vivdunstan

Back to Gaelic study, and restarting from the beginning with Moray Watson's books. Hoping to get a bit more of the vocabulary to stick this time, despite my severe memory problems from my progressive neurological disease! Which really really doesn't help, and eg stops me using things like Duolingo. Also conversational teaching doesn't suit me. On plus much grammar has stuck over the years. I'm surprised how much has stuck. But I need to make a more conscious effort re learning new vocabulary. And increasingly so as my neurological disease progresses. I love Gaelic and its sounds. And was given a Gaelic middle name at birth. Will persevere!

Just caught up with Homer translator Emily Wilson chatting yesterday at the Edinburgh Book Festival. I studied both the Iliad and Odyssey as part of my Open University history/classical studies BA(Hons) degree 1998-2000. A very part time degree, but one that was greatly shortened thanks to credit transfer from my St Andrews BSc(Hons). Which meant I could leapfrog the first year's courses. Though that made it a much harder transition from studying hard science to studying humanities at degree level!

I was using Richmond Lattimore's translations of the Homer poems in my OU degree. I have a vivid memory of one night we'd driven over to Dundee, and Martin was nipping into supermarket Asda, with me waiting in the car. And reading the Iliad, full of hefty anatomical descriptions of battle injuries. And desperately wanting to read out some of them to him when we came back! I haven't read Emily's new translations yet, but hope to, health permitting. I did have her hardback Odyssey book for some time, but struggled too much with it due to my neurological illness. I may yet get the Kindle versions to read, with a gigantic font I need now.

The book festival chat was interesting. Emily was a very good speaker. Though the lady interviewing her talked far, far too long between Emily's bits. At one point Emily was repeatedly struggling to get a word in. And also, very frustratingly for the online audience, the interviewer totally ignored the many questions that had been typed up online to be asked to the speaker.