It’s All Greek
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
One of my classes this year (and will be for the next three semesters) is Ancient Greek. It’s incredibly different from English, relatively different from French, and slightly similar to Spanish. But the letters look weird to my American eyes. An r looks like a p. The p looks like a math symbol (Ï€). Don’t even ask what an x looks like… something similar to spaghetti noodles thrown all over the floor (ξ).
Although most people shudder at taking languages, particulalry dead ones like Ancient Greek, I would encourage you to try one out. One of my sisters studies Spanish and another is learning Elvish. Okay… Elvish isn’t the most practical language in the world to learn. But research has shown that the more languages you learn, the easier it is to understand and learn new ones. Case in point: when I was younger I wasted (read, invested) a whole lot of time developing two languages called Palandish and Delviidan. I also studied Spanish, French, German. Consequently, Greek isn’t too hard for me.
Bottom line: take another language. It will expand your world.