Here's to the aorist optative

[starlady]

Oh man, it's been years since I'd thought about the aorist optative. I'm such a bad lapsed Classicist. But here's a line from this week's Economist about the study of ancient Greek that I thought was too damn good not to share:

Intellectual elitism, as much as an appreciation of Aristophanes’s bawdy humour, is the glue that binds Hellenists together—stoked, in some schools, by a feeling of official neglect or hostility from peers.

The article concludes by saying that the real threat to the classics in general and Greek in particular is not modernity but globlization. I could see that. In the meantime, off to the grocery store.

Comments

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

I agree, German grammar isn't too bad, but the vocab drives me nuts after a while. I think I spend enough time cramming Latin and Greek into my head that I don't care enough to remember all those German words. And I don't use it frequently enough to learn by osmosis. Whereas in French, 90% of the vocabulary is almost blindingly obvious.