TUESDAY, 19 JUNE 2018I've had a good week for languages, but a lot is still changing in my life and my interests and I can't really seem to make a regular thing out of my studies. Be that as it may, I'm enjoying them enormously and I love to be back in languages. After a longer break, studying is more fun than ever. I'm combining my language studies with studies in literature, history, and philosophy though, so I'm busy on all fronts.
GaeilgeI've decided not to take up Irish again. It's a great language, but my focus of interest has changed too much. I've dealt with Ireland and the Irish language long enough, now it's time for something completely different.
ἙλληνικήStill working on lesson 46 in
Kairós. The topic is comparison of adjectives and adverbs, which is reasonably straightforward. However, the vocab is giving me a hard time. For the first time, I'm beginning to feel it's a problem I have no translations for the lesson texts. While I like working with
Kairós, this problem might aggravate in the course of the textbook, so I'm starting to look for alternatives. I especially like Yale University's
Learn to Read Greek, but it's quite expensive, so I'll probably wait till next month before I buy it.
עבריתI'm still dabbling a little bit in Hebrew. I had a look at the next lesson, which is a continuation of
hif'il paradigms and an overview of numbers bigger than ten. I'm not taking Hebrew too seriously right now, so all is fine.
संस्कृतम्I'm taking a short break from Sanskrit until the CIS online course starts again this weekend. I've already worked through most of the material for the next chapter, so I'll be able to take it easy for the time being. I'm looking forward to the course enormously and hope to get some more insights into ī- and ū-stems as well as
visarga sandhi.
WanderlustSo, I got myself some materials for Middle Egyptian, but I'm not sure I'll dive into them right now. After a short period of enthusiasm for hieroglyphs and the like, I'd much rather deal with Classical Chinese now. The problem is, however, that I don't have any knowledge of Modern Chinese that would be worth mentioning. As far as I can tell, most textbooks for Classical Chinese seem to expect that the learner already knows Modern Chinese to a certain degree or at least the most common
hanzi. So, maybe, I'll take a look at modern Mandarin first.
Why this sudden enthusiasm for Chinese, you ask? Well, since I dealt with Sanskrit literature for the first time, such as the
Bhagavad-Gita and the
Upanishads, I've been very much interested in Eastern philosophy and religion. After Hinduism, I'm now dealing with Daoism and Confucianism and I'm also reading some ancient Chinese and Japanese poetry (in translation, of course).
All this is to say I'm very much fascinated and taken by ancient China right now, while ancient Egypt seems to be a bit less interesting for the moment. I'm still reading Toby Wilkinson's
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, but I'd like to concentrate on Classical Chinese literature in the near future, especially
The Journey to the West,
The Dream of the Red Chamber, and
Water Margin. Besides that, I'd also like to read the
Genji Monogatari, so Classical Japanese would be interesting as well. I'll read all those novels in translation, of course, but I'd love to be able to read excerpts in the original.
And then there's still the vast field of Greek and Sanskrit literature I'd like to read, so I'll probably be busy for the next 20 years. Oh, did I tell you I was looking for materials for Gothic the other day... ?
Oró, sé do bheatha abhaile! Anois ar theacht an tsamhraidh.