Posts Tagged 'Greek'

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Lauding two great resources and mourning another

Published 2 April 2009 Academia , Early Christianity , General , The Orthodox Faith 4 Comments
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The bad news first: ReGreek, which was a really useful online New Testament Greek resource, has gone the way of the dodo. I’m still not sure I totally understand all the intricacies of what happened, but it sounds not dissimilar to the legal flap between Warner Bros. and Fox over Watchmen — basically, permission had been given to use something (in this case, a version of the UBS critical text) by somebody who did not have the right to give permission. That may be a crude and inaccurate representation; see here and here for more information. Alas. This means I’ll actually have to look things up and analyze forms when I read the New Testament now… sigh.

On the other hand, another really fantastic, if old-school, resource which just came to my attention is the Google Books online verson of E. A. Sophocles’ Glossary of Later and Byzantine Greek from 1860. I discovered this while doing my own translation of the long prayer of consecration in the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil (which will be its own post here shortly). I have to take a diagnostic Greek test this fall, so I’m taking the opportunity to work through various texts, looking up even the words I think I know just to familiarize myself better with various nuances, principal parts of verbs, etc. Anyway, I came across  the word σαρκωθείς, and while its meaning was obvious both from context as well as knowing what σαρκ- means and also being able to clue into the fact that there was a theta at the end of an aorist stem (that means it’s formed off the sixth principal part of the verb, that is, the aorist passive), but I nonetheless wanted to find it in a dictionary. Well, Messrs. Liddell, Scott, Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich were collectively no help, so I started searching for the word online. This search led me to the Sophocles, which, as expected, gave me the dictionary form σαρκόω, meaning “enflesh”. It otherwise seems like an excellent resource, and I will be adding a link to it under the Greek Resources tab. (Although, when I post on the prayer of consecration, I’ll have to talk about the two words which weren’t in BDAG or Sophocles but were found nevertheless in Liddell & Scott.)

Finally, the Dynamic Horologion and Psalter just rocks. Period. The service texts generated appear to assume that a priest is not present, and not quite all the service text variables are worked in yet (stichera at “O Lord I have cried” during Vespers, for example), but it nonetheless seems incredibly useful.

NEWLY POSTED: answers and notes for Hansen and Quinn, Unit IV

Published 20 March 2009 Academia , General 5 Comments
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If you’re just here for the Greek, then, as promised, I’ve posted my guide to Unit IV of Hansen and Quinn on the Greek Resources page. I’ve also posted some corrections to a couple of other units, and I’m not entirely certain they aren’t corrections of corrections. I’ve switched platforms, word processing software, and keyboards once or twice since I embarked on this project, and I think every time I have done so it is has given rise to accenting errors on my part. Apologies.

On the other hand, I’ve managed to post a new unit within roughly six weeks of the last one. I will do what I can to Unit 5 posted within that same timeframe.

As always, if you have questions, comments, requests, complaints, insults, “your mom” jokes in Greek, whatever, e-mail them to me, leave as a comment, send smoke signals (no promises I’ll get them or understand them if you do send smoke signals, however), and I’ll see what I can do.

In progress: Hansen and Quinn notes and answers, Unit 4

Published 17 March 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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If you’ve been waiting with baited breath since I posted the Unit 3 materials, I hope to have Unit 4 posted this week. As always, reality reserves the right to intervene, but I will do what I can.

Notes & answers for Hansen & Quinn Unit III posted

Published 5 February 2009 Uncategorized 3 Comments
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Find them here. If you’ve been waiting a long time, sorry. Hopefully it won’t be eleven months before I post Unit IV.

Can I have a declinable participle, please?

Published 24 January 2009 General 3 Comments
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One of the major constituents of the initial massive overhead required in learning ancient Greek is the participle. Participles are extremely important in ancient Greek; where possible, it seems, it’s preferable to a finite verb. Because they decline and agree in gender, number, and case with what they modify, participles seem complicated compared to English; on the other hand, this reduces the ambiguity that can exist in English with participles, a la “I saw the dog running down the street.” Is it “I” or “the dog” which is running down the street in that sentence? In ancient Greek, however, there would be no confusion — the participle would either be in the nominative case, meaning it would agree with the subject “I”, or it would be in the accusative case, meaning it would agree with the direct object of the main verb “saw”, “the dog”. In English, having lost most of our inflection, we depend on word order and proximity, as well as context, to tell us grammatical function, so the only real way to distinguish whether it’s I or the dog running down the street is to change the sentence to “Running down the street, I saw the dog,” which unfortunately seems a little stilted and artificial. “I saw the dog while running down the street” is a little better, but it seems to imply the imperfect periphrastic “while I was running down the street,” which starts to edge away from a pure use of a participle.

Modern Greek’s participles, it turns out, do not decline. This means there isn’t as much to learn at the outset, but it also means that the ambiguity you have in English exists in Modern Greek:

Είδα τον Πέτρο πηγαίνοντας στο σπίτι μου -> I saw Peter going to my house. (Not clear if it’s the subject, “I”, or the object, “Peter”, going to my house.)

As opposed to ancient Greek, where you can do this:

Εἴδον/Ἔβλεπα τὸν Πέτρον βαίνοντα εἰς τὸν οἴκον μου. Here, the participle βαίνοντα is in the accusative case, making it clear that it’s Peter going to my house. Also, because of the inflection, you can manipulate the word order in all kinds of ways and have it make sense regardless:

Εἴδον/Ἔβλεπα τὸν Πέτρον τὸν βαίνοντα εἰς τὸν οἴκον μου. Literally, “I saw Peter, the one going into my house.”

Εἴδον/Ἔβλεπα τὸν βαίνοντα εἰς τὸν οἴκον μου Πέτρον. Literally, “I saw the going-into-my-house Peter.”

But then you can also do this:

Εἴδον/Ἔβλεπα τὸν Πέτρον βαίνων εἰς τὸν οἴκον μου. Here, the participle βαίνων is in the nominative case, making it clear that it agrees with the unexpressed subject “I” (unexpressed since the -ον/-α ending of the verb already makes it clear that we’re in the first person).

All of this is to say — here’s to inflected languages. Pay now or pay later.

AGAIN, again — postcript

Published 21 January 2009 General , Media , The Orthodox Faith 5 Comments
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My Divine Liturgy in English review generated a letter to the AGAIN editor over a not-unexpected issue — that of the use of “Holy Strong” in the Trisagion. Here are the highlights:

I’m uneasy with regards to the language [Cappella Romana] would institute. Changing the music is one thing; changing the language it’s written in is another thing entirely.

It’s important we don’t discard and/or replace the words that stir mind and soul, just to smooth some inconvenient bumps that have come about with the coupling of the Byzantine chants to English. If the truth be told, there’s a strong benefit inherent in the older English words. Simply because it takes an act of self will to use them, just like enter our church buildings leaving the physical world for the spiritual. The uncommon older words in our worship allow for the erecting of a similar barrier for the mind allowing separation from the offal baggage of our degenerate common day to day language. It’s a mistake to replace the word mighty with the word strong; to do so is to lose the Divine Authority inspired by the first in exchange for the wrongly elevated physical insinuation of the second.

Whatever the history regarding these two words, as well [as] the translations that have brought us to this point, the fact is the word strong is no longer capable of instilling the divine contemplation needed to lift the mind from the physical to reflect on the mystery of the spiritual. Our modern English speaking society throughout the world has mitigated this awe inspiring word by making an idol of strength.

Mighty, another word that carries much the same thoughts as the word strong once did, is currently used in the Liturgy. It has been for the most part spared the jaded attention of our society. Retaining its potency it bears well its burden, conveying the authority, the astonishment, the respect required of us. It commands us to humility, and as much as our puny minds can attempt, to contemplate and reverence the trenchant* power of our triune God.

If people don’t understand the meaning of such words, we should follow the example of our early church fathers that developed though God given inspiration the Divine Liturgy and a system of enlightening the ignorant, and educate them.

So when we think of our risen Lord seated at the right hand of the Father, do we want to glimpse him in the Divine Authority of his Majesty, or as…a glorified strongman?

Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal; have mercy on us.

Phillip, your brother in Christ

* Keen, Sharp, vigorous, intensely perceptive, Penetrating, clear-cut, Distinct

My response:

Dear Phillip,

Thank you for your reflections on the translation of the Trisagion as sung by Cappella Romana. I am agreed wholeheartedly that it is a mistake to replace or discard words capriciously. What might help clarify things for you is that Cappella Romana followed the official translation of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira; that is to say, Dr. Lingas and co. did not write their own translation or change words as they saw fit. Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, neither an amateur nor a shrinking violet when it comes to the matter of rendering biblical or liturgical  texts into English, was the chief architect of the Thyateira translation, and he has a detailed essay regarding the proper translation of the Trisagion, found here: http://www.anastasis.org.uk/THE%20TRISAGION02.pdf

In any event, the two most salient points might be:

  1. The Greek word “ischyros” is translated as “strong” virtually every other place it is used, and in other liturgical languages (such as Slavonic) the equivalent of “strong” is employed rather than “mighty”; “krataios” is the word which better corresponds to “mighty,” as in “Pantokrator” – “All-Mighty” being how that is often rendered in English.
  2. Translating “ischyros” as “mighty” in the translation of the Trisagion, ironically enough, appears to date back to the 1772 translation of Dr. John King, a Protestant. The earliest known English translation, that of Dr. John Covel in 1722, uses “strong.”

I hope this helps!

In Christ,

Richard Barrett

No denying it’s a sensitive matter; this is a tricky instance where a translation of a prayer, regardless of its relative merits, has taken on a life of its own beyond that of its source. The 20th century certainly demonstrated that you mess with the language in which people pray at your own risk. On the other hand, Phillip makes the excellent point that in such cases an effort should be made to educate the people, and I think Fr. Ephrem’s essay does that quite well. The other side of that bargain is just that the people need to be willing to not refuse the instruction out of hand.

For my own part, I’ll note that I don’t consider myself my own authority on Greek, particularly not where these kinds of issues are concerned. I’ve been there for Fr. Ephrem Lash sight-translating a Gospel reading from Greek during a Liturgy without realizing he wasn’t reading from an English version until I was told later, so if he says “Holy Strong” is what the prayer actually says and means, I don’t think I have too much of a basis to disagree with him.

Finals Week, fall semester 2008

Published 19 December 2008 Academia , College , General 1 Comment
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It is Friday of Finals Week; the campus is basically empty, it is grey outside and already hinting at getting dark. The next couple of weeks will be very quiet. While I generally like the winters here (as long as I’m not snapping the bones of my various extremities) I have found, particularly the last couple of winters, that I struggle somewhat with it being nearly dark out by the time I get home after work this time of year. It’s never bothered me before, so I’m not altogether sure what that’s about, but there we are.

My one final this time around was Modern Greek. Confidence, I suppose, is when you know you would have to bomb the exam completely to impact your grade at all, and I didn’t bomb it in the least. Next semester I will be bumping up to the 4th semester of the sequence, which means I have some fill-in work to do between now and then, but I am reasonably unconcerned about my ability to deal with it.

One of the problems I’ve been trying to solve this week has been that, upon realizing that my iTunes library was taking up 33 gigabytes of my 80 gigabyte hard drive, I decided to get a 1 terabyte external hard drive and hook it up to the wireless router that governs the connectivity in our house. Simple, right? Well, no. The router, one of AT&T’s custom jobs that you have to use if you have their DSL service, only has a Type B USB port on the back, and the output port on the MyBook drive is a Micro B. A USB hub didn’t solve the problem, because the only upstream port on the hub was, yep, a Micro B. A USB-to-Ethernet adapter didn’t solve the problem, either. Finally I pulled out the AirPort Extreme router I still have from my cable days, which has a Type A port on the back of it specifically for hard drives, and connected that to AT&T’s router via an Ethernet cable. It works now, more or less, but I don’t understand why this wasn’t easier. Now I’m migrating my iTunes library over, which will take another few days to sort out, I’m sure. A friend of mine in high school used to call such needlessly complicated arrangements “goat-ropes.” I’m still not sure what a “goat-rope” is, exactly, but I think this qualifies.

And, of course, Leopard’s Time Machine functionality still doesn’t work with an external hard drive connected via a wireless router, and I wasn’t about to spend $500 on a 1 TB Time Capsule when an AirPort Extreme router plus a 1 TB external hard drive cost less than $300 combined. So, whatever.

Under the category of miscellaneous observations — you know, Rick Warren certainly wouldn’t have been my choice if anybody had asked me to set up the invocation for the Presidential inauguration. (That probably would have been Metropolitan Jonah.) Still, I am bewildered by claims that his views are not “consistent [with] mainstream American values.” Now, his views are most certainly not consistent with what Ms. Kolbert’s values are, nor with what Ms. Kolbert perhaps hopes “mainstream American values” might someday be, but that does not make them inconsistent with what “mainstream American values” presently are.

We have a real problem in this country, on both sides of the aisle, with acknowledging principled, conscientious disagreement; particularly where certain social issues are involved, the same assertion is made on both sides — “We’re talking about people’s lives. You either agree with me or you’re objectively hating an entire subset of humanity” (whatever group might be impacted by the social issue in question). Somehow we have to get past this and not be constantly assuming the worst about the people with whom we disagree and their motives.

That bears repeating, I think.

I believe wholeheartedly that the level of public discourse in this country will not improve until we can stop assuming the worst about those who disagree with us and what might be motivating them.

“Baby-killer” and “bigot,” to use but two common examples, are labels that do nothing but shut down the conversation. They get used, not to further understanding, but to vilify. They identify as enemies and dehumanize those with whom there is ideological disagreement. They do nothing to identify common ground and attempt to find a way to co-exist.

If nothing else, President-elect Obama’s choice of Pastor Warren seems to acknowledge this problem and seek to find a way to navigate through it. That his choice of Warren has angered some on the Left, and Warren’s acceptance has angered some on the Right, indicates to me that it might in fact be an effective move on the part of both men.

Yesterday I was present for a discussion with somebody who very clearly believed himself to be better-informed than most and in possession of a privileged point of view, a puppet who was able to see the strings, and he made a lot of very sweeping generalizations about a great many things, clearly finding it incomprehensible that any educated, thinking person might disagree with him, thus making anybody who might disagree with him categorically uneducated and unthinking. This person might be broadly described as a Northeastern academic liberal; what was fascinating is that his manner and intellectual approach was virtually identical to that of an Alaskan neo-conservative who espoused almost perfectly antithetical views to me a few months ago. Both opiners dripped utter contempt for any who might see things differently; both were absolutely convinced that they understood reality. You know, real reality.

The truth may very well be that, eventually, the center cannot hold and the United States must splinter. Perhaps that will happen in my lifetime, or my grandchildren’s lifetime. It seems to me, however, that we have to resist such an eventuality. Sitting at the same table as those with whom we disagree is the reality of being the secular, pluralistic, supposedly egalitarian society that we like to pat ourselves on the back for being; we have to co-exist, and we have to get along, even if every settlement has not yet been negotiated and ratified. The result may be messy, the result may be something with which we’re not always happy, but that’s the nature of our system. Agreeing to disagree is the only way civil discourse can happen in the long run.

Now I get to spend the next couple of days researching how to brine a goose. Watch this space for details.

Things you think about when you’re trying not to fall

Published 29 October 2008 Academia , College , Early Christianity , General , Media , The Orthodox Faith 4 Comments
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This morning was the first frost in Bloomington, Indiana — or, at the very least, the first at our house. This is a relatively early first frost; I’m more accustomed to it staying hot until sometime in November, at some point during which God hits a switch and the temperature drops fifty degrees in a week. Given that my ancestors, centuries ago, were roaming the frozen wastes of Scandinavia wearing fur loincloths and swinging battleaxes, and that I’ve inherited their programming to stay perfectly comfortable in cold temperatures while wearing shorts and a t-shirt, as well as having to face the unpleasant corollary that above 75 degrees Fahrenheit I tend to be very uncomfortable no matter how little I’m wearing, I am very, very, very much okay with an early frost. The nice thing about cold weather is that you can always put more on. Hot weather… well, not so much. There’s only so much you can take off. (And trust me, you’re thankful for that — very very very thankful.)

What I emphatically don’t like is getting to the top step of my front porch on my way out to the car and realizing, in rapid succession, a) the first frost has arrived very much unannounced and b) I need to grab onto something very quickly. I am not one normally given to quoting John Mayer, but gravity, stay the hell away from me. Otherwise, I will be in repair (again).

For those who have asked — I do not, as of yet, have any information on the outcome of Fr. John Peck’s 16 October meeting with Metropolitan Gerasimos. All I know is that Fr. John is still listed here on the Prescott Orthodox Church website as the priest. Once I hear something I will post it (if I can).

A couple of links to pass along — Anna passed along the article “Keeping the End in View” by James R. Payton, Jr., over at Christianity Today. Prof. Payton, a Protestant, is also the author of Light From the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition, a book which I have not yet read myself, but I have heard Orthodox say that it is a better introduction to Orthodoxy than some books by Orthodox authors. (One hopes that he has less in common with Daniel Clendenin than with, say, Met. Kallistos Ware.) The article is an examination of the Orthodox Christian understanding of “theosis,” comparing it to how Protestants understand conversion, justification, and sanctification as “phases” of salvation. In general, Prof. Payton treats the Orthodox position quite favorably, but there are two points I’d like to mention.

In Orthodox teaching, “image” and “likeness” are not the same: the first is gift, the second, goal.

This is a matter of some imprecision; it’s not called “Orthodox teaching,” it’s called “the Greek language.” εἰκών and ὁμοίωσις are the words in question, and as even a cursory examination of their entries in either Liddell-Scott or BDAG shows pretty quickly, these are different words with related-but-different meanings, and authors do not use them interchangeably. This has nothing to do with “Orthodox teaching” except insofar as Orthodox teaching reflects how the Greek Fathers use the words. “Policy” and “law” are English words which have related but ultimately different meanings, for example. If a German author wrote that “In American politics, ‘law’ and ‘policy’ are not the same…” it would be a similar situation. It’s an issue of what the words mean, not an issue of how they’re treated by a particular group of people.

While evangelicals can learn from the Orthodox, it is fair to note that Orthodox believers can learn from us, too. The Eastern presentation of salvation can smudge the distinct steps of salvation. Justification and sanctification often get folded into the broader concept of theosis, and they become so blurred that Orthodox believers often don’t know what to make of the terms. They would be well served by an explanation of how the steps of salvation as presented in apostolic teaching fit into the larger package of divinization.

While appreciating Prof. Payton’s open-minded, open-armed approach and thus being willing to lay aside concerns about how patronizing this paragraph might be, I will suggest that he fails to mention that the issues he brings up are addressed by the participation of the Orthodox Christian in the sacramental life of the Church. I assume he knows this, and that this is a concept which probably will sail right over the heads of most CT readers, so I can understand why he doesn’t go there, but ultimately the picture he paints is misleading.

I would also direct your attention to the paper, “Approaching the Educated Person in the Post-Christian Era” by Abp. Lazar Puhalo (ret., OCA). I don’t necessarily agree with every point, but I think it’s worth reading and discussing. I might have more to say about it later.

Current reading: The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, by George H. Nash. Whether one agrees with everybody he describes or not, the story he tells is fascinating. I may have more to say about this later.

By the way, I’m considering participating in NaNoWriMo for purposes of finishing a first draft of a particular writing project of mine. I’m not sure I’d quite hit 50,000 words, but I’d have a draft finished finally, after four years of picking away at something.

I’ll wrap this up for now by saying that my application for West European Studies has been submitted, and that now it’s just a matter of my letters of recommendation rolling in. Hopefully I’ll know something soon. In the meantime, another option has come up in terms of a departmental home, and the person who suggested it did so unprompted. I don’t want to say much more about it for the time being. For right now I’ll just say that I’m flipping two coins, West European Studies and this other possibility, and we’ll see what comes up. Maybe both will come up heads, in which case I’m decidedly not opposed to leaving IU with more rather than less. Maybe both will come up tails, and I really will have to leave here with 30+ worthless graduate credits. We’ll see. Meanwhile, a near-annual conversation with a particular faculty member about said options has led to this person dubbing me a “professional applicant.” I suppose he/she isn’t wrong.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be prepared for the frost.

Τι κάνω;

Published 19 September 2008 Academia , College , General , music , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the end of week 3 of a new semester has been reached.

I’m having fun with Modern Greek thus far; given that much of what has been covered is stuff that hasn’t changed much from Attic usage (with the exception of pronunciation), I’m having, shall we say, a relaxed time of it. The prof says that he will start getting together with me and the other grad student to pick up the pace a bit, so that we can jump to the fourth semester next term, skipping the 150 and 200 level classes altogether. This doesn’t altogether depress me; the class so far certainly has been hardly anything about which I would lose sleep, but it would also be nice to untether myself enough from the pace needed by a freshman who after three weeks is still struggling to read the alphabet so that I feel like my own time is being spent wisely.

Modern Greek has also opened up a new possibility for me; in my ongoing quest to not have 30+ graduate credits just sitting as an unusable blob on my transcript that won’t transfer anywhere, I’ve brought up the possibility with my Greek teacher of doing a Masters in West European Studies, looking at the Greek diaspora in places like Germany and examining issues of religious identity and so on. He was supportive of the notion, and is reviewing my personal statement. I have to say, I’m not totally in love with the idea, but I’ve got half of the coursework done, I’d be able to finish in about a year, and it is something in which I’m legitimately interested. If I leave IU with a Masters in a field that isn’t directly related to where I go from here, I’ll at least leave here with a Masters (and keep up the pattern started with my undergrad), as opposed to a boatload of credits that nobody will care I have and won’t transfer anywhere.

The demographic makeup of the class is interesting; I’d say it’s about 3/4 Greek-American kids. I can’t tell if they’re trying to (re?)connect with their heritage, shooting for an easy A after years of Greek school growing up, or just want to be able to talk to Yia-Yia.

We use “Greek names” in class. The professor originally suggested Ριχαρδός, which is just “Richard” with a Greek masculine ending added, but thinking about it, I decided to go with a name that had the same meaning rather than the same sound. “Richard Barrett” roughly translates to “King Troublemaker” (I’m not kidding, although it depends on which part of Europe your particular Barretts are from — it can also mean “hatmaker” or “fortress”); in Greek, according to my friend Anna, that can be rendered more-or-less as ο Βασίλης Ταραχοποιός, and thus I am now called in class.

(By the way, Anna has some interesting observations which are perhaps not entirely unrelated to some I have made before. I have a hard time relating fully to either person she describes for various reasons, but have certainly encountered similar people myself. The convert friend sounds like he’s exactly the kind of guy who needs to hear The Divine Liturgy in English. Anyway, her post is, as is typically the case with Anna’s blog, worth reading.)

I have finally started the notes for Hansen and Quinn Unit III; I hope to have them in done in a week or so (once I’ve got a particular writing assignment done this weekend). If you’re waiting for them and have that particular unit staring you in the face in class — well, I’ll do my best.

(And perhaps next week I’ll finish translating the Meyendorff article, too.)

If you recall a rather cryptic post from a couple of weeks ago, I’ll add only that another very interesting (and positive) dimension has emerged from this set of circumstances. More to come once it happens.

A couple of completely random bits —

I bought a treadmill about a month and a half ago, and except for days I’ve been out of town and two somewhat exceptional evenings, I’ve been good and have used it for a half hour every day since it was delivered. I watch episodes from the various series making up the DC Animated Universe; including stretching, I usually manage to watch two episodes in one shot. I started with the second season of Justice League (when it became Justice League Unlimited); since that season ends with what is, effectively, the chronological end of that universe, it seemed only fitting that I move on from there to the show that started it all, the very first season of Batman: The Animated Season. All I can say is, it never ceases to amaze me how good these shows are on an extremely consistent basis — and as much as I think Christian Bale has become the definitive live-action Batman, there is no question in my mind that Kevin Conroy is the definitive Batman of any medium. (You know what I’d love? Bruce Timm and Paul Dini to write the script for the next Christopher Nolan Batman. It’ll never ever happen, but just imagine…)

Anyway, it keeps me excited about exercising. It begs the question what I might do when I’ve burned through them all — but hey, I’ve still got the season box sets for Babylon 5. That’ll keep me busy for a few months once the Timmverse goodness runs out.

After an interesting reference to their singer on a particular celebrity blog I read, out of morbid curiosity I bought the eponymous first studio album by the so-called “Brechtian punk cabaret” act the Dresden Dolls. I’m an Oingo Boingo fan from way back, and this is certainly within that tradition; the artists involved are definitely talented and creative; nonetheless, I can’t quite figure out if it’s my cuppa or not. I may give Amanda Palmer’s solo album a shot and see if that convinces me; at the very least, the companion book sounds intriguing.

OK — have a good weekend. I’m needing to get some sleeping done, some writing done, and some birthday parties done by Monday; let’s hope.

Price comparison shopping for Greek textbooks

Published 14 August 2008 Academia , College , General 2 Comments
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So, as it works out, I’m taking Modern Greek this fall, and that’s it. I’ve canned further Syriac for the time being — frankly, it’s just tough to justify the time commitment at this point, since I was doing it to prepare for the path of further graduate study, and now that hardly seems likely to come to fruition. I’ve got enough Syriac at this point to be able to bash through texts I’m likely to run into with a dictionary and a grammar; for what I’m likely to need it for going forward — which is what, exactly? — that ought to be fine.

Modern Greek is a little easier to justify. There are people I know now with whom I could speak it. I still very much want to travel in that region, even if it probably isn’t going to be for the purpose of grant-funded research, and there are other reasons it could be useful — such as finding myself someplace where the only church is a Greek-language parish, maybe. (Using that as justification, I acknowledge that Russian, Arabic, and Romanian would also be a good plan from here.)

It also might make asking questions of His All-Holiness about his book a bit easier. (I still have never talked much about that, have I? I’ll have to get around to that someday.)

Anyway — today I ordered my Greek textbooks. The course is using Communicate in Greek by Kleanthis Arvanitakis and Froso Arvanitaki. Rather than just snatch them on a whim from the campus bookstore, I decided to do a little poking around online to see if that was actually going to be the best way to go. Here’s what I came up with:

  • Campus bookstore — $103.75 for the first year textbook, workbooks, and CD
  • Amazon.com — unavailable, for some unknown reason
  • Greece In Print — with shipping, $105.21 for the set
  • Direct from the Communicate in Greek website — $99.08 (approximately, since it’s actually priced in euros)

All more or less comparable. At this point it seemed like going direct from the website would be the best way to go — hey, four bucks is four bucks — but the tradeoff was going to be that they were shipping from Greece, and it would be difficult to know for sure that they’d arrive before 2 September.

Then I checked one more place — and as it worked out, Orthodox Marketplace had the whole set, with shipping, for $72.63.

That’s probably the one time it will ever cost less to order from there, but I’ll take it.

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