Re: Old Languages

| At 8:19 pm -0400 3/10/01, Colin Halverson wrote:
| >I was wondering- how many people here speak dead languages,
| especially Latin,
| >Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew.

        I had three years of Latin in high school, though disuse has caused
it to atrophy rather badly. I also have the TY book on beginning Latin with
the tapes, that I intend to go through someday "soon". (I had to buy
something to spend enough to qualify for a rather nice discount. Yeah, I
bought it so it would only cost me $2, I know....)
        I also have the TY book on Sanskrit which I have looked through with
very good intentions. Does that count? ;-)
        And I have a book on Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek, which I
mainly got because of the tone of the author. Besides being rather
ethnocentric ("While English grammar makes sense, Hebrew can seem quite
strange."), he also manages to say indirectly several times that the best
way for a minister (like himself) to really dazzle a congregant and "hush"
someone whose questions are too critical is to pull some Biblical Greek and
Hebrew out of the air. He stops *just* short of saying, "This is how you
bull$|+ out of a tough question while still looking impressive," but he
comes *very* close. The book was one of those "I can't believe he said this
in print!" impulse buys.

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