Well, I only did it for 5 weeks, and I'm not doing it when I go back, so no! Really I was studying Akkadian, but it involves reading Sumerograms. The first text was Hammurabi's law code. I looked at it after five weeks of studying an immensely complicated language I knew next to nothing about and went, "Bluh?" I'd probably have been able to do it given time, but I degraded and I think I'll do something nice and easy like a paper from PPS next time.
I want to study Sumerian! Or other cuneiform languages. I'm reading the Penguin Classics edition from 1999 but in it, the translator says there's loads of clay tablets that haven't been translated because there aren't enough people with the knowledge to do so to get them all done. I don't know if 10 years made a huge difference, but it made me so eager to be someone capable of doing the translating.
Last edited by Ann on 02 Dec 2010, 18:05, edited 1 time in total.
This website is run by my former Supervisor in Akkadian. It's a different language, but it's also written in cuneiform, and the lessons have a coherent structure to them. If you're serious, I could even get you the answers to the exercises.
Currently reading At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald, who I find interesting because he wrote fairy tales, but not necessarily for kids. I liked this quote by him: "I write, not for children," he wrote, "but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five." It's the kind of fantastical getaway I need right now.
In addition to that, I'm reading Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry. Way different from the MacDonald book, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Hope it's as good as White Noise. Pleased by its massiveness. Also Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami but (a first for a book of his, having read about 7 others) I'm not enjoying it that much.
I actually started with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and then read Norwegian Wood. They're both great, but I prefer The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Norwegian Wood is definitely a lot more straightforward.
"Never get so attached to a poem, you forget truth that lacks lyricism"