Josquin's Classical Log - Graeca non leguntur

[Josquin]

TUESDAY, 15 AUGUST 2017

So, my family was there for a visit, which was fun, and now I'm on holiday in western Germany, where I was born and raised. As my trip to Ireland had to fall through I needed some sort of compensation and this seems quite adequate. Unfortunately, it means I can't study as much as I used to the last weeks although I've brought my books with me. I'm mostly busy with other things.

Gaeilge

I've taken a break from An Leon, an Bandraoi agus an Prios Éadaigh and replaced it with the tales from Éigse Chonamara. As these are stories that were orally told, the language in them is much easier and more vivid. I've come across countless conditionals and past habituals, which spice up the language. An additional plus are the recordings that accompany the book. They're very hard to understand though as they're told in full-speed traditional Connemara Irish, which sounds quite different from the anglicized Irish I'm used to hear these days. After finishing Éigse Chonamara, I'll return to An Leon, an Bandraoi agus an Prios Éadaigh.

Ἑλληνική

I'm on dialogue 5E in Reading Greek now, which introduces the aorist tense. After the imperfect and the future tense, its formation seems quite logic. The weak aorist uses the augment ἐ- and the suffix -σα-, which almost seems like a combination of the characteristics of imperfect and future tense. The aorist has its own set of personal endings though. The strong aorist will be dealt with in latter dialogues of this section. I really like Ancient Greek. It's a fascinating and very beautiful language!

עברית

I'm on lesson 11 in Lehrbuch Bibel-Hebräisch, which deals with the perfect of so-called Lamed-Aleph or III-Aleph verbs. These are verbs whose third root consonant consists of an Aleph (א) and which have some pecularities in the formation of the perfect conjugation. Lesson 10 already dealt with verbs with other gutturals as root consonants and lesson 12 will deal with the so-called Lamed-He or III-He verbs, which have other irregularities. Also, the perfect of the irregular verb נתן has been introduced as well as more noun paradigms and the question particle ה. Hebrew is a great language and very interesting as well. It's a lot of fun!

[Josquin]

SUNDAY, 20 AUGUST 2017

Several events have been interfering with my language learning for the last few days. Firstly, I'm on vacation at my family's place in western Germany right now, so there are a lot of diversions by relatives visiting and other forms of socializing. Secondly, it was my birthday on Thursday, so there was a celebration with all my family. Thirdly, the whole setting here makes me lazy and I tend to rather listen to music and read Goethe's Italienische Reise instead of studying foreign languages.

Generally speaking, however, I very much like studying classical literary languages at the moment. It's a totally different feeling than studying a living language, but it feels good. I mostly study languages for the sake of reading anyway, so this way of studying suits me pretty well. I sometimes miss recordings to accompany my studies, but it's possible to get by without them. For the time being, I'll stick with my combination of three languages, but I feel a little urge to get back to Japanese one day. Well, we'll see!

Gaeilge

I'm still reading the first story in Éigse Chonamara. It's called An Mhaighdean Mhara and is about a little boy who is taken from his parents by a mermaid. He escapes her custody and lives through a series of adventures on his way home. It's quite entertaining and easy to read. The German translation helps a lot, of course.

Ἑλληνική

I've completed section 5 in Reading Greek. The last two dialogues dealt with the strong aorist, which is similar in meaning to the weak aorist, but is formed differently. The difference is similar to that of strong and weak verbs in Germanic languages. Unfortunately, the strong aorist has its own stem and takes the same endings as the imperfect though. This can be a little bit confusing in the beginning, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

עברית

Hebrew is getting more complex. I'm on lesson 12 in Lehrbuch Bibel-Hebräisch now, which deals with the perfect of so-called Lamed-He verbs and the locative suffix He locale. Lamed-He verbs are verbs with a He (ה) as third root consonant. They have certain irregularities which make their conjugation a little bit tricky. I still haven't internalized the paradigm, but I'll get used to it. The He locale is a suffix that's attached to certain nouns to indicate location or movement towards a place, such as ארץ --> ארצה ("land/earth" --> "on land/earth"). There are similar suffixes or endings in Ancient Greek and even Latin, so this is pretty easy.

[Systematiker]

When you get ready for it, there are a number of lightly-edited collections of Plato done in the early part of last century for increasing reading ability. I have one in pdf (let me know if you want it), it's a good step between learner materials and the difficult bits of Plato. The Anabasis is also a low-threshold point of entry. I started with koine, of course, but really learned it in the sort of semi-classical stuff that lumped theology students and would-be classicists together (I can't quite remember the name of what we used, but I remember having the choice to continue with the theologians or the philologists. Hellas is the best book out there, in my opinion, but it's a long slog, more for several years of Gymnasium than a quick run-through). Homer is a different animal entirely, haha!

And good luck as well with Hebrew. I used different materials (Jenni, ugh, but it's still what I've got), but my experience is and has been much the same as yours. I keep trying to re-introduce Modern, as well!

Edit: Kantharos was the book the LMU used. It came to me.

[Josquin]

Thanks for your input, systematiker! I'm planning on using annotated readers once I've completed my textbook. I've heard of Hellas and Kantharos, but I thought Reading Greek was superior to them. I'd be very interested in the simplified Plato exerpts though. Greek isn't that bad at the moment. I still tend to confuse active and medium endings, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it sooner or later. Yes, it's a lot of morphology, but I rather like it.

Hebrew is a totally different ballgame. It seems to me there's not so much morphology implied, but the grammar is a little bit more exotic. The different verbal classes like Lamed-He and Lamed-Aleph verbs and so on are giving me a hard time at the moment. The advantage is once more that I don't have to be able to produce the different forms, but it's difficult nevertheless. Well, at least I've finally memorized the conjugation paradigm for Lamed-He verbs.

Jenni is pretty old-fashioned, isn't he? I'm working with the Lambdin textbook (German edition), which is okay but pretty dry nevertheless. The Biblical vocabulary like "slave" and "terror" and "salvation" and so on is of course pretty abstract. It would really be interesting to spice things up with Modern Hebrew, but I don't want to confuse myself right now. Well, I'm doing German-to-Hebrew translation exercises now, so I get at least a little bit of practice in the language.

[Systematiker]

PM me your email and I'll send you the Plato thing.

I didn't really have a choice on Kantharos, it's what the course used, but I got Hellas myself for supplemental work after reading reviews. I know it was super popular in BY and BW for classical gymnasium. I failed the graecum twice before passing though (once I would have passed if my German had been better. No, I didn't mean "nachdem", I wrote "nach dem", and should have written "danach" )

Jenni is super old-school. I'm on my tablet at the moment, but I'll stop by again to tell some of the stories from taking Hebrew. Some of them are downright hilarious (me as the foreign phd student, a bunch of first-years, a girl who did Hebrew at gymnasium and was like 17, and a Brazilian-German who couldn't understand why "Mohr" and "Neger" were problematic. Five days a week.)

[Josquin]

TUESDAY, 29 AUGUST 2017

It has been a week since my last update. I haven't been very busy these last few days, because I was on holiday till Friday. Also, I spent the weekend with some friends in Brunswick (Braunschweig) where I got to see Angela Merkel by coincidence, but didn't get to study at all. Instead, we drank some beers, made some pizza, and played some old-school PC games like Age of Empires II.

On a more positive note, I decided to spend my birthday money on something useful, so I ordered Ernst Kausen's Die indogermanischen Sprachen, William Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture, Martin Ball's The Celtic Languages, A. M. Ruppel's The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit, Jesse Byock's Altnordisch 1, and Odd Einar Haugen's Norröne Grammatik im Überblick. That means I'm the proud owner of two books on Indo-European linguistics, one on Celtic linguistics, an introduction to Sanskrit, and two books on Old Norse.

I'm very much interested in Indo-European studies at the moment, which means dealing with the classic languages of the Ancient and Middle Ages. So, after Ancient Greek, I'll go deeper into the matter by studying Sanskrit. Also, I'd like to brush up my Old Norse and maybe, if time allows, go into Old English and Old Irish. And yes, I'm still planning on taking up Japanese again!

Gaeilge

I haven't made any progress in Éigse Chonamara. Tá brón orm!

Ἑλληνική

I'm on dialogue 6C in Reading Greek now. Section 6 is pretty easy so far, as it only deals with infinitives and the past tense of some irregular verbs. The text I'm reading is based on the Apology of Socrates by Plato, which is quite interesting.

עברית

Hebrew is giving me a hard time. I'm on lesson 15 in Lehrbuch Bibel-Hebräisch now, which deals with the perfect tense of Ayin-Ayin verbs, i.e. verbs with the same sound as second and third root consonant. The former lesson dealt with so-called "hollow" roots, i.e. roots whose second consonant is either a Waw (ו) or a Yod (י). All these paradigms are rotating in my head and it's really difficult to recognize a verb form you haven't encountered before in a text. Hebrew verbs just work so differently from Indo-European ones.

As if this wasn't enough, Lambdin wants the learner to memorize all kinds of conjugated preposition paradigms while only giving some meagre practice sentences. Hebrew is starting to get really hard, although I'm still motivated enough to take up the challenge!

[Systematiker]

So I promised to tell you at least some odd stories, and forgot, but now I'll do it. Multilingual jokes ahead.

Best one of all:
Jenni gives "saris" (virtual keyboard here doesn't do Hebrew and I'm lazy) as "Kammerdiener", which of course our Prof wanted to correct. The girl who had translated the sentence didn't hear him clearly, so he had to repeat "Eunuch" a couple of times. I get a great idea, and say to my Sitznachbarin "schau mal, ich tue als ob ich nicht weiss, was das bedeutet". I'd have never gotten away with it if I hadn't already proven many times that, at the time, I really sucked at German conversation. You have to imagine me this whole time with a look of bewilderment on my face, I seriously pretended to not know what was funny

So I raise my hand and ask (think about the pronunciation, and you'll figure how I got away with "confusing" "oi-" and "you-"). Of course the class breaks out in terrible laughter, and the Prof goes:
Prof: "ein Kastrat"
Me: "Das Wort kenne ich leider auch nicht" (pronunciation again)
Class:
Prof: "äh, ähm, ein Verschnittener, eben "
Class:
Me: "Beschnitten? Also es hat was mit dem Alten Bund zu tun?"
Class:
Prof: "Also, nein, nicht Beschnittener, Verschnittener. Einer der nicht ganz Mann ist.
Class:
Me: "Wie nicht ganz Mann? Ein Feigling? Wieso ist so einer ein Diener?"
Class:
Prof:
Class:
Prof: "Also, nein, ähm, ein Mann, dem was....fehlt "
Class:
Me: "Ein Behinderter? Wie kann so einer ein Diener sein?"
Class:
Prof: "(irgendwas mit Hoden)"
Class:
Me: "Hosen? Haben sie damals Hosen getragen?" (because he knows I can't decline, I suck at German at this point)
Class:
Some from the class, shouted: "(irgendwas, ist zu laut)...in der Hose!"
Prof: "Also, wirklich, meine Herren, "
Class:
Prof: "(irgendwas, ist zu laut)...Entführung aus dem Serail"
Me: (mit Mitleid, endlich) "Oh."
Class:

I have no idea how he didn't twig to it based on what I finally let him out of it on (I mean really, I get that reference but not the other explanation?), but as far as I know he never knew it was me messing with him.

[Josquin]

FRIDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2017

Wow, Systematiker, sounds like you had a great time learning Hebrew in Munich! The Entführung aus dem Serail reference is super cryptic, looks like the professor was really embarassed having to explain that...

In other news, I'm doing well, but I spent too much time today listening to music and watching videos on YouTube. Now, my head is spinning and I can't really concentrate on my textbooks any more. That's what comes from wasting time and playing too much instead of working. However, the last days I have been quite diligent doing mainly Hebrew and Greek. Unfortunately, I'm always so exhausted after studying these two that my Irish reading regularly goes overboard. I really need to organize myself better, if for nothing else then for my 6WC record!

Gaeilge

As I said, no progress here. I promise to change that.

Ἑλληνική

Okay, I really enjoy this chapter of Reading Greek. Besides infinitives and the aorist participle, there's next to no new grammar and I can fully concentrate on the text, which is an excerpt from Plato. I loved Plato during my philosophy studies and I'm really excited to read him more or less in the original now. The rest of the section is made up from excerpts from Herodotus, so this will be interesting as well!

עברית

Okay, I'm starting to get the hang of verbal conjugation in Hebrew. I wrote down the different paradigms from memory yesterday and I didn't make too many mistakes. However, now comes the next challenge. I'm dealing with the status constructus of nouns, which often changes vocalisation patterns dramatically. Once again, all that counts in Hebrew are consonants and the vowels are added more or less arbitrarily. Getting used to the different paradigms will once again take some time. My advantage is I only need to be able to recognize forms, how people can produce them actively is beyond me. At least, it takes a lot more time than I'm used to take for grammatical phenomena.

Be that as it may, I'm on lesson 17 now and I finally get to read modified excerpts from the Bible. I'm reading the story of creation, which is quite different from the artificial practice sentences I've worked with up to now. It reminds me that the language of the Bible is highly artificial and literary and quite remote from everyday conversation. So, there's still plenty to learn.

Wanderlust

I'm already planning the time after completing my Hebrew textbooks. I don't know if I'll really branch into Modern Hebrew any more. I'd rather keep on wanderlusting and dabble in Sanskrit and Old Norse. And then there's still Japanese. I subscribed to Dr. Jackson Crawford's YouTube channel, which has a lot of interesting information on Old Norse language, literature, and culture. So, maybe I'll get back to where my polyglot journey on HTLAL started and work on Icelandic again. Of course, this time it would be Old Icelandic!

Við skulum sjá til, en ég hugsa að það væri mjög gaman!

[Josquin]

SATURDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2019

This will be more of a general musing about my languages than an actual account of my studies, so if you're not interested in me thinking aloud, please skip this entry.

I've been studying Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew for more than a month now and I'm getting to the point where I have to ask myself what I want to do with the languages. Surely, with Greek I can read Plato and Herodotus and the like, and with Hebrew I can read the Bible. But this gets me to the question: Do I want to read classical Greek literature and the Old Testament? Am I interested in the content my languages provide me with?

In fact, I've been dabbling in Old Norse for the last few days and today I took my materials for Old Irish off the shelf. It turns out I'm much more interested in medieval sagas and poems than in classical philosophy, drama, or even the Bible. In the case of Irish, I'm also very much interested in traditional music. So, while Greek and Hebrew are interesting on a common and more abstract level, I'm much more motivated to study Old Norse and Old Irish. Probably, my motivation for Old Irish is even bigger as I can already read Old Norse reasonably well through my former studies of Modern Icelandic.

So, what does that mean? I'm not quite sure yet, but maybe I'll put Hebrew and Greek on the backburner in order to make room for languages I'm more interested in. I have been very strictly clinging to my three languages for the last few weeks, but maybe it's time for a little change. Of course, it would be a pity to leave Hebrew now it's starting to get interesting, but I have only so much time available, so I must make a decision. Maybe, I'll simply allow myself some wanderlusting so I can decide which language to persue earnestly in the future.

Okay, I think this is it. So, be prepared for some more language variety in my schedule!

[galaxyrocker]

If you decide to do OI, let me know! I've been looking to get into it myself, as I'd love to translate some of the old texts into Modern Irish, as I don't think many are.