[B-Greek] Translation Exercises

Kevin Smith kgsmith at webmail.co.za
Mon Sep 27 04:41:42 EDT 2004


Thanks Carl for your in depth remarks. 

The exercises are extracted from "A New Approach to Greek." I think the
author is Carl Ruck, but I'm not sure. To his credit, many of his
exercises, especially later in the book, are actual readings from
ancient authors, but these exercises are from the early chapters where
only a limited amount of grammar and vocabulary has been introduced. 

You often allude to the artificial nature of textbook exercises. Is it
attainable goal for modern students to become fluent enough to write
ancient Greek as a native speaker would have? Might it be a fair guess
that few people today, even among those who teach it, read Greek
fluently enough to read through large amounts of ancient texts in search
of good illustrative sentences? I can't speak for other countries, but
in South Africa the study of classical and biblical languages seems to
be in a state of rapid decline. I suspect the standard is also
declining, that modern graduates (like myself) are less fluent at
READING Greek than our teachers were when they graduated. 


 
Kevin Smith
South Africa 




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