Languages Languages
This month I am taking a semester of Koine Greek… also known as New Testament Greek. This is a daily class that lasts three hours, but also highly recommends that students spend an extra two to three hours in a language lab that occurs an hour after the class. So, it is a pretty intense class.
The thing about this that is weird to me is that this is the fifth foreign language that I have studied formally. In addition to Greek, I have also spent time in the classroom studying Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, and French.
In addition to time spent studying those languages, I have also traveled abroad and tried to pick up Swahili, Spanish (again… and on multiple occasions,) and Ukrainian.
I can’t help but think that all of this is just a big waste of time. The only thing I seem to retain are a few words here and there, a few pieces of information about cultural issues, and more practice at learning language in general.
I am just glad that all of these languages have had alphabets of some sort. I don’t think it would be all that much fun to learn a tonal language or a language that has no alphabet. Then again… if I tried I might end up less tone deaf.
I know what you mean about learning languages feeling like a waste of time. I spent 4 years in spanish and was close to being fluent, and now I can’t even carry on a conversation or understand someone. It’s like you need to keep practicing it and you need to learn it in a country where you are surrounded by the language.
Comment by Jessica — July 31, 2005 @ 3:11 am
I hope you aren’t too discouraged about learning languages. I was hoping to make that a hobby for us in the future. I thought it would be neat if we could fluently learn a language and then our children would easily pick it up as they grew. Now that was a hobby I thought would be worthwhile.
Comment by Joy — August 17, 2005 @ 11:33 am