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I didn’t start learning Greek until I was 21 (I’m almost 29 now). If ancient studies wants to be accessible to more people it’s going to need to take into account people who went to high schools without Latin or came to the field in a non-traditional way https://twitter.com/isisnaucratis/status/1334939498048872450
Over the last six years, I’ve had to learn four languages from scratch in addition to developing the two I had at a beginning level. This did not come naturally to me, and I only feel relatively confident in two of them, even then only with a dictionary.
I tend to work very slowly because my memory for vocabulary is bad, and I often misspeak even when I know the correct answer. This has led to assumptions that I don’t know the language, which has wrecked my confidence in a lot of ways
I began to cry whenever I would read the NA28 and need to look up a word or couldn’t recognize a verb. A professor told me to just keep reading no matter what because it was important, but when I asked for help I was met with “you should already know this”
I failed two of my three language exams the first time I took them. As I translated my mind would seize up and I could no longer tell what I was writing or thinking. I late realized these were panic attacks.
I began to think I would never be able to reach my doctoral exams, which I could only take after passing three ancient languages. Eventually I did ingloriously muddle by, but that didn’t stop the feeling of inadequacy or the tests by faculty
I love translating, and I like thinking in and with Greek, but it’s hard to find a place in parts of the field when it takes a long time for me to untangle my thoughts into proper English, and my slowness is taken as a negative.
