“Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.” – ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΗΝ 1:1
In keeping with my apparent theme for the week: random languages that I studied long in the past. Above – the opening of the most interesting of the four Gospels (in my opinion), John. As found in my mother’s old Greek New Testament, which I acquired in January when visiting her, when she showed me a box of books she was getting rid of.
My ability to read Greek is very poor (maybe slightly better than my ability to read, say, Welsh – see previous blog post – mostly due to the more accessible plethora of cognates). I did take a semester (or two? I don’t remember) of Ancient Greek in college. But the translation of this phrase is nevertheless quite easy because it’s such a commonly known phrase: “In the beginning was the word…” – see? You can complete it yourself.
Shall I attempt to read this book? Probably not. But Greek (and especially ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, “the common dialect” [koine] such as found in the New Testament) is pretty high on the list of languages that interest me. The Bible makes a great text to revisit when learning a language, because it is so meticulously translated into each language. I saw a trilingual edition in a bookstore a while back: Greek, English, Korean. I should have bought it. Then I could mess with koine guiltlessly, having the Korean staring me en face.
