[B-Greek] Benefit of studying modern Greek for BGreek?

Randall Buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Tue Aug 1 13:33:29 EDT 2006


Vance egrapsen
 >In light of our recent discussions concerning the pronunciation of
BGreek, I am thinking about buying RosettaStone's Greek language
course <http://www.rosettastone.com/en/individuals/languages/greek>
to learn modern Greek (at least at an elementary level). In teaching
Classical Hebrew, I teach my students modern Israeli pronunciation--
standard practice these days. Here at ORU we have offer a Modern
Hebrew minor and I find that students who take Modern Hebrew read the
Biblical text with greater ease. I have students memorize portions of
the Biblical text using modern Hebrew pronunciation. Despite the
anachronism, there is a certain internalization that occurs in this
process. My question is, will studying modern Greek have a similar
effect on my understanding of B-Greek?
Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.>

Donald XAIREIN
This comes up every now and again and there are always new twists.

I would recommend modern Greek for itself.

It is part of the end of a trajectory that covers a long long  
language history. Modern Greek lets you absorb the sounds of the last  
1000 years and sets a real target. It is a real language and you know  
when you are successfully communicating and when not.

For learning modern, it helps to love the music and the food and to  
plan extended visits to Greece.

There is an overlap in vocabulary that nails down a lot of vocab that  
might be ignored.
E.g., last night David Bivin and I were speaking 'ancient' and ran  
into a gap. We didn't know the word for 'comb' and didn't know how to  
look it up. (The Chicago English-Greek wasn't available and the  
recent Oxford classical Gk-Eng/Eng-Gk didn't list it.)
A modern dictionary was able to help. XTENI χτενι. Of course,  
ancient Greek doesn't like "XT" so I checked Oxford and Sophocles  
under "KT" and found O KTEIS TOU KTENOS "comb". Sophocles even  
referenced another word that helps fill in a list of good words for  
body parts (my SBL presentation this year). (I've checked, they're in  
LSJM, too, of course.)

One disappointment for an ancient Grecist might be that the modern  
verb morphology is quite different from the ancient. The aspect  
system is still in place but the 2 futures and 2 subjunctives are  
marked by particles QA 'future' and NA 'subjunctive' rather than verb  
morphology. Of course, this can be taken as a plus. If you  
internalize standard ancient verb forms AND the modern forms you will  
have a good feel for the development of the language thru the last  
2000 years.

PS: if you drop by the Biblical Hebrew ulpan next summer, you might  
want to plan to take in a week in a Greek island for $400 (flight TLV- 
island-TLV, hotel pickup, 7 nights, bed+breakfast). (You can spend  
more, of course, but the fun part of a Greek island is getting out of  
the hotel, checking out the beaches and sights, and finding  
delightful little family tavernas.) Greeks are very happy to speak  
with those learning and many a restaurant owner will explain the good  
places of an island in Greek, or the ebb and flow of a summer season.  
A receptionist may help you thru a newspaper article should you wish.

ERRWSO
Randall Buth
www.biblicalulpan.org




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