Ne queraris!

[nullalux]

When all else fails, put your trust in the Greek. The LIN 406 students were kvetching about inflected morphemes in English, so I showed them the paradigm for ὁ κύκλος. One of them asked, "What are those words before each noun?"
"That's the definite article the," I replied.
"Which one is?"
"They all are. There's 24 forms (not counting the vocative, of course), depending on its gender, number and case, or use in the sentence."
Everyone worked with great industry for the rest of the session. I didn't even have to bust out the conjugation of λύω. As my first Greek professor used to remind us, the unflayed man is not educated.

Comments

Re: Wow....

[chalepa-ta-kala.livejournal.com]

Note that this was in reference to the graduate Linguistics course, so these were adults. I don't know what my first graders would do with Greek; most of them come without even knowing the Roman alphabet.

Most of my kids managed to get their paper in their binders without incurring serious injury...

How is your first week going, BTW? How exciting!