It's all Greek to me

One of the classes I'm taking this year is something pretty new for me. It's actually pretty new to my school, too; it was only started a few years ago. It's a combined Latin 2/Greek 1 course.

To date, I've taken three years of Latin; this is my fourth. However, I have never done any Greek. I've always been slightly jealous of my sister, whom my mother taught the Greek alphabet to, but never to me.

Greek is the first new language I've begun to learn in about six years. It's also the only language for which I've had to learn an alphabet for. It's really an interesting experience.

Greek has much more in common with English than Latin does, something that turns me off slightly. For instance, 90% of the time, you can put the words in a Latin sentence in nearly any order without affecting the meaning; not so in Greek. The word order is not only more important, but it is fairly similar to English's.

Maybe the biggest difference, though, is with the accents. Latin really only has one accent, the macron (ironically, the word comes from Greek). Macrons are important, but many teachers don't force you to know all of them and their positions. Admittedly, this is partly because Latin is no longer a spoken language (outside of Vatican City), so pronunciation is not as important to know. However, the accents in Greek, as well as the rough breathing and smooth breathing marks, are very important. They can change the entire meaning of a word.

Differences aside, I'm enjoying it thus far. Greek is cool, maybe not as cool as Latin, but still pretty cool.