Send in the Clowns

I went into today's Greek lesson not feeling terribly confident. Afterall, I had endured a less than ideal week in terms of study, what with various events and commitments to deal with, and relatives on both sides of the family providing very unwelcome distractions (is it too late to be adopted out?). Not that I'm offering excuses; just explaining that I was feeling less than boned up (and NO I'm not being crude) heading into today's weekly installment of torture by Koine.

My feeling of unease was not mollified when I noticed there was more than one missing place around the table this morning. I already knew one of my fellow students had decided enough was enough, and I started to wonder whether or not more than a few others had come to the same conclusion. The lecturer was also looking mightily pleased with himself; for a moment, it looked like his cunning plan to get out of marking a lot of exams at the end of the semester was bearing fruit.

Fortunately, it transpired that a couple of folks were running late or otherwise indisposed. Whether or not they turn up again next week is another matter. For the nonce, I was still content that I continued to be surrounded by plenty of fellow sufferers.

And so we commenced the lesson with a revision of last week's work and the exercises we had been set. Now, I produced a less than stellar performance, but I actually noticed that I hadn't done too badly either; my translations were either pretty good or just off the mark. Granted, there were some that stumped me altogether, but I was actually quite pleased that I seemed to be making some headway. Yet the curious thing is that I hadn't the faintest idea about the grammar; somehow, I had just managed to nut out what the sentences meant (or had nearly done so, anyway).

I was feeling a tad disturbed by this when one of the other students confessed to the same experience. And then a thought occurred to me: maybe if I can get enough of the vocab stuck in my head, I might just be able to make a fist of this subject. That is to say, when translating from Greek to English, an inside out understanding of the grammar is not strictly necessary; a sufficient dosage of vocab combined with a sense of sentence context might just be enough to see me through.

Naturally, the universe having the sense of humour that it does, I quickly realised that my revelation was not going to be the salvific experience for which I'd been hoping. Because, of course, when translating from English to Greek, I have to remember the right case endings and where the postpositives go and so on and so forth. And I'd be willing to bet my bottom dollar that our lecturer, being the smiling assassin that he is, will require that we render into our best Koine more than one passage of English for the exam.

But I thought to myself: maybe I might at least have the key to understanding at least half of this Greek thing...

Or am I just kidding myself? Am I doomed to end up with the linguistic equivalent of the custard-and-cream pie in the face...mmmm, custard and cream pie (incoherent Homeresque gurgling...)

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it. (Benjamin Whorf)