Dead Language Friday
Ah, Friday. Also known, so far as this semester is concerned, as "the day of awesomely dead languages."
As usual, I had Latin this morning, which was moderately fun (though the professor is hideously dorky and doesn't have a very good speaking presence. She's a nice woman, but she seems uncomfortable- or at the least, just not very good at speaking in a way that makes me feel confident in her.) Latin kind of feels like a step backwards- not in the sense of "Latin isn't nearly as cool as other dead languages," because it is cool, but because the course itself is taught the way French and other modern languages are taught... Slooooowly. After last year's Old English extravaganza, I'm used to being pretty much thrown into a heap of verb paradigms and told to have fun translating. Instead, we're singing the -a and -e verb endings to the tune of "A Doe, A Deer..." Fun, perhaps, but ultimately kind of a waste of time. I guess that's the difference between a 100 level Latin course and a 500 level English course, though...
I had my first session of Old Norse this afternoon, though, and that was really cool. The language seems a lot like Anglo-Saxon (makes sense), and, to my delight, we mentioned declensions and such briefly and then were immediately thrown into translating something called "Hrafnkel's Saga," which is, from what I scanned (and could immediately parse) about some son of Freyr.
Let's face it, reading about sons of Freyr (and Odin, and Thor, and the rest) is why I asked for this course. I'm quite happy.
I plan to finish my undergraduate work being able to read six languages, four of which nobody has spoken in at least six hundred years.
-E
As usual, I had Latin this morning, which was moderately fun (though the professor is hideously dorky and doesn't have a very good speaking presence. She's a nice woman, but she seems uncomfortable- or at the least, just not very good at speaking in a way that makes me feel confident in her.) Latin kind of feels like a step backwards- not in the sense of "Latin isn't nearly as cool as other dead languages," because it is cool, but because the course itself is taught the way French and other modern languages are taught... Slooooowly. After last year's Old English extravaganza, I'm used to being pretty much thrown into a heap of verb paradigms and told to have fun translating. Instead, we're singing the -a and -e verb endings to the tune of "A Doe, A Deer..." Fun, perhaps, but ultimately kind of a waste of time. I guess that's the difference between a 100 level Latin course and a 500 level English course, though...
I had my first session of Old Norse this afternoon, though, and that was really cool. The language seems a lot like Anglo-Saxon (makes sense), and, to my delight, we mentioned declensions and such briefly and then were immediately thrown into translating something called "Hrafnkel's Saga," which is, from what I scanned (and could immediately parse) about some son of Freyr.
Let's face it, reading about sons of Freyr (and Odin, and Thor, and the rest) is why I asked for this course. I'm quite happy.
I plan to finish my undergraduate work being able to read six languages, four of which nobody has spoken in at least six hundred years.
-E