Reflections of a language nerd

It's been a while since I formally learnt another language. In fact it was 11 years ago that I studied Latin in my third year of university. Opto, optas, optat, optamus, optatis, optant, and all that.

Now I'm studying Greek - the Greek used in the New Testament - as part of a theological degree. I wasn't sure how I'd go learning Greek, after all I'm 10 years older than I was last time I had to study language and do tests and exams. I've learnt bits of other languages since then (Dutch, Swahili, Luganda) but only piecemeal and through immersion, which is a different kind of learning.

So I've been pleasantly surprised that it's all coming back to me - learning paradigms and vocabulary, and translating sentences that don't always seem to make much sense. Thankfully, many of the grammatical concepts I learnt in Latin (such as noun declensions, noun cases and verb paradigms) carry over into Greek, so I didn't have to start cold as some of my classmates did. Of course, being a linguist doesn't hurt either! Now that we are learning more vocab and more structures, the sentences we have to translate start to be more meaningful and some are even recognisable as particular verses from the Bible.

My understanding of Greek, which is so far limited but growing, is also opening up to me new perspectives on translation of the Bible. I'm very thankful for the hundreds, if not thousands, of years of scholarship on biblical Greek and the careful translation work that has been done over past centuries to give us very good and meaningful translations of the Bible in English as well as many other languages.

The translations we have in English are really very transparent, with any uncertainties or ambiguities footnoted in most versions. So there need be no concern about the reliability of the translation. It is not to be taken for granted that we have the word of God, the Author of Life itself, in a form ordinary people can read and understand for themselves. This is especially so when there are still hundreds of languages around the world that have no translation of the Bible yet. Maybe something I can help with in the future...

What stops you from learning?

What things stop you (or have stopped you) from making the most of the educational opportunities available to you?

Perhaps...

• a lack of interest? (the lecturer obviously knows what they’re talking about but is really boring to listen to)

• a lack of motivation? (my parents want me to study this but I’d rather be doing a different course)

• a lack of energy? (working part time, studying full time, and trying to maintain a social life means sleep is hard to come by)

• a lack of time? (all my extra-curricular activities are making it hard to get my assignments done well and on time)

• a lack of money? (it’s hard to afford to buy text books and a computer, as well as pay rent and buy groceries, when I only work a few hours a week as a casual in retail)

Or...

• the lack of a pencil?

The late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, in his book 'The Shadow of the Sun’, wrote about an encounter with Ethiopian children:

“It is enough to stop briefly in a village, a town, or simply in a field - a group of children will instantly materialise. All of them indescribably tattered. Little shirts, pants - all frayed and shredded beyond belief. Their entire treasure, their sole nourishment, is a small calabash with a bit of water in it. Each piece of bread or banana will disappear, inhaled, in a fraction of a second. Hunger for these children is something permanent, a way of life, second nature. And yet they do not ask for bread or fruit, or even for money.
They ask for a pencil. The price? Ten cents. Yes, but where can they possibly get ten cents?
They would all like to go to school, they would like to learn. And sometimes they do go to school (a village school is simply a spot in the shade of an enormous mango tree), but they cannot learn to write because they have nothing to write with - they do not own a pencil.” (Kapuscinski, 1998, pp.230-231)

• the lack of feminine hygiene products, meaning that, if you’re a girl, you can’t go to school for a week every month?

A research group from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, spent some time in remote regions of Uganda focusing on literacy and developmental needs in the communities. In one study, they discovered that the teenage girls were all getting very behind in their education. They couldn’t go to school while they had their period because they couldn’t afford any sanitary products, and so they were missing a week of school every month. A number of innovative aid projects started as a result of this finding. One of these was Afripads, which set up a local manufacturing project to make affordable, reusable sanitary products so that the monthly period would no longer be an obstacle to girls going to school. It also provided work and income for local women involved in the manufacturing.