Distractions!

Wow. I begin concentrating on other things in my life and my writing takes a big hit! I'm not particularly happy about that, but it seems to be my reality right now. It's been a busy week and now all of a sudden I am pouring myself into studying again and don't really want to come up for air until I get it!

Honestly, things generally come pretty easy to me. I read things - they make sense. But, learning a language that uses symbols I'm not familiar with and pronunciations that are quite different than I'm used to is quite a trip.

In Greek, the 'i' sound is 'ee.' Ok, that's fine. A lot of foreign languages are like that. But, I have to pronounce a hard 'th' sound (as in 'the') for a 'd'! And a hard 'v' sound for a 'b'! What looks like a 'v' is actually an 'n.' What looks like a 'u' with an extended tail on the front is actually an 'm.' What looks like a freaking 'n' is actually the 'eh' sound. My brain hurts and I haven't even gotten to the vocabulary yet!

To top it off, there are 4 different pronunciation structures for Greek. You see, the Greeks got so melded into societies around them, that they actually lost the pronunciation that they were using. So, scholars have been making it up. Guhreat. At least they have it down to four. But, what you know from college fraternities is not actually correct and what we know and have heard from mathematics and science isn't actually correct. So, everything that I think I should know - is wrong.

Oh, then there are dipthongs and digraphs, fricatives, liquids, spirants and nasals. And don't forget the accents. Always with the accents. Oh whee, I have to learn 3 of them right off the bat, but then there are those that are at the beginning of a word that tell you how to aspirate the vowel sound.

I am doing pretty well on the letters - there are only 24. Well, sigma (the 's') sound has two letters that you have to learn. One that is used at the end of a word only and the other that is used at the beginning or in the middle of a word. So, that makes 25 - well, only 24. Oh my.

I'm really looking forward to this and I do know that at some point, the lightbulb is going to switch on and I'm going to get it! How much pounding my head against the wall is it going to take? I have no idea.

If I'm muttering strange words - no worries. I'm just talking to myself.