take, the easier I understand French, both aurally and in written form. I don't really know why this is...French isn't based on Greek at all - as a Romance language, it traces back to Latin, of course. And Greek isn't based on Latin...being all ancient and whatnot, it's based on itself. So there's really no linguistic connection...
I think the reason for this weird French improvement probably stems from the fact that I'm still struggling to understand Greek: it puts things into perspective. A month ago, French translation was the furthest I ever stretched out of my linguistic comfort zone, but now my Greek classes have taken that comfort zone and expanded it so far that translating French seems like child's play. My mind seems to keep up with it faster when I hear it spoken, and translating things for work has been less arduous than in the past. Now that I spend the majority of my time learning another new language, French feels like home. So that's been a nice little side effect...
Speaking of French and work and things, I talked to my boss on the phone today about new projects planned for our organization. Exciting! But, not necessarily so exciting for all of you, so I won't go into great detail. Basically, strategic planning has been done and we've figured out new ways to incorporate all our separate projects into a cohesive and connected whole (and by we, I mean my boss and the board of directors, I just heard about all this today). I also got the go-ahead to write a week-long devotional Bible Study for the study abroad spiritual resource website I've been developing, which I'm SUPER excited about...I get to try my hand at writing something spiritual for professional use! Writing professionally in some manifestation is one of the dreams floating about my head, and I've also played with the idea of writing church education curriculum/devotionals, etc. Plus, it's an opportunity to apply the stuff I'm studying at SMU to my job. So two thumbs up for that!
Anyway, most of my day was spent studying and/or putting off studying and/or being overwhelmed by studying. Typical pre-exam day...with just a bit more French thrown in than usual.
Some of my study diversions, for the French-speaking/Disney-loving readers of the blog...
That title comes from the song "One Day More" from Les Miserables. That song (well, really just the first stanza) has kind of become my life motto recently, somewhat unwittingly...it just pops up in my head all the time..."one day more, another day, another destiny, this never-ending road to Calvary..." Could be a seminary metaphor, yes?
Anyway, today was another day of plunging headfirst into paradigms and word tenses and translations and whatnot, for we have yet another exam tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty good about it...mostly because I made up songs to remember the principal parts of the four verbs that we have to be able to spit out of our brains onto the paper (there's a mental image for you). So now I can sing you a rousing rendition of "Don't Stop Believing" all about the Greek verb "erxomai" (I go), or a heartfelt performance of "Mama Who Bore Me" all about the verb "luo" (I loose/destroy) If you're feeling patriotic, I can sing about the verb "grapho" (I write) to the tune of "America the Beautiful", or if you're going through a bad breakup I'd be happy to sing about "ago" (I lead) to "Rolling in the Deep." So yeah, I'm going to rock this test out...literally.
I must tell you though, it was a rough Monday. Mondays are always rough because of the post-weekend effects (I want to call it a weekend-hangover, even though there wasn't any alcohol involved), and today was extra intense since it was a pre-exam day. Class was interminable because I had a horrible stomach ache the whole time, and then I nearly fell asleep in the library while studying during the afternoon (literally - I had put my head down on the table to rest for a few minutes and was just starting to enter that jumbled-thought pre-dream phase when all of a sudden what was left of my consciousness began shrieking "WAKE UP, YOU'RE IN A LIBRARY!!!"). Then I went on to a 2-hour review session that I didn't feel was really necessary for me to be successful on the exam, but which I didn't want to skip and then regret missing later. And then more studying in the evening. Except that the home studying also included a great deal of guitar playing, a decent amount of phone chatting, and a fair amount of lake-walking. And eating a microwaveable corndog and fries for dinner. And of course, the songwriting. Can't forget that.
All in all, it was a LONG day. The more the summer term goes on, the more ragged I feel I become. But I'm hanging on...one day at a time.
Foreign languages are my thing. I seem to have a natural ability for them, and I love being able to decode sentences and translate them back to English. It's like a big puzzle to figure out. I also like being able to travel to foreign countries and communicate with the people there, and I absolutely love the insights into a country's history that are opened up by studying a language. You have such a greater appreciation for a culture when you speak their language.
According to my love of languages, I have been happily bopping down the road to multilingualism, picking up languages here and there as they become available. Besides being fluent in French, I speak bits and pieces of German, and as you know I am now enrolled in Greek at SMU. Quadrilingualism, here I come.
In my first French lesson back in the 9th grade, I learned how to say "Hello, my name is ___" and "I am an American", closely followed by "I would like a ham sandwich, please." German was fairly similar in its approach; the first lesson included lots of people walking around saying "Are you Maria?" and "NO, my name is Christian Hansen!" These phrases are somewhat useful in daily life...especially if you need to eat or determine a person's identity. Simple phrases for concrete, necessary results.
Greek is different.
For one thing, I'm not learning 21st century Greek. No, in true seminary fashion, I'm learning ancient Greek, with the aim of being able to read the New Testament in its original Greek form. As I've been going through this class, I've learned to say all sorts of bizarre things, and I kind of think it's hilarious. I would like to share with you some of the things that I know how to say in Greek. Mind you, I am only a week and a half into this course (even if it is an intensive)...and here are some sentences I have translated thus far:
"A brother and a sister have land and they want to have kingdoms."
"The evil prophet is leading the children out of the church and into the desert."
"The children were praying on behalf of their sister, but they do not believe in the Lord and gods of stone do not answer."
"The heart of the small servant is faithful, but evil are the works of the master of the house."
"...and you didn't even gather the children into the houses!"
"The little sister does not want to see the dead child, for death is not good"
"Your sister and her child are in the boat, but they do not have bread."
"Our slaves throw a stone into the boat because they want to destroy it."
"These sinners are wicked, but we ought not to kill them."
"I was in the temple, but you were in the desert."
Yeah, these are all really odd sentences. But I've also noticed that as the lessons progress, they seem to be getting mildly more violent. Take these sentences from my last lesson, for example...
"The evil authorities were about to kill the teacher of righteousness and bring his head into the assembly."
"The demons stole the messenger's garment and threw it into the sea."
And, my personal favorite...
"You sent the children into the desert to die, and you did not save them. This will be upon your heads."
Now there's a sentence you can use on a daily basis.
So yeah, I totally can read all kinds of bizarre and odd stuff in Greek. I really find it hilarious, because I picture this ancient community having all this ridiculous stuff happening to them...evil prophets keep messing with the assemblies, and everyone is eating bread and riding in boats, and all the while apostles and disciples are proclaiming things about stones falling from heaven and the perils of sin.
It's too bad no one will give those people a ham sandwich.
**In the spirit of learning pointless phrases in foreign languages, I give you Eddie Izzard's take on learning French. If you speak French, I highly recommend you watch it. If you don't speak French, you can still watch it, but it won't be quite as funny...
I base this assertion on the fact that I woke up today at 7:15am (instead of 11:00am) and that I am planning to go to bed around 10:30pm (instead of 1:00am). Furthermore, I'm watching Laverne and Shirley right now...somehow I feel like that gives me bonus grown-up points.
On the whole, I would call today a success. I survived my first Greek class with only minor embarrassment (practically every answer I offered up was partially wrong, but that's to be expected on the first day of a foreign language class). The class didn't feel interminable either; the four hours actually went by rather quickly. I really like the professor, so that's definitely a plus.
Even better, I find that after today's class I'm WAY better at translating Greek sentences to English (yeah, we're doing that already, on day one). While my pre-class translations were things like "Brothers know that they see a lake" (coherent, and yet stupid), tonight's assignment read more along the lines of "In the hour of glory the Lord speaks to the hearts of children" (coherent, and not stupid). I really like being able to read full sentences in Greek on just the first day...French and German NEVER moved that fast, that I remember.
I do foresee a slight challenge in the fact that all my obligations now fall into the non-English category - Greek class/homework and French for my job. I don't know if it's because I was tired from waking up early or because my mind was all foreign languaged-out, but it was REALLY hard for me to push through my job today. I'm sure I'll get more used to it as time goes on.
In other news, I got barbecue for dinner with a friend, and have substantial leftovers in my refrigerator because I wasn't that hungry. Win.
I realize that this post is probably hugely uninteresting to people who are not me, and I commend you for reading it this far. I'll try to become more interesting in future posts...I'm planning on some cooking experimentation this summer, so at least there's that. But right now, I'm going to bed (at 10:30)...because I'm a grown-up, you know.
Well, I've been working on Lesson 1 out of my Greek textbook for about the last 2.5-3 hours my life (not counting the 1-1.5 hours I spent working on this lesson earlier this week). I have come to the conclusion that this class is going to be INTENSE. I'm hoping the lessons will go a bit faster once I become more comfortable with the letters and things (different alphabet, you know), but it's definitely not the sort of class that you can slack off in and still be fine the next day. Thankfully, I have enough experience with foreign languages to know that this is the case. I'll just have to make sure I really stay on top of everything. I have high hopes at the moment. It'll definitely be an interesting six weeks of Greek-ification!
It's actually kind of been blowing my mind that little kids learn an entire letter system and their pronunciation and how to read it all with relative ease...I don't remember it being this hard to learn English. It's really remarkable; to me, the Greek letters look like a bunch of gibberish, but a Greek kid could rattle off their names and read the language easily. It makes me all impressed with the minds of children.
In less intellectual news, I totally watched Gnomeo and Juliet today, and it was all fantastic. Seriously. I loved it. It's one of those movies that is just delightful in every way. Also, Elton John was a producer on the film...did you know that? I thought that was odd, but that it made perfect sense at the same time.
Anyway, I'd write more, but like I said I'm all Greek-ed out, and I need to get to bed early so I can start being a morning person who will be appropriately bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 8:30 classes all month. Off to bed with me!!
