[B-Greek] Learning b-Greek
Curtis Hinson
curtis at curtishinson.com
Fri Jun 4 21:11:50 EDT 2004
Hello Jan and Chet,
I disagree that the subject of Greek language acquisition is beyond the
scope of Bgreek, and the moderators may disagree but I doubt it, as Dr.
Conrad has chipped in eloquently on this very subject in the past few
months. Dr. Buth seems to have no problem with discussing language
acquisition on the list. There are lists that are concerned strictly with
translation, but my understanding has been that B-Greek is open to wider
topics that relate to the study, acquisition, and pedagogy of Greek. I
certainly learn from acquisition discussions and participate at times.
Here is a quote from http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/:
"Discussion topics include scholarly study of the Greek Bible and related
Jewish and Christian Greek texts, tools for beginning and advanced students
of Biblical Greek such as textbooks, reference works, bibliography and
research tools, and linguistic topics such as morphology, lexicography,
syntax,and discourse analysis."
"tools for...students" or possibly "linguistic topics" would seem to cover
the discussion, although the list doesn't claim to be exclusive.
Bless the Name
Curtis Hinson
Abilene Christian University
P.S. I apologize for leaving my signature off my last post.
-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jan Hoogland
Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 7:37 PM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [B-Greek] Learning b-Greek
Hello Chet,
The objective of b-Greek is two-fold: what does the text mean and how should
we translate it? Your obective to 'acquire' b-Greek is interesting but goes
far beyond the scope of b-Greek study. I am afraid that you will not find
anyone to converse with.
Your difficulty with b-Greek does not stem from b-Greek being difficult but
it stems from the method of teaching. English people have the tendency to
consider English as natural and as a consequence b-Greek is taught in terms
of English grammar. This happens to be a fatal mistake as b-Greek has many
more grammatical devices than English. Those additional devices can be
readily understood but they often cannot be accounted for in a translation.
To try to account for them in a translation is the cause of b-Greek being
considered difficult. I may receive some flak by claiming that about one
quarter of the information contained in b-Greek is untranslatable.
A case in point is the aorist, which simply is a tense that abstains from
indicating a time frame, as the name suggests. Inspection will show that the
N.T. writers used it for this purpose. It is an extremely useful tense, used
by far the most and it is sorely lacking in English. In addition this tense
causes a change of meaning of the other tenses. Other often untranslatable
devices are the cases, the placement of adjectives, some moods, etc.
Your goal however is a sound one. The only way to understand b-Greek is to
study the Greek, using a grammar of the b-Greek laguage rather than a
grammar that tries to put Greek into the straightjacket of English grammar.
If you have difficulty finding the right grammar you may consult "The
Language Instinct" by Pinker which might surprise you pleasantly.
Greetings,
Jan.
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