It's Greek to Me.

It's actually Greek to everyone.

'Cause it's Greek. The language.

And I'm studying it.

It all started (as so many good things did) when I took History of the English Language.

Dr. Chapman had us each present a Bible scripture at the beginning of class.

I looked up Luke 1:54 in Bibles ranging from Old English to the good ol' KJV.

There was a pesky word that I couldn't pin down a good definition for.

So I said to myself,

"I'll just look it up in the original Greek.

...

WAIT. I DON'T KNOW GREEK."

(Unfortunately, I can't read this.)

Then in May I went to the most wonderful BYU Forum.

John W. Welch spoke about BYU and the LDS view of education in his talk, "Thy Mind, O Man, Must Stretch":

"With stretching the mind comes an openness

to embrace more. The BYU Mission Statement

speaks of the pursuit of all truth. Our desire

is for further light and understanding, to circumscribe

all truth."

It was really inspiring and motivating.

And then Dr. Welch mentioned reading the New Testament in the original Greek.

And then I remembered:

I WANT TO DO THAT.

So I did.

Well, I will. In three semesters.

Greek 101's pretty great so far.

Suddenly I remember why I'm a linguist!

For the satisfaction of knowing that you're putting an accent on the right syllable.

For the beauty of a perfectly declined noun paradigm.

(These are the endings for nouns of the first declension.)

For the joy of a felicitous translation!

Of counting morae!

For the love of the poor little iota subscript!

Anyway, I've already gotten a new boyfriend out of it!

His name is Hansen & Quinn.

He's a great boyfriend, besides needing a lesson on modesty.

He accompanies me everywhere, he's a great conversation starter, and he makes me feel intelligent.

But he's kind of heavy, and I keep losing him, so I try to leave him in my locker nowadays.

But really.

There are some pretty cute nerdy boys who study Greek.

(Except not quite as hipster.)

And my professor says that studying Greek means you're allowed to be snooty, which is good.