I am also new to textkit; I’m a software developer in Southern California, and I have been studying Latin in my spare time for about two years now. My initial interest was Ecclesiastical Latin, the language of the Roman Catholic Church, to aide in my study of the Vulgate and other ecclesiastical texts. However, my interest in Latin has broadened, and so I have been seeking out more Latin resources, devouring as much as I can!
I am also greatly interested in pursuing study in Greek at some point in the future, but I do feel a little intimidated dealing with a new alphabet!
I was intimidated by the Greek alphabet too–to the point that I almost didn’t make an attempt–but it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I suposed. I quickly discovered more intimidating things. Knowing something about an inflected language already, I think you’ll find yourself making progress quickly.
You could probably pick up enough of the alphabet in a week to start learning important biblical words in Greek, which would be useful and rewarding for your studies, even if you don’t pursue it intensively.
Hi, welcome.
My niece’s name is Euodia. From the NT, of course – She, and her parents like to think it is from εὐωδία, or “sweet smell”, than εὐοδία, or “good journey”. It is also the shortest word I know with all the vowel letters within. Anyway it’s a good pretext for me to urge her to learn Greek.
Greek alphabet is only slightly different from Latin one. And if you are already studying Latin, Greek grammar won’t be too difficult.
It’s funny you should mention that, mingshey, because just two weeks ago I was reading Philippians, and I noticed that both euodias appear in the fourth chapter. At the beginning of the chapter we find the name εὐοδίαν (good journey, as you said), and at 4.18, ὀσμὴν εὐωδίας (a scent of sweet savour). At first I thought that Paul was playing with words, maybe even using humor to help reconcile Euodia and Syntyche, but many scholars think that the fourth chapter is a patchwork of different letters, in such a way that places the two occurances of euodia in different sections. But–who knows-- perhaps the redactor or forger had that pun in mind?
Indeed ! The Latins borrowed their alphabet from the Etruscans who in turn had borrowed a (western) Greek alphabet.
The main differences were that the cross X was used in the western alphabet to note a “ksi” and in the eastern one (“the” Greek alphabet) to note a “khi”, and that in the western alphabet, the “khi” was noted with [size=150]ψ
