Greetings Attic students from an aging beginner

Jamieson · Post by **Jamieson** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:33 am

Hi all,

I'm 49 years old, and am just starting Greek. To sum up my so called life, I have spent most of my adult years in the software development biz. My personal interests have been quite diverse, but I have spent a fair chunk of time at one time or another playing chess, bridge, and backgammon, practicing magic, and watching movies and TV. In the last 5 years or so, I have gotten pretty interested in American history, in the course of which I became very impressed with how articulate and educated America's founding fathers were. This in turn lead me to suspect that their education in the Classics might of had something to do with that.

Well I developed an illness about a year and a half ago that basically introduced me overnight into my mid-life crisis. During my recovery, I discovered the whole Rhetoric thing, read 4 books by Quintilian (translated of course) and got then got quite excited about learning Greek and Latin. I joined this forum a year ago, decided to hit Greek first, learned the alphabet and the first 4 or 5 chapters of "First Greek Book", but unfortunately ended up getting distracted by other stuff.

Nevertheless, in the past year I have had this recurring yearning, a feeling that I'm at some kind of crossroads, and that Greek, Latin, Rhetoric, Logic, History--will all somehow have something to do, in perhaps a profound way, with how I am going to spend my next 20-40 years. So when I heard a radio announcement for an Ancient Greek class starting last month, I immediately signed up. I decided that a formal class would provide the necessary structure and impetus to keep me moving forward. I'm on unit 4 of Mastronarde and just love my class!

Just last week my instructor was showing us a translation of Hippolytus and remarked in passing that the Greek "κουκ ανωνυμοσ" literally meant "not anonymous" and was a rhetorical device known as litotes, which I happened to recognize. But I also noticed the translator had translated it to "high renown", detroying the rhetorical sense, in my opinion. I knew then and there I was on the right track in deciding to study the original language.

I am looking forward to discussions with you. Nice to meet you all!

Jamieson

benissimus · Post by **benissimus** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:53 am

Welcome back Jamieson. I'm glad to see you decided to commit to Greek. A good teacher can be the best learning aid. The Greek forum will be a good resource for you if you choose to use it, but when or if you learn Latin I will be glad to help in the other forum.

mingshey · Post by **mingshey** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:20 am

Welcome!
I wish I had the chance for proper education of those western classics. Now I study them on my own when I doubt I could do a useful work with them. But at least I could influence my daughter. Anyway they are fun to learn. And that's a good reason to learn them. And I envy you that you have a class to attend to. Enjoy your visit to textkit.

Emma_85 · Post by **Emma_85** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:33 am

Welcome back to Textkit! I hope your class goes well! I'm sure it will, if you want to learn the language then everything should be much easier as you'll be able to motivate yourself. Good Luck!

Episcopus · Post by **Episcopus** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:31 pm

Hey Jamie, nice intro my son

Good luck to you, perhaps the females will come flocking when you can tell them to plot against the horses on the bridge in Ancient Greek. IF THEY HAD ANY DECENCY THEY WOULD FLOCK DAMMIT!!! Seriously though I love you. Bye. I mean welcome.

Eureka · Post by **Eureka** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:51 am

Welcome, Jameson.

(Never mind Episcopus, he likes to ramble.) BTW, it would be more effective if you tell them that you had plotted against the horses on the bridge.

Episcopus · Post by **Episcopus** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 3:12 pm

I don't ramble what are you talking about who said that I don't ramble are you being serious that's not fair I don't ramble what are you talking about?

PeterD · Post by **PeterD** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 3:03 am

WELCOME!

You are hitting 1000: you have chosen Greek, and you have chosen textkit.com as your online learning aid.

~PeterD

p.s. What is it with software engineers, and other computer related professionals and the study of Greek?

Jamieson · Post by **Jamieson** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 9:06 pm

Thanks for the warm welcome!

lau_kai · Post by **lau_kai** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:56 am

well i hear greek is difficult(dont let this change ur mind about learning greek!) but i am sure u'll do fine... i sorta gave up coz i am lazy... and i found it ummm well... yeh... hard... well i couldnt remember the greek alphabet...

i realli wished that i continued greek... how i regret it now...