between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Achievements for today:

Two hours of paid labour.
Meat shopping for next week. (Freezers. Such a fantastic invention.)
Two text sections of Classical Greek.
One section of Italian.
Arrangements to get more paid labour.
Nap.

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My language learning proceeds apace. My supervisor is arranging a postgraduate Greek "improvers" class for the modern Greek. Classical Greek is necessary, of course. And I'm learning Italian from Easy Italian Reader, a Chambers Italian grammar guide, and a pocket dictionary. Within a few weeks, I might be brave enough to plunge into the 20-page article, "Modelli di medicina in Galeno."

Of course, next week I need to get the Easy German Reader and start working towards "Galen und die Zweite Sophistike," another 20-page article. I have absolutely no German, of course, and it is one of those complicated case languages, but this is why we have pocket grammar guides, yes?

It's good to have ambitions. I'm a little bit worried about mine, to be honest.

You know, it strikes me that if I want to be a scholar of ancient history to any professional level, I need, in the next few years, to learn:

Latin
Classical Greek
Modern Greek (particularly if I get this dig placement in Crete thing)
German for reading
And retrain myself back to where I can actually puzzle out a page of academic writing in French with the aid of a dictionary.

I think, perforce, I will have to let Irish mostly lapse. Is feidir liom fós an Gaeilge a labhairt agus a léimh, provided it's not terribly complex. But I can feel it slipping away, every time I go to grasp after a phrase, and that's annoying.

(It's like maths and physics. I know I have to prioritise my learning, but damn, I hate forgetting stuff.)

We'll see, after the Schols, how this DIY modern Greek learning thing works. If it works out well, we'll try it for the German.

(For Latin, I have a book. And for French, well. I still have all those grammars and dictionaries from when I thought I was going to do French to degree.)

I guess this means I should think about learning Russian, Turkish and Arabic when I'm in my late thirties, rather than any time soon, right?

Ambitions. I has them.