I did something I had not done in a long while. I studied a chapter of a language book. Ancient Greek, to be exact. I took 1 1/2 semesters of Greek ages ago (the aorist conquered me, I must confess, and I dropped the second class), but I have a vested interest in learning Attic Greek, being a pagan who, well, worships a Greek Goddess primarily. (Okay, She's probably not truly Greek in terms of belonging to Greece proper, but still....) My Latin is rusty, especially if someone speaks it to me (reading is much better), but I had a total of five semesters of Latin (four classical, one mediaeval), so I progressed further on it.
My Greek text (I have both volumes I and II) is Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek by Maurice Balme and Gilbert Lawall (apparently I have the UK edition; there's another on Amazon with a different cover). In it you follow farmer Dikaiopolis (or Dicaeopolis, depending on your transliteration tastes) through various exercises. I found that I could still read the text pretty well, although I needed to refer to the vocabulary occasionally.
It was nice to stretch my brain a little. I need to do more. And one of these days I will conquer the aorist tense.
| Unshelved | by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum |
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