Kiva Free Trials

[quinara]

Apparently Kiva.org is doing free trials? I don't know what a 'free trial' on Kiva actually involves, but if you're interested in funding micro loans for business start ups (etc.) around the developing world, now's the chance to try out Kiva's system for free!

http://kiva.org/ladieshomejournal

It says they're going to run out of the sponsored free trials pretty quickly, so the link may stop working at some point.

In other news, I'm reading the first Harry Potter in ancient Greek. Couple of chapters in and it's going OK - funnily enough (or probably not surprisingly) it's the names and necessary neologisms (for televisions etc.) that are the most confusing thing. On the other hand, the Dursleys live on 'the street of the myrtle trees', and this continues to tickle me...

Comments

[readerjane]

Ancient Greek! That is so awesome.

My college library had a set of the Narnia books in French. Most fun I ever had with language studies: finally there was text where I didn't have to stop and look things up. I was so familiar with the tale, I already recognized words like badger.

[quinara]

Hee! It would be more awesome if every other word didn't make me think 'oh hell, I don't recognise that word at all, I'm so bad at Greek, I'm never going to be proficient, oh, oh - oh wait, he means [insert modern kitchen gadget here]'. :D

And yes, I totally agree on that benefit. I read the Latin Harry Potter back in school, and I swear it was the thing that most helped me get Latin syntax working in my head. I read longer things in Greek now than I was reading in Latin at the time, but it's fantastic to be able to pick up a 200-odd page book and know that you can recognise most of every chapter no matter how lost you get, so you can just concentrate on reading and working out how much you understand, rather than just trying to work out what's going on.

[readerjane]

Hub wants to know: is the ancient Greek classical Greek, or koiné? He's intrigued.

LOL, he wouldn't get the familiarity benefit with HP, though. I've successfully hooked him on Firefly & Dresden Files but failed completely with HP, BtVS and Doctor Who.

[quinara]

According to the author here, the primary model is Lucian, who was writing in classical/Attic Greek at the same time as koine was getting going - and I would agree that it's mostly classical, but with enough neologisms and odd appropriations that it doesn't perfectly align. (Petunia Dursley keeps turning into a tragic heroine when she says 'oh dear', which is quite funny.) Of course, I spend most of my time reading Homeric Greek anyway, so I actually find it quite hard to tell the difference between Attic and koine... It's possible I'm not in the best position to judge.

If he can read either, though, it might be worth a try! The Greek keeps most of JK's sense of whimsy, but a lot of the silliness seems to be dulled down so far.