Ken Martin’s Blog

It really is true that a huge part of learning a language is the habit of it. It’s repetition which makes this data I’m trying to assimilate accessible when I need it. And it’s neglect which allows it to get buried with all the other cares and tasks and happenings of the day. And after a few days, it’s hard to dig it back out.

This shouldn’t be surprising to me after learning programming languages from Lasso to JSP to Javascript to PHP and so on. I think the difference between a programming language and Koine Greek (a dead language) is that I can experiment with programming languages and get instant feedback and instant gratification. Failure in a programming language can be an annoying but benign null pointer error. Failure in Greek can be heresy.

As I’m learning the third declension nouns, I’m feeling like I don’t have the first and second declensions solid enough yet. Which just piles on the stress. I know them, but they’re not “at the ready” like I want them to be. Maybe I’m just being impatient.

Will that stop me? μη γενοιτο! Heck, four months ago, the word declension scared me. :)

This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Greek Class.