[B-Greek] Thinking in Greek

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sat Aug 20 09:50:19 EDT 2005


Robert Schut has raised the following question to me off-list and  
says he thinks that my response might be or interest to the list:

On Aug 19, 2005, at 7:48 PM, ROBERT SCHUT wrote:
> Dear Dr. Conrad
>
> I have been a member of the list for about a year now and have  
> profited much from the many dialogues between members.  One of the  
> issues that I find difficult, however, is the issue of thinking in  
> Greek.  As the weeks go by I feel more and more comfortable  
> translating from Greek to English, but I am concerned that I am not  
> progressing towards seeing things with a Greek mind.  Is this  
> something that I must consciously work on by forcing myself to go  
> over each line until I get the flavor of it or does this ability  
> come more naturally with time through continued reading and  
> translating?
It may well be that your sense of competence at "translating" Greek  
to English has already achieved the capacity to think in Greek, but  
I'm skeptical about that, because that often involves thinking at the  
level of words rather than of phrases or syntactic units. In my  
experience, authentic translation is a step BEYOND comprehension of  
the original text: one must first come to understanding the original  
text on its own terms, grasp the CONTENT of what that text is saying  
on its own terms; translation into a target language then involves re- 
expressing the CONTENT as understood into English or whatever other  
target language it may be as best one can -- and that may involve an  
altogether different structure from that of the original Greek passage.

My own view of what's required in achieving "fluency" or the ability  
to think in ancient Greek involves three types of effort:
     (1) voluminous reading in a variety of texts that lie outside  
the sphere with which one is thoroughly familiar (let's say, outside  
the sphere of the Greek New Testament. This could be in older  
Classical Attic (e.g. Plato, Xenophon, or the like) or it could be  
from the first two centuries of the Christian era (e.g. Apostolic  
Fathers, Lucian of Samosata, Plutarch, or the like). The point is  
that one needs to read a lot of sequential text and thereby become  
familiar with the recurrent patterns of expression used by good or  
standard authors: those recurrent patterns of expression are at the  
core of what it means to "think in ancient Greek."
     (2) composition in ancient Greek accompanying reading of the  
sorts of texts one is attempting to mimic in one's own compositions.  
In more traditional schools this still is a vital part of the  
curriculum for ancient Greek; it has been dropped by perhaps most  
schools, but its value lies precisely in its power to train one in  
thinking in standard ancient Greek patterns of expression and using  
them consistently in what one writes.
     (3) drills in 'question-and-answer' sessions using ancient Greek  
phraseology; while some of the better recent Attic grammars (e.g.  
_Reading Greek_, Carl Ruck's _Ancient Greek: A New Approach" use this  
for written exercises, the best way of all would be oral question-and- 
answer sessions, the method espoused and employed by Randall Buth in  
his "Biblical Ulpan."

Some resources for Greek composition may be found at::  http:// 
www.textkit.com/greek_grammar.php
   Randall Buth's materials for "Living Greek for Everyone" at:  
http://www.biblicalulpan.org/ (under popup menu on left for "Courses"  
choose "Greek Materials." The description there reads: "This is a  
unique introduction to Koine Greek. It is suitable for children, at  
least from as early an age as they are able to understand why they  
might want to learn Greek. It is equally suitable for adults of any  
age. It is doubly efficient in language learning and re-teaches  
adults what it means to learn a language and to think in a language.  
The methodology is based on listening comprehension approaches to  
language learning and has been successfully developed and applied to  
many modern languages by Harris Winitz."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at ioa.com or cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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