Learning Greek: How Far To Go?

c stirling bartholomew cc.constantine at worldnet.att.net
Tue May 15 14:10:19 EDT 2001


on 5/15/01 10:01 AM, Matthew R. Miller wrote:

> Languages are primarily things to be spoken, and
> when you can speak a language, you are mastering it.

Matthew,

Speaking implies an auditor who can understand and respond in the same
language. Not all of us live in the rarefied atmosphere of JUC professors
who can find people just hanging about in Jerusalem who want to speak
Hellenistic Greek. 

I can on any sunny weekend walk along the shores of Puget Sound and find
native speakers of  Russian, German, Arabic, Ukrainian, Yugoslavian, Spanish
. . .  k.t.l.,   but I cannot find anyone speaking Hellenistic Greek. Why
not? No one anywhere on the globe speaks Hellenistic Greek. For this reason
I consider the quest  for conversational Hellenistic Greek a utopian one.
Utopia is nowhere and that is where Hellenistic Greek is spoken.

 
--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062





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