Anyone who spends time learning either Latin or Classical Greek, becomes familiar not only with the "reference standard" grammar and vocabulary, but with various idioms that would make an elementary student wonder what was being expressed via that idiom.
Though if you want a
real challenge, try mastering Classical Greek as it would have been presented to a Greek pupil learning the written language back in the 5th century BCE. this is a serious challenge, because at that time, Greek was written ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS (small letters were a later invention), with
no gaps between words, and no punctuation.
This makes matters especially troublesome, because Classical Greek is a completely inflected language. It uses spelling changes to denote the grammatical function of words, with entire systems of such changes covering such details as number and case for nouns, or number and person for verbs. Since word endings in Classical Greek are frequently a critical determinant of meaning and context, you can imagine the hilarity that can ensue when those endings run into the beginning of the next word, without
any indication of where the word breaks are in a sentence. Small letters, the emergence of punctuation, and the use of accents to denote the intonation used when speaking, were all later inventions.
One of the idioms therein, centres upon the fact that the verb 'to be' is sometimes omitted from a sentence, even when its omission adds confusion to understanding. Poetic works are particularly susceptible to this putting in an appearance, right at the very spot that appears purpose designed to make life exasperating for a translator.
Even though Greek is considered to be a conservative language in terms of its evolution, with both grammar and vocabulary basics having remained remarkably stable for 3,000 years, and the existence of a literature continuity that is the envy of several other languages, modern Greek has recently introduced some oddities, such the the near-abandonment of the dative case for nouns. Though as far as I can ascertain, it still maintains its weird (to an English speaking person, at least) approach to verbs. I shall now explain further.
English verbs (taking their cue from Latin), are based primarily upon
tense as a determinant of meaning. Tensed verbs use
time at which the verb action took place as the primary determinant of grammatical structure. Hence, taking the relevant cue from Latin, English has verbs that are conjugated into present, future, imperfect, perfect, future perfect and pluperfect tenses (along with some expansion from this basic set of six tenses as English evolved). Present and future are pretty much self-explanatory. Imperfect and perfect refer to actions that started in the past, but either continued into the present without ceasing (imperfect) or continued to the present and ceased there (perfect) - at least, this was the inference arising from the Latin origins of the English verb tense system. Future perfect is a bit of an oddity - it refers to a future action considered from a reference point located further in the future, and from which time that action will actually be in the past. Pluperfect basically considers an action that is, for want of a better phrase, deeply historical from the standpoint of conversation.
Greek verbs use an entirely
different system as the determinant of meaning. Greek verbs are based upon
aspect, namely, consideration of the verb action as a single, discrete action in some (frequently unspecified) moment of time, or as a
process. Although Greek verbs have a present aspect and a future aspect, with largely appropriate coupling to time, they also have an imperfective aspect, a perfective aspect and an aorist aspect, which are sometimes annoyingly fluid with respect to their temporal reference, and concern themselves primarily with the verb action as continuing or completed. You can imagine the fun and games that arise for newcomers used to tenses, when this hits them.
Then to throw an even bigger spanner in the learning works, Greek isn't content to have two voices for verbs - active and passive. No, Greek also has a middle voice, which, just to confuse you, uses
exactly the same grammatical forms as the passive voice, but has to be inferred from context. To throw you off even further, some verbs are active in voice but middle/passive in form, and you have to learn these the hard way.
As an illustration of the sort of usage this little lot was put to, take, for example, the Greek verb δικάζω, the verb which means "to apply the law" - basically, to conduct litigation. in the active form just given, δικάζω bears the meaning of
presiding over the case as a judge, from a presumably impartial standpoint, with the intention of ensuring that the law in a given case is properly applied. The middle form, δικάζομάί, on the other hand, means to pursue litigation
from the standpoint of the litigants, and their pursuit of benefit from that litigation. This distinction between lofty objectivity and mercenary self-interest appears in the same manner in several other Greek verbs, but δικάζω is probably the canonical example. Just to throw an even bigger spanner in the learning works, the form δικάζομάί, used above in the middle voice, is
also used unchanged for the passive voice (i.e, asking whether the law was properly applied), and has to be inferred from context.
Toss into all this, idioms arising from various key contributors to Greek literature (Homer being a rampant source thereof), and you have some idea what sort of linguistic fun and games awaited the citizen of Classical Greece.
