Extensive Reading Is Great

This past year, partly as a result of trying to teach Latin in The Netherlands, I have become very much impressed with Stephen Krashen's work in general, and certainly with the concept of Extensive Reading (which other people have taken on, of course). It has pushed my own language teaching even further to the left, so to speak. I was already convinced of reading, but I still thought grammatical exercises were important, very important. If I were teaching a class again now (and if I could do what I wanted), I really think I would ditch grammar exercises altogether and focus even more on reading. Tons of it. And good stories!

Not only am I more aware now than, say, a year ago, how (in retrospect) I learned German and Latin for sure, probably English to an extent, and even French mostly through extensive reading, i.e. reading (more or less) copiously, meaning that the material has to be easy enough for one's level and that the stuff one reads has to be interesting enough to keep turning the pages. More importantly, I've made an attempt to finally learn Italian beyond the absolute basics for the last few months.

In early August, I went to a bookstore to use some vouchers I had gotten as presents. I didn't know what to buy, but I was guided to the foreign languages section (this is in Maastricht, The Netherlands) and found a few easy readers in Italian, which seemed nice enough, so I bought them. And started reading. And reading. And reading.

Basically, I read a reader a day or so, for a couple of weeks. After moving to a different area of Germany and finding a decent bookstore, I picked up more readers. All in all, I think I have read between 30 and 40 of them, some more than once. I may write a bit more in detail about my experience, but I really think I've gotten quite a good idea of what's out there for easy readers in Italian.

Anyway, next thing I know, I'm in Italy. Just for a few days, to see friends (not Italians). Some interesting experiences. I am quite aware that, while my spoken Italian is still not terribly impressive, it's much better than it was even four months ago. Of course, I visited a few bookstores and picked up some real books--nothing easy or anything, just real Italian novels and non-fiction. 

Finally, on a brief stop in Udine, after walking around the old city in the rain (a charm all of its own in Italy), I did walk into another generic bookstore. Many, many books, but one was crying out to me, almost literally. It's a recent translation of a 1968 novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, possibly the greatest of all Yiddish novelists: Il Ciarlatano. The book was written in Yiddish (of course!) and serialized in the Forverts, as many of Singer's novels. Then, somebody prepared an English translation (I think Singer's nephew sometimes did that, but apparently this one is anonymous), clearly intended for publication as a book, which however never came about, for some reason.

So this brand new Italian translation is actually the first publication of the novel as a book. In other words, if I wanted to read this novel by Singer that I didn't even know existed, I have no choice but to read the Italian translation.

And guess what: I am.

I realize that those three dozen of easy readers (levels A2 to B2, whatever that really means) in not even four months have enabled me to now read this fantastic novel in Italian without serious difficulty. I don't know every single word, but (I am proud to say) I really never look anything up. I understand the story in pretty much every detail (I think anyway). And, I have to say, I totally and utterly love it.

The book. And the fact that I'm reading it in Italian. Singer's New York jewish characters, each of them crazy in their own way, all immigrants from Eastern Europe, with Yiddish as their main and sometimes only language--now speaking perfectly idiomatic Italian! Singer is rolling over in his grave--with laughter, that is!

Also, as a by-product, I'm thinking of going back to learning Yiddish......... 

Grammar

Just now, I heard a very good line about grammar. It comes (I can’t check the citation at the moment, but I trust my source) from Kató Lomb’s famous book Polyglot: How I Learn Languages.

“You cannot,” says the famous Hungarian poly-polyglot, “You cannot learn language from grammar, but you learn grammar from language.”

What’s there to be added to that marvelous, super-succinct summary of all the misunderstanding about grammar teaching? I’ve written quite a bit about my experience teaching Latin and Greek in The Netherlands this year. What has happened to language teaching in my own country? 

Dutch as a school subject meant literature when I was in school (like, forty years ago). A short story here, a poem there. Medieval Dutch. A highlight of nineteenth-century Dutch literature (Max Havelaar). We famously had one grammar (spelling) lesson a year, followed by a quick test applying a few stupid rules (for those who know Dutch, this was mostly about applying the kofschip rules). It was no big deal. What I hear from students and pick up from a few colleagues now is that Dutch classes have become some horrible thing about grammar, vocabulary (?!), and more torture. What a surprise no high school graduate in The Netherlands wants to read Dutch in university anymore! (It may, by the way, also explain the general disdain of the Dutch for their own language and their embracing silly English expressions where perfectly fine Dutch equivalents are available.) 

The modern languages where taught grammar-based in the 1970s and 1980s, but there were some adventurous teachers who were clearly moving in a different direction, and it was not only about grammar and vocabulary, as it often seems to be today (or so I hear from my poor students--third year French, never read a book).

The Classical languages have been grammar-based for a long time in The Netherlands and despite excellent classicists (such as A.G. de Man in In grammaticis veritas [Groningen: Wolters, 1951]) ringing the alarm bell, very little seems to have changed for the past 80 years, or more likely a century and a half. No, something has. It’s even worse than when I was in school. More grammar (not that the kids actually learn it), less stories, much less learning. (Sorry, but I don’t give a penny for turning Latin and Greek into a kind of ancient history class, it seems to me a horrible sell-out, a cop-out for not learning the language, which indeed they don’t, and teachers seem to think it’s fine.)

So what is it with my Dutch colleagues and their odd belief in grammar? Anybody who speaks a few languages fluently knows s/he did not learn that language by studying grammar. The very best students I see in Latin and Greek read, read, read. I ask them, Do you think of grammar rules when reading? Oh no, sir, they smile, almost apologetically, except they do know I love their answer. We just read. If I don’t get it, one very good student adds, I just read it again. And then I get it. The grammar exercises in the reading book? Oh no, says the student, I skip those. And she is right.

Such students learn grammar from language. They have long understood that it ain’t work the other way around, like I found out, realizing I couldn’t read Latin to save my life after six years (very many hours, plus a very decent final exam) of Latin in high school. 

How come language teachers don’t seem to see that?

Disappointed Already

I asked my seventh-grade (first-year) Latin class this morning what they would like to be able to do with the language after their exam (following six years of Latin).

"Speaking," one boy said without loosing a beat. (I can't help loving that that's the first answer I get! This kid has no prejudice whatsoever about Latin being a d--d language.)

"Writing," his neighbor adds quickly. (OMG, how cool is that, he would like to be able to write stories in Latin, so wonderful!)

"Reading," says a girl in the same corner. "And translating," she adds, as she has already heard from other teachers that translating is the thing about Latin (and possibly also about French, German, maybe even English).

"Well," I said, "you can easily ask the students in twelfth grade how well they speak, write, and read Latin. Or, of course, I can give you the answer."

The class agreed they wanted me to give them the answer.

"Well OK," I went on. "Let's do it in order. Who thinks the twelfth-graders can speak Latin?"

The answer, of course, very sadly, is they can't. Most of the class figured as much, but you could still smell the disappointment. They obviously love it that I can speak Latin with them (yes, with them, because they are already able to give simple short answers in Latin) and would love to be able to do it themselves!

"Writing. Who thinks the twelfth-graders can write Latin kinda like you guys can write English?" (The class is a bilingual high school class, so their English is actually pretty darn good.)

By now, they start to sense that something is very wrong. Indeed, the answer is, of course, in the negative: not one of our twelfth-graders, I bet my bottom dollar, would be able to write a paragraph or even a halfway decent sentence in Latin to save their life.

"Reading, then? Well, no, not if you mean reading reading. I mean, if you have to look up every other word in your dictionary and the other ones in your grammar, do you call that reading?"

Of course they don't. So, case proven. After six years of Latin at a pretty decent high school in The Netherlands, nobody can read, write, or speak Latin.

Oh, translating? I wouldn't call it that myself. The grades need more help every year to make a reasonable amount of students pass their final exams. And the "Dutch" students produce in their so-called translations is famously horrendous.

Of course, all this could easily be different with a more sensible approach to teaching Latin. Erasmus, Grotius, Peerlkamp, and all those other great Dutch Latinists from centuries past are rubbing their skins off as they keep turning in their graves. What can I do? The sad answer is Very Little, but at very least I can make some students aware of the problem. That's a beginning, at least.

Normal and Common in Latin Teaching

I learned many years ago from a very wise man the difference, or presumed difference if you like, between “normal” and “common.” I honestly don’t know any numbers, and I’m not going to waste my time by looking them up, but an example is a “normal” body weight among, say, American children – that would be the “healthy” weight in relation to height, etc. – and the “common” body weight, caused by a diet heavily based on McDonald’s and KFC.

So if you can accept those contrasting definitions of “normal” and “common” for the sake of the argument, I’ve been thinking for a while about what would be “normal” in Latin teaching and what, by contrast, is “common.” So this morning, while sipping my coffee at this friendly German bakery and reading Ugo Enirco Paoli’s marvelous Ciceronis filius (a wonderful yet apparently little-known Latin reading book for, let’s say, advanced-intermediate students), I paused to jot down a few observations.

Normal (I omit the quotation marks from now on): Students learn Latin in order to be able to read Latin. Evidently, what Latin text you can expect them to read after, say, six years of study is open for discussion. But at any rate you’d expect them to be able to read some Latin for fun. Reading, of course, defines as reading, not “translating” at the rate of one sentence per hour with a dictionary and a grammar.
Common: Teachers plainly tell you they don’t expect students ever to read Latin after their HS exam. The point of learning Latin, they say, is to learn to think logically (I once heard a very experienced American HS teacher say that learning languages was a kind of brain gym), or to learn other languages more easily (like driving from Amsterdam to Cologne via Madrid), or to learn grammar in their own language (which by definition has a completely different grammar than Latin).

Normal: Teachers obviously like what they teach, so they read Latin often for their own enjoyment. Because they are able to read Latin with ease, they rarely study a Latin text in translation, because they don’t need to. (Doh! Which English teacher reads Dickens, J.D. Salinger, or Tom Wolfe in translation because the original is so hard?)
Common: Many teachers rarely if ever read anything in Latin at all, except of course the small portions read in “advanced” classes with students. Many teachers frequently refer to translations even when teaching beginning to intermediate classes. (If this seems hard to believe, why do teachers’ manuals print “literal” translations?) Teachers who like ancient history or philosophy read Sallust, Livy, or Cicero in translation.

Normal: Students read roughly the same amount of text in Latin that they would read in an average modern language curriculum. If they read, say, six books of a total of 300 pages in German, they can be expected to read a similar amount in Latin.
Common: Students read only a very small amount of Latin texts; to read as much as one complete book from Vergil or Ovid would be highly exceptional. Oh, while talking about Ovid:

Normal: Students love Ovid, because his hexameters are the easiest of all time and the stories are delightful.
Common: Even good Latin teachers consider Ovid just about the most difficult author for students to write an exam about. (In The Netherlands, exams are about different Latin authors each year). Said one colleague: Ovid is really almost too difficult, because one’s grammar has to be so exceptionally good that almost no student can cope.

Normal: In order to make the language part of oneself, students learn to write and, better yet, speak some Latin to at least an extent, even though this is evidently not the primary goal of the Latin course.
Common: Students don’t even read out the mediocre Latin sentences in their beginning textbooks. When the teacher reads out a sentence or two (let alone a whole paragraph!), students don’t listen, because their only task is to “translate” Latin into their own language. Answering even the simplest question in Latin is considered absurdly difficult, speaking Latin something for madmen.

Normal: Students get a fair overview of the Latin literature without explicit or implicit prejudice for an author or a time period.
Common: Students study only a very small amount of texts from a tiny part of Latin literature, rarely older than Cicero or younger than Pliny Minor. Authors like Apuleius, Bede, Erasmus are considered only of interest in translation or for scholarly research at the doctoral level.

Philosophy

A few weeks after I returned to Europe, last Spring, I had to send my condolences twice. A colleague whom I barely knew very sadly gave birth to a baby that had passed away in the whomb a few days earlier. Maybe a week later one of my famous organ teachers, Piet Kee, passed away at a very high (but not high enough) age, after a very productive life of (in alphabetical order) composing, performing, and teaching (of course, I can’t speak about his personal life).

I told the friend I used to hang out with at the time about this strange coincidence. I got a bit philosophical about it, more, I think, than the friend could deal with.

“I’m obviously not going to say this to the mother of the baby,” I said. “But the thing is, no matter how difficult, to believe that the baby’s life is not worth a penny less than Piet Kee’s.”

My friend tried to avoid a fight, I think.

“Hm,” she said. “Not less valuable, perhaps. But less rich, no?”

I tried to put it differently.

“I mean, for reasons we can obviously not fathom, it was their time to go. For both of them, their life was complete.”

My friend almost got angry, but not quite.

“It was,” I tried one more time, “meant to be that way. For both of them.”

I’ll never forget what she said.

“Well, I just think it was terribly bad luck, for that mother,” she said. (If you know Dutch, the expression my friend used was “domme pech.”)

“You can call it that,” I made one last attempt. “Or Fate. Or God. I like that better than ‘bad luck’. Don’t you?”

She didn’t.

How to measure whether a life is complete? Piet Kee counted on at least another ten years, in the footsteps of his equally famous father. What do we know about the life of an almost-nine-month-old? What do we know about the life that was awaiting him (it was a boy)? But it’s our obligation, I think, to believe that the kiddo’s life was no less meaningful, no less important, no less wonderful than Kee’s. Heck, it’s got to be that way, or the whole universe is a joke.

Why Latin?

A while ago I’ve written on this blog about what the goal of Latin in high school might be. Now that I finally managed to get an answer from a colleague, who, I suppose, may be representative for a generation or two of Dutch classicists, I’m writing this short postscript.

The colleague does not believe much in  extensive reading in Latin or for that matter in reading anything in Latin with ease: the more difficult the better, word-for-word translating, speaking Latin in class complete nonsense, after all, it’s a dead language, the whole megillah.

The purpose, then, of learning Latin in school, according to the colleague, is to learn to look at an entirely different society through the eyes of an intellectual. “Reading a novel from the nineteenth century in French or German would do the same,” I tried. No, that’s not a different enough society, countered the colleague.

Well, when reading Martial, I often think of New York in the 1980s. And not to pooh-pooh Ovid, but I wouldn’t call him the greatest intellectual of all time. I love Sallust, but I can think of twentieth-century historians with equally interesting and possibly less biased views on history.

But what about after the exam? The colleague is very clear and open about it: “I don’t expect them to read any Latin after their exams.”

I knew it was that way. I know it’s like that for so many colleagues. I know that many students look forward to throwing away their Latin grammars and dictionaries.

But I find it so, so sad.

I remember how disappointed I was to realize that all those hours of Latin and Greek (way more than we had for the modern foreign languages — after all, we had to keep up the myth that Latin and Greek were unspeakably difficult, even for the happy few of us who took high school at the gymnasium level) — that all those hours had not taught me to read even a relatively simple text in Latin with some ease. (I’m not even mentioning Greek.)

I was so happy to find my way back to both languages many years later and loved learning to read Latin and even Greek with ease, a journey I’m still continuing after ten years. Not because I have to, but because I love it.

I see the occasional student who understands what I’m saying and starts reading, with unheard-of results. I am so grateful to be able to work with such students from time to time.

Why do so few colleagues in The Netherlands want to see how Latin and Greek can pleasant, enjoyable, fun? What are they so afraid of? Freedom?

What do we want from Latin in high school?

Here is another brief (I hope) piece inspired (if that’s the word) by a recent conversation with a fellow Latin teacher. In an attempt to discuss methodology, I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss the presumed end result of five or six years of Latin in high school. Now in The Netherlands there is a centrally coordinated exam, identical for all the students of a given subject in the country, comparable to, but of course different from, the dreaded AP exams in the US. So The Exam is generally considered the most important thing, as a satisfactory result overall gives you access to university (with this particular kind of high school diploma, known in The Netherlands as “vwo”).

But thankfully, some enlightened colleagues do agree that one does not educate students only to pass the exam. My own view is even more liberal: teach the kids a language, Latin for example, properly and the exam shouldn’t be a big deal at all. You do it in passing, so to speak (no pun intended).

So the question is, beyond passing the exam, what does a Latin teacher want for his students after five or six arduous years of study?

“Well,” said this colleague, “it depends. For example, this other colleague hopes that students will become readers.” (Implied, I’m quite sure, is ‘of books in Dutch’.) “I myself,” the colleague continued, “want them to learn to think logically.”

This is no doubt connected to this teacher’s believe in teaching from a grammar point of view, implying that you can not even read a Latin sentence in the order the writer wrote it in (see my recent piece about this on this blog).

I find this so funny, because both views are, to me, so clearly about side effects at best. Hello! Just imagine an English or French or German teacher in The Netherlands saying something similar! Clearly, colleagues in those languages will tell you something like, Well, I’d like my students to be able to follow university classes taught in English (in The Netherlands, for example). Or, I would like them to be able to watch a German police movie without subtitles. Or, Look, I’m quite happy if they can work their way through ordering a meal in a French restaurant. But I mean, something about the actual use of the language.

What should it be in Latin? Being able to translate fifty words of Cicero at a rate of one word per minute? Being able to read a poem by Catullus you’ve studied in class before with a facing translation? Being able to recognize an occasional expression or word from Latin that Dutch has appropriated? In my view, none of these are good enough for five, six years of hard work.

My own take is that being able to read at sight and more or less in real time a passage from, say, the Vulgate or Eutropius would already be something. But, to be honest, I think with a serious change in methodology, the aim can be higher. Reading an average poem or fragment by Ovid at sight, with notes for my part, or perhaps a Latin prose paraphrase. Reading Vergil with the help of a Latin prose paraphrase. A colloquium by Erasmus with some vocabulary help (in Latin).  And how about being able to write a paragraph or two in Latin in response to, say, a Caesar, a Pliny, a Sallust?

In any event, the vast majority (my guess is well over 99 %) of the students who sit for the Latin exam here (and the same is true for the AP exam in the US) never ever look at Latin again in their life. That, it seems to me, is an unacceptable net result of five or six years of study, and that’s putting it mildly.

Motivation v. Method

At one of the schools where I teach a miracle happened. (It’s not at all a miracle, but within the confines of traditional education it darn well is, or should be considered as such.) A student in the fourth year of an “OK” high school type in The Netherlands (“havo,” not bad, but does not grant access to university) is taking a fifth-year Latin class at the highest high school level here (“gymnasium,” roughly comparable to its German counterpart). Note that the kid has not taken any Latin before this fifth year in high school.

How is this possible? The kid learned Latin on his own. No, not with a private teacher. No, not by taking community classes. No Skype lessons either. He Read A Book. Within barely six months he had learned more Latin (very literally) than his now-classmates, who have been sweating on it for three years (Latin starts in the second HS year at this particular school). The colleague who has the kid in class says he translates (a big thing in Latin teaching here in The Netherlands) better than any other student in class.

What would you want to know, I asked some of my friends and colleagues.

What I wanted to know is which book he used.

I asked the teacher whose class he is in. “Oh, some Danish book,” my colleague said. Of course I knew immediately which book the student had been using and everything fell into place as I had expected.

It is true that the student —  who is very eloquent, erudite at his own level, and most of al incredibly nice — had been interested in Latin for a while and had occasionally asked my predecessor a few things about Latin. “But really,” he told me, “that was very occasional.” He wanted to really learn it.

So what he did is in itself remarkable. He looked around on the Internet for the best Latin textbook. And found, surprise surprise, Ørberg’s immortal Lingua Latina per se illustrata, the book of choice of so many of us who believe Latin is a language, not grammatical archeology.

Completely on his own the kid worked through the 35 chapters of Familia Romana, the first part of the Ørberg method, in about six months. In the meantime he had learned that there are very good readers to use along with the last part of the book or after finishing it. So he got them and worked through those books, too.

Now to me the most striking proof that this method obviously works extremely well is that the kid is so good at translating. How did he learn it? Not from the Ørberg book, which is completely in Latin. “But,” says the kid, “I understand what the Latin says.” Yeah, right, and obviously he knows Dutch, so he can translate whatever he reads in Latin into Dutch.

It seems so obvious, but that is not at all how 99.99 % of the Dutch students learn Latin (or Greek). They learn it (or people think they do) by what they call “translating,” but what is really substituting Dutch words for Latin. Any reasonable foreign-language teacher will tell you this is downright impossible, with the exception of most Classicists in The Netherlands, the vast majority of whom still think this is the way to go about things.

Then came the moment that I decided to at least address the student’s success in a departmental meeting. I tried my very best to be diplomatic. “I think,” I lied, “that it may be worth asking how this kid was able to pull this off.”

“Motivation,” my colleague said, without loosing a beat.

To me, that was the end of the conversation. Oh, I tried. Of course he’s motivated. But is it not worth looking at the method he used that taught him so well (and, I thought but did not say, kept him motivated, rather than the opposite, which happens to the vast majority of Latin students in our schools). That discussion was very brief. There is no budget for new textbooks. More importantly, the colleague likes the current book, because it has free tests and other allegedly helpful stuff on the Web.

Most importantly, the colleague thought the Ørberg book would be too difficult for our weaker students. Ironically, from some experimenting, I find the opposite to be true: students tended to prefer the early Ørberg chapters, which can very readily be understood on their own terms (in Latin), over the complicated texts in our current book, which can only be “understood” by substituting a Dutch equivalent (often a bad one) for practically every Latin word with the help of a vocabulary list in the margin.

The bigger problem is that by making motivation the decisive factor in learning, one might as well stop discussing methodology altogether. And so you start to understand why the situation with Classical languages in The Netherlands is the way it is. Wait, did I just hear Erasmus and Grotius (or Hugo de Groot, whose name every third-grader in The Netherlands used to know) turn in their graves?

Reading Latin

I can almost not believe I’m writing this, it’s so surreal (but not nice, fellow Notting Hill fans).

A brief prologue for full disclosure: I learned Latin for six years in high school. That school was and is considered excellent; the teachers were extremely competent (one of them also taught in university); and in some years, we had as many as six class periods each devoted to both Latin and Greek. My final grades were more than adequate, with particularly good notes for the final exams, especially in Greek.

I remember that, after I finished high school, I was quite disappointed that, despite all those hours and decent grades, I was still utterly unable to read Latin (forget Greek) independently. Many years later, call it chance if you will, I was asked to teach Latin, took on the challenge, and soon started to teach myself Latin with the eminent Lingua Latina per se illustrata series. I finally learned how to actually read (and later also write and speak) Latin.

After teaching Latin in the US and Australia, in schools and universities, to kids and adults for a total of some ten years, I now find myself teaching in my home country. Although that means compromising my teaching style in a many ways, I have also been encouraged to speak Latin in class. So that’s nice.

But of course, not everybody is happy. A colleague who visited a class expressed surprise at my speaking Latin, even though it concerned only reading out loud. “You can not,” said the colleague, as if patiently explaining one of the most basic laws of the universe, “read Latin from left to right.”

Pardon me?

“With the modern languages,” the colleague explains, “it is possible, because the word order is the same.” As in Dutch, it goes without saying.

How to answer? I really don’t know. Do I read Latin from left to right? Why of course I do, how else? I even speak Latin from left to right! What am I supposed to do? Think about the verb first and then save it for last? It may even be that the brain actually works that way, who the heck knows. But even if it does, sorry, when I speak Latin, I just speak Latin. (Of course that does not mean I can not think about a word or a sentence before speaking.)

Of course what’s behind this, let’s say, misunderstanding is a very different way of thinking about Latin. In the eyes of many, Latin is not really a language, merely a (relatively very small) corpus of texts that students translate into Dutch with such grave difficulty that they themselves often don’t understand their own so-called translations. (Evidently translating a text that you don’t understand is impossible, which is why such pieces of Dutch un-prose should not be called translations to begin with, but that’s a different story.)

I have often written stories in Latin and recently published Latin translations of some short stories by legendary Dutch writer Simon Carmiggelt. But why? “Why would you want to write Latin,” the aforementioned colleague opined. “Do you think you can write better than the Romans?” Why? Well, perhaps because it’s fun? And, I mean, Erasmus wrote Latin, didn’t he? And better than many a Roman, I may add. J.S. Bach, on the other hand, not only created the fugue as we know it, he also brought it to Absolute Perfection (note capitals A and P) within a decade or two, spending the rest of his life making clear once and for all that no-one would ever be able to come even remotely close. But that hasn’t stopped generations of composers from trying!

Just imagine the English teacher saying, Look guys, why write English? Do you really think you can do better than a Shakespeare, a Dickens, a J.D. Salinger? And what about the Russian, Chinese, or even Italian teacher who explains you could never read that language from left to right because the word order is different from Dutch? 

Astrid

Time flies when you’re having fun. In fact, it also flies if you simply work a lot (even if it is not always fun). I almost can’t believe I’ve been in Europe for well over half a year, and living in Germany (just across the Dutch border) for almost four months.

When I first came to the area, I thought it was great to have all these big cities easily within reach. Ironically, I found there was quite enough to do in town I live in, but tonight, I finally made it to Düsseldorf. I found a hip and very nice little restaurant that specializes in Spätzle (plus it’s organic and everything) and with a bit of asking I managed to find my way to a nice movie place that’s lies a bit hidden in one of those little alleys you only find in old European cities.

Just the other day, this new movie came out about Astrid Lindgren, the great Swedish writer, probably most famous for creating the immortal Pippi Longstocking. Before the doors opened, I had my espresso in the foyer, picked up a brochure about the film (it’s simply, beautifully, and appropriately called Astrid) and, a bit lost in my new environment, glanced at it a bit. A girl who looked like the granddaughter of Pippi walked by. Was she 12, 13? Or even younger but just a very smart cookie? I suspect the latter. “Are you going to see that film,” she asked as if it were the most normal thing for her to talk to a complete stranger, obviously significantly older than her dad, whom I saw smiling behind her.

Once I got over my surprise I said, “Yes, and how about you? Have you seen it already?” “Yes,” she said. “It’s very, very good.” She looked at the brochure in my hand. “That,” she pointed at a beautiful picture, “comes at the very end.” “Ah. That’s good to know,” I said. “Yes,” she said. “It’s really, really good.” “Have you read her books,” I inquired, in an attempt to continue the unusual conversation. Within seconds she gave a complete list of all the Lindgren she had read, in passing explaining to me how one book is called such in Swedish, but so in German. “Perhaps you’ll be a writer yourself one day,” I quipped, somewhat unsuccessfully, although I did see her dad smiling.

Well, what can I say. The girl couldn’t have been more right about the movie. O my goodness. It made you think that not only there’s perhaps hope for your own life, but perhaps, perhaps there is even hope for a world that’s going more insane by the day. If Astrid could do all that barely out of her teens, why then, who’s complaining when life gets a bit funky sometimes?

Alba August, the actress playing the role of young Lindgren (before she became Lindgren, in fact), has received many accolades, and rightly so, it’s in a word marvelous. But how they get the toddler to act as Lindgren’s three-year-old kid is a total mystery to me. Striking. Many other very fine roles, including Lindgren’s mother.

One aspect of the story (at least in the movie, who knows whether this is historically accurate or not) will, I think, make some viewers uncomfortable. In the film, it’s emphatically Lindgren who flirts with her much older boss, the editor of the local newspaper. It’s emphatically Lindgren who seduces him. In fact, only slightly less obvious, one gets the strong impression that it is Lindgren who wants to carry the guy’s child, and not only, I think, out of pity.

The film will undoubtedly, as the saying goes, come to a theater near you. You must go see it. I’m tipping on a handful of Oscars, at very least one for August and one for the film maker, Pernille Fischer Christensen. 

Conversational Medicine

I spent a day at the Amsterdam AMC, the university hospital, in essence for a relatively complicated eye operation, a stressful thing in itself (to put it mildly) and worsened by a troublesome history in that eye and a number of current circumstances. But the main event was preceeded by many hours of administrative humbug and repeat tests that made one long for the days of the simple-but-knowledgeable-and-most-of-all-kind-and-understanding country doctor—a James Herriott for humans, essentially, or a Doc Martin (deliciously rude, but heart in the right place). But alas, those days seem to have long gone, and likely gone forever, just like the days people played piano duet or string quartet at night instead of watching indiscribable nonsense on television.

Or perhaps not completely. Thanks to this mini medical odyssey around the AMC, I now realize how perhaps almost all the doctors, many of the nurses, and even many secretaries are aware of how disorganized the place is. Nobody can do anything about it, but many of them express dissatisfaction and disappointment about it, which often translates into highly ironic, almost cynical jokes.

But more importantly, one young doctor, the assistant who was the first of three eye doctors to see me today and who took the lion’s share of taking my history, effectively made my day by saying something I had to boastfully (sorry) write this piece about.

The doc asked whether I had had light flashes and/or moments that I did not see anything with the eye in question. That was a nice surprise, because none of the four (highly qualified) eye doctors who had seen me yesterday had asked that. (By the way, I have now been seen by a total of seven eye doctors in less than 36 hours, one calling my eye “really interesting,” wholly aptly, I guess.) In any event, as I started to explain my experience of seeing those flashes, the young doctor interrupted me.

“But wait,” he said, “are you actually a professional writer?” (It sounds even better in Dutch, I think: “Bent u schrijver dan, van beroep?”)

“No,” I said, “but I do like writing, and I consider that a big compliment. Thank you.”

“I mean,” he said, “you explain it so vividly, it sounded like a writer.”

I have had compliments for my writing from time to time, but this was a whole new experience. Most of all, the hint at personal interest between that one doctor and an admittedly unusual patient made the whole day a little bit easier to bear.

Plus it gave me a reason to sit down and write this little piece with my pirate patch still on.

Nice!

I’ve been walking (mostly biking actually) around in The Netherlands for about eight weeks now after an almost twenty-year absence, interrupted only by very brief and infrequent visits (bliksembezoeken or “lightning visits”). My Dutch is still quite adequate, I like to think; some people do comment on a very slight American touch in my pronunciation—not my usage, I think—but interestingly only after I have already told that I have lived in the US for nearly twenty years.

Of course, the Dutch have been busy speaking Dutch in The Netherlands, and so, they all use a number of interesting expressions I am slowly getting used to. I thought I write a few salient examples down here, for the benefit of fellow ex-patriots or other learners of the beautiful Dutch language.

Back in the day, if you wanted to wish somebody a pleasant day or encourage him/her to enjoy his/her weekend, you said (I remember it well): “Nog een prettige dag verder,” or “Prettig weekeinde” (that word is pronounced as weekend,  but we learned it was more elegant to spell it in Dutch anyway).

OK, forget prettig these days. For some reasons beyond my grasp, the Dutch have grown to tremendously dislike the word. (Is it because it reminds them of pretty? But then what’s wrong with pretty?) These days, everybody—and I mean everybody—wishes you “een fijne dag,” “een fijn weekeinde,” “een fijne avond,” etc. etc.  I refuse to use it myself, but at least I’ve managed to say “Jij ook” (you too; and yes, the use of the informal pronoun je/jij instead of formal u has become much more common, to the point it’s almost getting rude, IMHO).

The Dutch pay with their card much, much more often than anybody I’ve seen in the US. This is known as pinnen (“to pin,” referring of course to the use of the PIN code). In fact in many places pinnen is not only the preferred, but exclusive way of payment. But if you’re lucky, you can still bay cash for your coffee and croissantje. When paying wiht exact change or even when paying at all, the person will almost 100 % certainly say “Helemaal goed,” “Completely fine.” I think this is the equivalent of prima in the old days.

Why the helemaal? Isnt’t goed good enough? Apparently not, and many good things are simply not good enough by themselves in The Netherlands. A teacher is not simply trots (“proud”) of his students, but megatrots (“mega proud”; mega of course is Greek for “big time” or—in fashionable US English—“bigly”), even if the results of a test are nothing special. Dutch always had the fun word leuk (“fun,” but with many connotations; “een leuke jongen” is not just a fun guy, but quite attractive to the speaker), but this morning I overheard two youngish ladies talk about a “superleuke jongen.”

I friend had already told me about the fashionable use of “nice” in Dutch. My friend tells me it’s predominantly used by women in a higher income class, and the word is a sentence by itself, commenting on something perceived as extremely positive mentioned by the conversation partner. “Nice!” I tried it once. “Oh,” said my friend, “but you also have to pull up your eyebrows when saying it.” I tried it. “Nice!”

“Nice!” my friend said, expressively raising her eyebrows in return.

Remembering Kee (2): The Solo Viola

I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to study for two years with Piet Kee at what was then called Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam. (Unfortunately, the name of the great Amsterdam composer disappeared from the name of the school following a merger with the Hilversums Conservatorium in 1994.)

Many fellow students, back then or later, often privately (as students do), sometimes very publicly, have expressed dissatisfaction with Kee as a teacher. “It must always have been a tremendous burden to him,” I remember one excellent former Kee student—now a very prominent Dutch organist—saying, back in the day. Another very prominent international student has stated rather publicly that Kee, while evidently an excellent musician, could not teach at all. I humbly disagree, and here is one small example of how Kee taught in a manner that, at least to me, was fascinating, beautiful, and highly effective.

Many Kee students studied the Prelude to the Pange lingua by Zoltán Kodály in their first year at the conservatory. (Kee had recorded the Prelude himself at St. Bavo’s; I don’t recall having ever heard another organist play it in concert, but it is a very beautiful short work that is worth revisiting, I think.)

It was admittedly not so terribly easy to play this colorful work beautifully at the 1950s Flentrop in Amsterdam South (where Kee famously taught for many years, presumably because he particularly liked the action of the instrument). Moreover, I had really no clue what to do with a Neoclassical work with elements reminiscent of, say, Ravel. On the top of the last page, there was a rather high solo in the left hand, which I obviously had difficulty with.

“Look,” said Kee. “Such a beautiful little solo! Think of it as a viola solo in an orchestral piece.” (As always when I cite Kee here, please note that I cite from memory after many years; moreover, I do my best to translate citations into idiomatic English.)

At 18 I found that such a beautiful and enlightening remark. I remember smiling; Kee, of course, observed my reaction. “I see that appeals to you,” he said, I suppose not altogether displeased. “Why don’t you play it one more time.” I did, and of course it now was so much better (not that I noticed that myself, but I noticed very little back then).    

Remembering Kee (1): At the Cinema

When I came back to The Netherlands in mid-May of this year, it was very much on my mind to visit my old organ teacher Piet Kee. But the first weeks were busy, and I figured there was no hurry in contacting Kee; yes, he was 90 years old, but since his dad had made it to 99, it seemed reasonable to expect that Piet would still be with us for quite a while.

Boy, was that a mistake. Kee passed away within two weeks of my being back in Haarlem.

That’s now almost exactly a month ago and I have spoken about Kee quite a bit with colleagues and close friends. Many, many memories, and my intention is to write them down here, a bit as I get to them (or as they get to me). Here is a first one.

I was reminded of this when I went to see a movie in Haarlem’s outstanding independent cinema, the Filmschuur. We saw The Bookshop, a nice enough movie that I enjoyed watching for the second time, this time in the company of a friend. At the end, as it happens with movies, the titles rolled down the screen. People start leaving the room. We stay seated a little longer.

“Many years ago,” I tell my younger friend, “I went to see a movie in the old Filmschuur, over in the Smedestraat. An Italian movie, Tuscany, beautiful pictures, but goodness knows what it was about. One of those movies.

“Anyway, I walk into the cinema, and there are Piet Kee and his wife. I sit down next to them, how could I not, they were friendly, both parties bien étonnés de se trouver ensemble, so to speak.

“At the end of the film, like now”—I said to my friend—“the titles roll down the screen. People start leaving, but not Piet Kee and his wife, nor, of course, I.

“Piet Kee turns to me. ‘Ik heb zo’n hekel aan mensen die meteen weglopen,’ he says, somewhat quietly, but nonetheless very clearly.” I hate people who walk out immediately (although admittedly ‘hate’ sounds  little too harsh in English.)

“I have often thought about that,” I said to my friend. “Of course, it had nothing to do with music, but in a way everything with Piet Kee’s artistry. Respect for the work of art. For the music. For the performance. And for the performer, of course.”

My friend encouraged me to blog about my memories of Kee, so thanks to her, there’s the first one. Many to come.

Polleke

A while ago, when I taught third-year French to an interesting mix of students in America, I somehow got the idea that it would be fun to read some really good Dutch children’s books in French. I found the first two of Guus Kuijer’s (possibly the foremost Dutch children’s author of the fin de siècle) Polleke cycle in what are in my view excellent French translations and very much enjoyed reading them. Kuijer is a master in discussing very serious matters for a young audience in a manner that is both serious and playful, no mean feat, as they say.

I could not find the remaining three French Pollekes (although I now see that all five books in the series have indeed been translated), so now that I’m back in The Netherlands, I finally walked into the nearest independent bookstore, Gillissen on de Rijksstraatweg in Haarlem Noord. Polleke was not on the shelf, but the friendly bookseller offered to order it for me. “It’ll be here tomorrow after three o’clock.”

It’s now tomorrow 6:30 PM and I just started reading the third Polleke book, Het geluk komt als de donder. I made it to page 3 and already I have to interrupt my reading to write this little piece. I could not have written all of this introduction, all you really need to know is what Polleke writes (the books are written in the first person, very effectively) at the bottom of that page 3. Here it comes, with my own translation:

Soms lijkt het of er overal oorlog is, behalve hier.
Sometimes it seems as if it’s war everywhere, except here.

“Hier/“here” is The Netherlands, of course, and one only wishes it were true. Amsterdam just got a new mayor, a woman just two weeks my senior and from my hometown, a prominent member of the “green-left” party in The Netherlands. Already not only the Dutch capital, but the whole nation seems to be divided about the new mayor, and in no uncertain terms.

But perhaps this is nothing compared to what’s going on in other parts of the worlds at the moment.

Hyde Park on Hudson

I haven't published anything here for almost two years. That time I spent teaching and performing in Australia. Some of what I've done in Armidale NSW is published in a different form; take a look on YouTube and/or on my website. I'm now back in America--at least for the time being--and I had been thinking about writing again. But I couldn't anticipate that my first piece in two years' time would be about a film.

Here I am in Lexington, Kentucky--of all places, some people might add. But what I had hoped turned out to be the case: there's a very nice movie theatre which plays independent new films and nice oldies. So to celebrate MLK Day I went to see a movie about FDR. It's called Hyde Park on Hudson, which is actually not so far from where we used to live north of NYC. Hyde Park is where FDR used to live when he didn't have to be in DC. The film is really about the president's affair (whatever its exact nature) with a distant cousin, Daisy. At the same time, there's the visit of the British king & queen (that's the king we all know from The King's Speech) and there's lots of fun stuff along with really beautiful aspects of FDR as a person--his relationship with Daisy at its best, his fatherly care for the much younger king. That the Daisy in the movie (perhaps not the one in reality) felt also betrayed by FDR (who, after all, had many girl friends) makes the film in a way even stronger: it's not just a 'nice' fairy tale.

But what struck me most--sorry, can't help it--was the music in the film, both on- and off-screen. The "theme song" is clearly based on the song "When I Fall in Love" (although I doubt that 5 % of the audience will recognize the opening motive), and very nicely done. (I just looked it up and "When I Fall in Love" is an early 1950s song; not that it matters.) But then there's the on-screen music in the form of various bands performing for FDR. Not only is the music that's played so sweet, the best is how the people in the film--not least FDR himself--clearly like the music in a very physical and lovely manner. You see FDR sitting in his chair, tapping the beat with his right arm, and the household staff nodding their heads along with the music. I think it's so nice because it seems to me that this is something we no longer have in the popular music (if that is the correct terminology) of today. Well, at least not in this friendly kind of way.

FDR's affair with Daisy starts out by him taking her for trips in the car. Finally, he gets rid of the body guards and is alone with Daisy in the middle of the fields of upstate New York. He lights a cigaret and turns on the radio. "Moonlight Serenade". "I love that song," says Daisy. You can tell that she means it.

I don't think I realized it when watching the film, but I realize now: They both loved music.

Nice.

        

Conducting Hänsel und Gretel

When I was in Austria recently, I picked up Peter Planyavsky's rather disturbing book about his 35 years as organist of the Stephansdom in Vienna. The book is quite appropriately called Gerettet vom Stephansdom (Saved from St. Stephen's). You wonder how Planyavsky managed to spend such a long time in a outrageously difficult working place. The book is full of horror stories: lots of mediocrity, of course (and this is the big cathedral of the music capital of the world!), lots of utterly hypocritical priests (not all of them, thank God). That Planyavsky—who is one of the very best improvisers alive—was nevertheless able to bring lots of great music to the church is a miracle. Anyway, if you read German and you have some kind of connection with church music, by all means read the book.

I feel a bit of a connection with Planyavsky, and funnily enough, I've just retired from church music myself after some 35 years of professional involvement in it (though thank goodness I've not been a cathedral organist for 35 years). Like Planyavsky—he calls himself an agnostic—I don't feel particularly religious in the narrow sense of the word, and I've been increasingly aware that that made it impossible to function well as a church musician. Plany sees this differently: to him, agnosticism is not in the least an objection to being a good church musician: "You don't need to believe in witches to conduct Hänsel und Gretel," he writes with his wonderfully dry sense of humor.

"But one has to know what a fairy tale is, what a witch is, and what the story wants to bring across. Most of all, however, one needs to try and understand what went on in Humperdinck's mind as he set the text to music exactly the way he did."

I have thought about Plany's comparison for days and spoken to a number of people about it. My initial reaction was: "Of course, he's completely right." In fact, I thought, it would be a real problem for a Hänsel und Gretel conductor to believe in witches. I mean, how the heck are you going to conduct Hänsel und Gretel if you believe that witches actually exist?!

And so I mulled things over for a long time until, finally, I came to a different conclusion. Here's the problem: If I—and I confess to not believing in witches—were to conduct H & G, I surely don't have to deal with a stage director, singers, and an audience who—at least allegedly—all believe in witches. In fact, if after the show I met a five-year-old who was really scared of the witch in the opera, I would surely tell her that, look, witches don't exist for real, you know.

Now try working in a church, especially in America, and not believing in the virgin birth, the resurrection, water turning into wine and all that jazz in a literal sense. I once worked for a minister who objected to the song "We three kings of Orient are." "Look here," she said. "They were not kings, but magi, and it doesn't say there were three of them." So much for her analysis of one of the better stories in Christian mythology, but how was I ever going to tell her that, well, this was of course mythology? To another minister, with whom I thought I had a really good working relationship, I once mentioned a bestselling author of books on early Christianity He simply dismissed the whole author with a "We don't do that sort of thing." Huh? An advanced degree in theology and no interest in a middle-of-the-road scholarly book on what happened in the early church? I once had a choir member who went to a seminar at some church where the free-thinking presenter had had the chutzpah to suggest that the physical reality of the virgin birth was, perhaps, not so crucial to Christianity in today's world. "If that's not true," she said disdainfully, "the whole fundament of my belief is gone."

Now imagine the whole opera company plus the audience all believing—or telling themselves they're believing—in witches. "But you know, the conductor doesn't believe in witches!" "What?! He doesn't believe in witches?!" "No—he thinks it's all just a fairy tale!" "O my... But how can someone conduct H & G without believing in witches?!" "You're right—we had better get someone who believes in witches."

In dulci jubilo

The other day, a colleague asked me about a well-known Bach organ piece, the chorale prelude on the medieval German Christmas carol "In dulci jubilo" from the Orgel-Büchlein, BWV 608:

"What's the current interpretation of Bach's In dulci jubilo in canone all'ottava—the one with quarters in the left hand and 9/8 in the right (3/2 in the pedal)? Can I play the quarters in dotted rhythm, is that a cop-out, or is it considered stylistically correct? My mother played it the other way, and it's a nice challenge, but I'm thinking it's probably out of date."

The colleague asked a bunch of colleagues about this and I think the results will be published in the newsletter of the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists (of which I am, still, a member). But I thought I might put what I wrote here as well. (When playing the piece again the other day I was reminded of some tricky passages and I want to write something about fingerings some time soon—but for now, this is it.) So, here we go.

I don't know what the current interpretation is—that probably depends on the country one lives in, one's teacher, and one's religious views (in matters of performance practice, I mean). To me the question is, What is gained by playing two-against-three? In terms of actual hearing experience, not much, IMHO. In fact, I think a listener in 1715 would have been bewildered by the incomprehensible, "shaky" rhythm and by the de facto strangely arpeggiated chords. It is true that Bach's writing could be unconventional, but he was not an eighteenth-century kind of Stockhausen or Carter.

That two-against-three is hard to play may sound trivial in itself; the real point is not that it's difficult but absurdly difficult in the context of Bach's music (not to mention his contemporaries). In fact, it would make this piece rhythmically the hardest Bach organ piece by far—more so, than, say, the hypercomplex five-part Vater unser from Clavier-Übung III. Bearing in mind that the Orgel-Büchlein was intended (according to Bach's title page) for beginning organists, I simply don't buy that level of complexity. All in all, my best judgement is that it's best to adjust those evenly notated quarters to the triplet movement, taking Bach's hints in mm. 25, 26, 28, 30 (I am aware that one can also use this as evidence to the contrary).

The pedal cantus firmus, BTW, was surely intended to be played an octave lower using a 4-ft. stop; no organ would have had a high F-sharp in Bach's time—in fact, very few European organs do today. The facsimile I have in front of me is to small to see if there's any indication, but I personally think it's quite possible to play the extra tenor voice in the last two measures (dare I call it the quinta vox) in the pedal as well—of course with the same 4-ft. stop and therefore also an octave lower, obviously with the left foot (and yes, I think toe-toe-toe-toe will do fine). Remember that the piece—as almost all of Bach's organ music—was written on two, not three, staves; the separate staff for the pedal is largely a later invention. In any event, the double pedal ending feels very idiomatic to me.

From the Septuagint to Judy Collins

One thing I like very much about my community intermediate Latin class is that it is so intergenerational. Of the four students in the group, one is a sophomore in high school, another one his dad; I think it would be fair to describe the remaining two as seniors. It's a very nice group, and they're making excellent progress in their Latin studies. (With one 90-minute class meeting a week and very little homework, they move at about the speed of a good high school class.)

It is very important to me that all the students in the class are comfortable at the level we're working at, but it's perhaps understandable that, in some ways, the class focuses around the teenage boy. He seems remarkably dedicated to his Latin studies, obviously doing all the work in his spare time. His parents clearly support his studies a great deal, and it's quite beautiful to see the kid and his dad interact in class. The boy is often the first to volunteer reading in class, in fact, he'd happily read on for pages if only we'd let him... There is, however, absolutely nothing nerdy about him.

Anyway, the other day we were reading the chapter in our textbook about numeri difficiles—difficult numbers. When we got to the word septuaginta, "seventy," I couldn't resist saying a few words about the septuagint: the Ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew bible, allegedly crafted by 70 scholars. We talked a bit about what might be the importance of the septuagint for us and I pointed out that, in some cases, the text may reflect versions of the Hebrew bible that we no longer have in the original. Having the translation is obviously not as good as having the original, bet still better than nothing, I suppose.

"Imagine," I said, "that we didn't have Shakespeare's Midsummernight's Dream in English—that it was somehow lost early on—but that we did have a German translation from, say, the 1650s. That would obviously not be nearly as good as Shakespeare's original, but it would be a lot better than not having the play at all. In fact, you could probably reconstruct Shakespeare's original to quite an extent from such an early translation."

"Or," I went on, "imagine we didn't have the Beatles' own recording of 'Yesterday,' but only Judy Collins covering it on an early 1970s LP. That might not be quite as good as the Beatles' own version, but it would be a LOT better than nothing. In fact, come to think about it, it might almost be better than the Beatles' own recording."

To my delight, both my young student and his father protested. Surely, I was pushing things just a little too far. Judy Collins covering a Beatles song, OK, good enough—but better than the Beatles?! You gotta be kidding. "Look," I said, "if we finish this lectio in time, I'll play you a recording of Judy Collins covering a Beatles song that's actually better than the Beatles' own recording."

We finished the reading quickly and even managed to squeeze in an extra exercitium, so while the class was packing up, I quickly found the record and put it on the turntable. My student, his dad, and I listened to Judy Collins's superb version of "In My Life." "Can you hear the double bass?" I asked my student. "Very subtle," he agreed. More superlatives about Collins's recording ensued.

"You see," I said to my student, "I shouldn't be saying this, but to me, this is far, far more important than learning Latin."

My student agreed, thank goodness. I think I saw his dad smiling.

Learn Ancient Greek

I am about to start up my Greek classes again, and this is something I've been very proud of: I have been teaching Ancient Greek in two variants since last September, one class focusing on Book One of Homer's Iliad, another reading bits and pieces from the Greek Bible. Greek, of course, is not so terribly easy, but way back in high school, after three years of Latin and two of Greek, I decided that Greek was the cooler language of the two: that it was basically much friendlier, much nicer than Latin. I still think so, even though today my Latin is much better than my Greek. That, of course, is why I teach Greek: no better way to learn than by teaching it!

Anyway, the other day I found this lovely little Greek textbook on a friend's bookshelf. I wish I had known it earlier, as I might have used it for my classes last year. In fact, if I would start a new beginners' class now, I might use it, as it is a very nice introduction and written with a lot of humor. The book is Learn Ancient Greek by Peter Jones, a professor at the University of Newcastle on Tyne.

There's a number of things I love about the book. One thing is that Jones doesn't even bother printing the accents. I think this is such a good idea, as learning the accents from the beginning makes the work unreasonably difficult, and really, there's not much reason for a beginner (or for anybody learning Greek for fun, for that matter) to bother with them.

Equally unorthodox is how Jones doesn't much bother to distinguish between Attic (Sophocles), New Testament Greek, and the Homeric dialect. Rather than emphasizing the differences from the outset, you might as well start with the—let's face it, many—things the dialects have in common.

But the best part of the book is that it's so funny, and in a very pleasant way. Here is some pretty witty wisdom right from the Introduction:

Talk about learning ancient Greek and someone is bound to ask 'Ancient Greek? What use is that?' The answer, I suppose, depends on whether you think pleasure is useful. Being a joie de vivre man myself, I can think of few things more useful than pleasure, but I do not want to stop anyone being as miserable as sin if they so choose.

I mean, all these crazy discussions about why high school students have to learn Latin—their SATs, learning other Romance languages later, the Beauty of Vergil—one gets really tired of it. Greek is even harder to tackle—except if you think Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Herodotus are simply vastly important to one's understanding of society, and that reading these authors in translation, like it or not, is watering them down big time.

But really, such discussions are useless in the end. Either people understand you and you don't need to tell them, or they don't understand you and, in all likelihood, never will. That's why I love the way Jones deals with the problem. Why Greek? Hey, it's so much fun! And of course, it is!

Here's another great little paragraph, dealing with this silly idea of "dead" languages:

As for ancient Geek being 'dead', that is the sort of claim made only by those ignorant of the language. I waste no more space on them.

Yeah Professor Jones! That'll teach 'm. Of course! How can anybody who has read aloud two lines from the Iliad or, for my part, a paragraph from the Gospel of Mark in the orginal language maintain that this language is dead? Hey: you just read it, with feeling I hope, and through your voice, Homer (or Mr. Mark) spoke. Dead? Alive? It all depends on you reading it—or not, of course.

To be fair, I don't think the book will suffice if you really want to learn Greek: it's meant as an introduction, and that's what it is. An enthusiastic group of language lovers with the help of a teacher I'm sure can work through it in a semester, very comfortably in two. High school teachers will probably look down on the book, but actually, I think it would be a great basis for an after-school program (or even an official one-year course) in Greek.