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My big fat Greek exam

Alas, while the calendar shows July, my summer--for all intents and purposes--is over. I began summer Greek last week. Summer Greek condenses an academic year's worth of Greek into 8 weeks. Each week is basically the equivalent of a month of Greek taken over two semesters. We have a quiz every day and an exam every Friday, except for last week. So the first exam is this Friday.

On the PTS Web site the school discourages students from working while taking a summer language, and I completely understand and agree with the suggestion. I thought I studied a lot last year, but each day requires a good five or six hours of studying (I opted to take the class for a grade rather than the recommended pass/fail).

Greek is unlike any foreign language I've studied (the others being Spanish and Korean) in that virtually every particle of speech--articles, subjects, objects, adjectives--must agree in gender, case (i.e., nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative), and number (i.e., singular or plural). Thus, there are 24 different ways to say "the." If Alexander were so great, he should have spent less time conquering and more time devising a simpler language. It's no wonder the Greeks conquered so many peoples--they had no chance of communicating such a complex language.

Comments

  1. HeemanJuly 19, 2011 at 11:06 AM

    This made my month. Great piece.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 19, 2011 at 10:12 PM

    Whew ...makes my head spin just to read it and process it! *But*: since I know you so well, I know, too that you'll come through with flying colors. (And of course since you know me so well, even under this albeit required false name, you know it's from the heart.) :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. JohnJuly 20, 2011 at 4:40 AM

    @ Heeman: Having a friend named "Heeman" makes my month.

    @ Anonymous: Michael, is that you? Gail? Steve?

    ReplyDelete

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