[B-Greek] Help with word order in sentences
Barry Hofstetter
nebarry at verizon.net
Sun Aug 22 22:45:30 EDT 2004
----- Original Message -----
From: <JMonte2000 at aol.com>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2004 7:33 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Help with word order in sentences
Our favorite beginning Greek student writes:
> I am also a first year GNT student, I've been acing my test, thank God.
> But one problem I have is after I do the literal translation, word for word,
> I have a terrible time putting it into an English sentence. The smaller
> sentences up to seven words, I am better at, but as soon as I get the 15 word
> sentence it looks like a puzzle that does not fit together. There are four of
us,
> its funny the guy who is doing the worst puts the sentences together much
> easier then I can. I am 40% through Mounce's book. Does it get easier as time
> goes on the more you do it, and also can someone help me out a bit on what to
> do. We don't have a teacher, it's just the four of us going through the book
> helping each other.
> Jimmy Montesano
You have a lot more resources to help you than I would have attempting the same
thing in the 1970's, but if you can find a live teacher to help you, it would be
even better...
But, to your question: I have noticed that there are two major types of
beginning Greek (or Latin, or Hebrew) students, that I classify as:
Technicians
Savants
Technicians are those whose first instinct is to memorize everything that
doesn't move, and everything that does move, on general principles. They can
parse contentedly, and their fellow students give them a lot of room because
paradigms are always igniting in their vicinity.
Savants are students who, with minimum study, nearly always seem to get their
translations right. They don't have to work too hard at memorizing. They just
seem to be able intuitively to put things together.
Now, these are stereotypes or extremes, but I would say that all students are
somewhere along this spectrum. Even the extreme savant has to do some
memorization (gotta pass those quizzes), and the the worst technician
occasionally sees things just fall together.
Now, these are beginning students. If a tech works at it hard enough, he or she
eventually develops and intuition for the language. If a savant continues in
studying, after a while, parsing and other grammatical technicalia eventually
take up residence in the fog of intuition. They start out in different places,
but eventually, by dint of perserverence, arrive at the same place. I classify
myself as a savant: in Greek, I don't think my parsing caught up with my
translation abilities until sometime until the latter part of my junior or early
part of my senior year.
The lesson? Don't give up. You may be a technician, but eventually your
intuition will catch up, and things will just get easier.
Something I think I picked up from Moises Silva: how does a beginning student
successfully translate? Only part of it is parsing and grammatical
comprehension: the rest is imagination. No, I'm not kidding: I specifically
mean the ability to imagine a context in which to plug the exercise that the
student is attempting to translate. If the student mis-imagines (neologism?)
the context, then he will try to beat up the grammar and vocab to make it fit.
If he approximates the possible context imagined or borrowed by the editor who
wrote the exercise, then he will tend to see the grammar/vocab more clearly. At
the advanced level, translational difficulties are almost never something so
gross as mistaking a dative for a genitive, but usually involves missing some
contextual clue...
N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Purpureus Vindex II
Tota fere sapientiae nostrae summa...
duabus partibus constat,
Dei cognitione et nostri.
-Calvin
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1yfx7/
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