[B-Greek] Is modern Greek informative for Koine or Classical Greek?

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Sun Oct 30 04:22:54 EST 2005


Vance EGRAPSEN
>there is an assumption here that modern Greek speakers would have some
insight that non-speakers would not have. If modern Greek is as
different from Koine Greek as modern Hebrew is from Classical
(Biblical) Hebrew, then the insight would be minimal. (I will hear from
Randall on this one.) Since I do not know how different modern Greek is
from Classical and Koine, I would also like to hear what they might
say.
Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.>

XAIREIN
I guess you're inviting a reply. (this may be a duplicate message, but
my machine seems to have eaten an earlier draft)
I see two issues woven into your comments.

1. One has general agreement: only ancient data is the 'evidence' for
discussing an ancient language. I heartily agree. This relates to the
word "informative" in your title. There is value, of course, in
following the trajectory of internal development within Greek, but
that is secondary to contemporaneous ancient data. Of course, within
Hebrew studies, I would include Mishnaic Hebrew in the data pool since
it is a continuation of older and then literary-classical dialects.
Mishnaic Hebrew fills many accidental semantic holes in the more
ancient texts. It lets one see more of what the whole language was
like.

2. On the other hand, fluency in a related dialect has such strong
advantages that one should always be clear with students planning
their training: modern Hebrew is a must not an option. (Was that what
you wanted me to add?) Graduate study programs that do not demand this
do so at their own impoverishment. TWMTBC? (=to what may this be
compared?) IMagine a Goethe lit program for grad students that did NOT
demand fluency in German. Of course, modern German does not determine
Goethe's meanings but to work in the field without it!? [While I
recommend to our summer BH ulpan students to continue into modern
Hebrew, let me clarify and reiterate that we only speak Biblical
Hebrew in our summer classrooms, vav ha-hippux and all.]

On modern Greek, unfortunately, it is more distant from its ancient
counterpart than Hebrew. Greek has become two languages and is wider
than, for example, classical/colloquial Arabic. This is why I advocate
directly internalizing the ancient Greek language/dialect. However,
modern Greek speakers are still required to study the ancient texts in
high school and if they go on to study Greek literature in university
they develop a very  large vocabulary and internalization of the the
ancient language structures (internalization="acquisition" in
Second-Language-Acquisition studies.) I would not expect Greeks to
seriously enter an "aspect versus tense" discussion since it would be
a non-issue. [What would English lit majors do or feel, if some
hypothetical Russian-speaking students spilled a lot of Russian ink on
whether the English future was a mood ("will") or a tense? Get
excited, or shrug their shoulders?] On the other hand, someday a Greek
might write a Greek pedagogical grammar description that drops the
label "Present" from the non-indicative imperfectives. (I would
suggest a label PARATATIKH OPSIS.) If and when they do, it will not
change their internalized understanding, only their taxonomy, their
name calling.

ERRWSO
Randall

--
Randall Buth
www.biblicalulpan.org
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com



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