Languages and Linguistics

Usually I depend on semantics to resolve any syntactical ambiguity, but either English or the Greek classics would make sense, so the ambiguity remained for me until you answered my question.

Here in the USA English translations of the Greek classics were standard fare when I went to school. Knowledge of ancient Greek itself was rare, and it still is. Knowledge of Latin is and was less rare, but it wasn't and isn't required for most students.

As a physicist, I use the term "deflect" rather than "inflect" to describe a turning away from a course. I think "deflect" is also the more common word in plain English. (Words like deflect, reflect, inflect, genuflect, flex all come from flecto, flectere.)

The literature now studied in Classics departments was never lost entirely. Knowledge of it in Western Europe was minimal during the early middle ages. Greek literature was there all along in the Byzantine Empire, but that literature was inaccessible to Westerners who didn't know any Greek. Successive waves of translations changed all that for a while. But we have entered a new dark age, as far as knowledge of Latin and Greek are concerned. Now that English has become the planetary language, many Americans see no need to learn any other language. (Okay, I'm exaggerating, but only a little.)