Sunday, March 29
This week we have been finalizing the Aba Giorgis piece that told of his life and most famous known works. Here is an excerpt from the translation:
I have really been able to see my growth in language learning this week and I have two anecdotes to share. The first is while listening to the Miracles of Jesus book (Te’amire Eyesus) being read I was surprised to find that I understood the whole story. Even without catching every work I knew what miracle it was referencing and saw that I caught small details. Because this text isn’t very obscure and the miracles of Jesus are often retold and read throughout the Bible, I had the familiarity to connect passages where I couldn’t recognize as much of the words. This was an extraordinary experience and I hope to have more like this. It showed me how context is key and that I’ve really been retaining the instruction I have had. The second story is about dreaming in Ge’ez. After listening to what felt like hours of Ge’ez being read, I dozed off for a moment and actually had a dream in Ge’ez. I dreamt about my priest telling me a funny story about a little boy and a bag of flour.
After discussing it, my language partner and I decided to make the next project a composition which is a little different than what I have been doing thus far. Last semester, we started a little with compositions, applying the grammar concepts in sample sentences of my choosing. Now, we have decided to compose a Ge’ez “synaxarium” (Book of the Life of Saints) passage according to the life and miracles of St. Spyridon.
This means writing in the same style as the Synaxarium and using similar conventions. There is an English version that we are working from that is written with slightly different conventions than what would be used in Ge’ez. I am excited to apply what I have been noting and learning through the past couple of months on something that is a real story and an original rendering of it in Ge’ez! Of course, with the guidance of my language partner and the dictionaries that we have on hand but nevertheless, it will be interesting! I often hear the Synaxarium being read in Ge’ez in church and following along with my English pdf version I notice a lot of different attributes of the texts. I think it will be similar to the previous Miracle piece by Aba Giorgis that we translated so it was really good preparation.
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