Ai theoi, mens meum necovi!
So, some of you may have noticed I have been curiously absnet from... everywhere, recently. For this you can blame the allure of dead languages. Ten days at Greek camp, a three day break day, ten days at a Latin camp with no internet whatsoever, three days' break and now a full two weeks of Greek and Latin do not leave a whole lot of time for hanging out or posting in places or being online generally. For this terrible negligence I hope you shall, in time, come to forgive me.
I've been having simply tremendous amounts of fun - particularly at JACT Latin last week. That was completely awesome. I'm not as much a fan of the one I'm on now, at Lampeter in Wales (the middle of NOWHERE)- the teaching's not as good, the atmosphere's not as good and the food's distinctly inferior. But still enjoying hanging out with my fellow geeks. One of whom, Don, is a fellow aspiring fantasy author, so we while away much time discussing the ins and outs of the genre. Delight! I did have to drop down a Greek class from Intermediate/Advanced to Intermediate, which was somewhat disheartening, but since I've only really properly been studying Greek for a year, I shall try not to lose hope just yet. The class I'm in now is taught by a really super guy, whose one failing is that he's Greek, and therefore speaks Ancient Greek with Modern Greek pronunciation! I'm not sure how many of you know enough about Modern Greek and Ancient Greek to understand how irritating this is, but for you, I will demonstrate.
A word which, in sensible (read: Classical) Greek, is pronounced doo-nar-tah [spelt dunata], in Modern Greek, becomes th-ee-nah-tah. Pretty confusing if you've not heard to word before and are trying to work out where he's reading from.
Also, I would like to register my vague distaste at being in a class full of people twice, or in many cases three or four times, my age! It's a bit lame. And I swear I do not understand how some people got to Intermediate level Greek without understanding some of the principles that we end up going over time after time... I'm not saying no one should have difficulties with these things, but surely they've been DOING them for a while already! Or they wouldn't be intermediate! So, why don't they understand?? Anyway, that was really a minor annoyance.
More on this when I, hopefully, get an internet connection from my room some time this week. : ) Talk to all soon, I hope.
In other news, this IT lab is FUCKING FREEZING. I'm sitting right under an air vent, wearing gloves. ¬_¬
I've been having simply tremendous amounts of fun - particularly at JACT Latin last week. That was completely awesome. I'm not as much a fan of the one I'm on now, at Lampeter in Wales (the middle of NOWHERE)- the teaching's not as good, the atmosphere's not as good and the food's distinctly inferior. But still enjoying hanging out with my fellow geeks. One of whom, Don, is a fellow aspiring fantasy author, so we while away much time discussing the ins and outs of the genre. Delight! I did have to drop down a Greek class from Intermediate/Advanced to Intermediate, which was somewhat disheartening, but since I've only really properly been studying Greek for a year, I shall try not to lose hope just yet. The class I'm in now is taught by a really super guy, whose one failing is that he's Greek, and therefore speaks Ancient Greek with Modern Greek pronunciation! I'm not sure how many of you know enough about Modern Greek and Ancient Greek to understand how irritating this is, but for you, I will demonstrate.
A word which, in sensible (read: Classical) Greek, is pronounced doo-nar-tah [spelt dunata], in Modern Greek, becomes th-ee-nah-tah. Pretty confusing if you've not heard to word before and are trying to work out where he's reading from.
Also, I would like to register my vague distaste at being in a class full of people twice, or in many cases three or four times, my age! It's a bit lame. And I swear I do not understand how some people got to Intermediate level Greek without understanding some of the principles that we end up going over time after time... I'm not saying no one should have difficulties with these things, but surely they've been DOING them for a while already! Or they wouldn't be intermediate! So, why don't they understand?? Anyway, that was really a minor annoyance.
More on this when I, hopefully, get an internet connection from my room some time this week. : ) Talk to all soon, I hope.
In other news, this IT lab is FUCKING FREEZING. I'm sitting right under an air vent, wearing gloves. ¬_¬