[B-Greek] NA27 and Greek-English Dictionary

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Oct 2 15:54:58 EDT 2003


At 2:44 PM -0400 10/2/03, bgreek at ntresources.com wrote:
>Although I hesitate to disagree with Carl's mature judgment, I'm not
>convinced that an analytical is a prudent choice for a beginning student.
>Most analyticals give no more info on the semantics of a word than Newman.
>They do give more info re. morphology, but most beginning students use them
>as a crutch and don't learn their forms well if they start using an
>analytical. (For that reason my syllabus forbids their use in first year.)

Actually, I hesitated long and hard before suggesting an analytical,
especially after being told what I could scarcely believe, that there are
professional translators of the GNT who use ONLY the Friberg ANLEX and
haven't ever learned to use any other. I certainly do think that a serious
student of the GNT ought to go ahead and acquire BDAG, but as Rod knows
very well and has taken pains to teach his own students, one needs to learn
how to use BDAG properly; perhaps what ought to be said is that one needs
to LEARN how to use a dictionary properly as a resource for studying the
range of a word's meanings and usage rather than as a trove for quickly
finding a one-word gloss on an unknown word.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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