For no reason at all, I have begun to study ancient Greek. I am hardly systematic and it’s only just to put me to sleep at night. It serves no purpose other than to allow me to pretend that my life has infinite extension and everything can be done. I therefore noticed this story when normally it would not even have caused a flicker of interest: Beginning Greek, Again and Again. It is by someone who is teaching Greek to reluctant students, but I am not so sure that it is much different for someone teaching economics. Some people get it and some don’t and if there were some way to change the balance to a larger net surplus, we would all do it. At least I had done Latin in high school so understand cases and declensions and how they work. But let us share Professor Romm’s frustrations.

Reading Greek (or Latin) depends, first and foremost, on recognition of case endings. A student must develop an instinct for seeing the word “anthrōpou” as “of a man,” “anthrōpois” as “for men,” and similarly with eight other forms of the same word. To look for meaning rather than case, to see only “man” in either word, is what readers of English are programmed to do. My task, as a teacher, is to defeat this impulse. The experience of reading without reference to word order, once students “get it,” can be exhilarating, like being freed from a kind of gravity.

But for reasons I don’t understand, some take far longer than others to “get it,” and a few never will. Lack of intelligence isn’t the problem; it’s more about adaptability, acceptance of change. How long should such students go on in the language, hoping for an epiphany? Should I encourage them to continue? And if I do, is it only to assuage my own sense of failure?

Cheer up. John Stuart Mill started Greek at age 3, but many people born in Greece start even younger. To be learned is tough, and we can only be knowledgeable in a minutely narrow range of things.