[B-Greek] Re: English Grammar as a Prerequisite to Learning Greek?

LIKELUKE likeluke at bg8.so-net.ne.jp
Thu Dec 11 20:41:15 EST 2003


Maurice


Thank you very much for your quick response.

| I would be the first to categorise it as an exasperated cry <g> from a 
| generation whose schooling included parsing of English prose as a standard 
| part of English classes and whose university insisted that my matriculation 
| subjects include Latin before I could enter the engineering school.

I understand what you mean, though I cannot imagine how you were parsing
English! A parallel argument or even regret is often heard in Japan, too,
with regard to Chinese classics education, which is regarded as parallel
to Greek or Latin in the West.

I myself belong to a generation in the middle. As I learned English as
something that was not useful to my daily communication, I had to do it
all over afresh when I learned speaking and writing in it. Yet, the
grammar/translation-oriented English that I had learned at school
provided me with a very good help when I started learning Greek and
Latin. The way I learned English had made me a good frame of reference
in tackling those classical languages.

And I am now teaching Greek, crying for the students' lack of that
frame of reference. My relief, however, is that, since I was an English/
Japanese teacher/translator with a formal linguistic training, I can
enjoy teaching even English (a bit of fake one), translation techniques,
and linguistic points of view to my students with a lot of delight.

Thank you also for the inspiring article that you quoted on-line and
sent to me off-line. I really enjoyed reading it. I subscribe to some of
the mailing-lists on Latin as well, and, honestly speaking, I sometimes
feel envious of such a world that you are taught these classical
languages at the high-school level or even a lower one. You learn them at
a high school as typical educated Westerners while we learn, again, 20,000
Chinese characters as typical educated Japanese . . .

Well, let us keep enjoying learning this beautiful Greek language!


==========
Hirokatsu Yoshihara <likeluke at bg8.so-net.ne.jp>
Asia Pacific Theological Seminary, Baguio City, Philippines
December 12, 2003 (Fri) 05:47 +0800





----------------------- Original Message -----------------------
From:    "Maurice A. O'Sullivan" <mauros at iol.ie>
To:      Hirokatsu Yoshihara <likeluke at bg8.so-net.ne.jp>
Date:    Thu, 11 Dec 2003 18:46:25 +0000
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] English Grammar as a Prerequisite to Learning Greek?
----

| At 15:23 11/12/2003, Hirokatsu Yoshihara wrote:
| 
| >Maurice
| >
| >
| >Speaking from my experiences of 1) traning Japanese people who wanted to
| >be teachers of the Japanese language as the second language, 2) working
| >together with English teachers who were teaching in Japan with the only
| >qualification that they were native speakers, and 3) myself, a native
| >Japanese speaker, having been formally trained as a linguist specialized
| >in my own mother tongue, it always seems quite difficult for a native
| >speaker to be well trained in analyzing his/her own native language
| >UNLESS one has had a good quality of education on it at any level from
| >elementary to college.
| 
| Thank you for your courteous and well-reasoned response to what you ( 
| flatteringly ) term my "thesis.

<snip>

--------------------- Original Message Ends --------------------




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