[B-Greek] Knowledge of Ancient Greek
Patricia Walters
walters.patricia at gmail.com
Wed Feb 22 11:23:13 EST 2006
Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes one such pedagogical approach to
teaching Greek reading and writing:
"When we are taught to read, first we learn by heart the names of the
letters, then their shapes and their values, then, in the same way, the
syllables and their effects, and finally words and their properties, by
which I mean the ways they are lengthened, shortened, and scanned, and the
like. And when we have acquired knowledge of these things, we begin to
write and read, syllable by syllable and slowly at first. And when a
considerable lapse of time has implanted firmly in our minds the forms of
words that we execute them with the utmost ease, and we read through any
book that is given to us unfalteringly and with incredible confidence and
speed. It must be assumed that something of this kind happens with
accomplished littérateurs [paraV toi'" a*qlhtai'" tou' e!rgou] when they
come to deal with literary composition and the harmonious arrangement of
clauses" (Dion. Hal. *Comp.* 25).
Patricia Walters
Beloit College (Beloit, Wisconsin)
On 2/22/06, Terry and Gail Cook <cookie99 at fuse.net> wrote:
>
> During my 1st qtr of Greek I frequently asked the professor, "how do we
> know
> this?" There are lots of "rules" which really aren't rules and I wanted to
> know (and still do) if we were just making this up (mildly joking). I
> think
> it was and still is a fair question.
> As English/readers/speakers living in the 21st century we have memories of
> how we learned our own language- we had teachers! Our parents, uncles,
> aunts, playground friends and when we became of age, teachers with formal
> education. These teachers ALWAYS taught from books. Our teachers too
> learned
> the way we learned and their teachers and so on.
> One need only go to Amazon and type in English grammar to find dozens of
> textbooks.
> It's not unreasonable to wonder how today we know that an aorist was
> thought
> by Paul to be____(fill in the blank) or that an indicative was considered
> to____. If the ancients wrote about grammar then where can we find their
> writings? There are those of us who would like to know if Paul and Peter
> thought about the language of their day the same way as we do 2,000 years
> later. If there is guesswork involved in our current scholarship then we
> want to know that.
> We translate our GNT based on the methods and understandings taught us by
> AT
> Robertson, and Carl Conrad and our local guy. These teachers learned from
> someone who learned from someone and so on. How far in the past can the
> chain be traced? Did Augustine and Jerome think about the use of the
> article
> the same as Paul? Did he understand participles as does Daniel Wallace?
> Terry Cook
> sDg
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
> To: "Ernest Blum" <eblum at adelphia.net>
> Cc: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 9:55 AM
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Knowledge of Ancient Greek
>
>
> >
> > On Feb 22, 2006, at 9:33 AM, Ernest Blum wrote:
> >
> >> In answer to the question of whether the ancient greeks thought up
> >> "grammar," I'm disappointed that not too much light has been thrown
> >> on this
> >> question.
> >>
> >> Just how the ancient Greeks, Romans and speakers and writers of Koine
> >> learned Greek is a matter of great interest to those of us who are
> >> eager to
> >> learn Greek today.
> >>
> >> Is there any book that addresses these matters and explains how
> >> Greek was
> >> taught and learned over the milleninia? Sincerely, Ernest Blum
> >
> > I don't really understand why one should imagine that ancient (or
> > modern) Greeks learned Greek in some way other than human beings in
> > general learn their native languages. How they TAUGHT it in the
> > schools is another matter altogether. Inasmuch as Plato's Republic
> > focuses on the "reform" of traditional education in order to produce
> > a better society, one might learn something from it about traditional
> > "music and gymnastics" and what all was involved in that, and one
> > might check them encyclopedias (and Wikipedia) under "gymnasium," the
> > primary educational institution of the Hellenistic Greek-speaking
> > world..
> >
> > There are books on the history of Greek, including the recently-
> > appearing book by Chrys Caragounis, (The Development of Greek and the
> > New Testament: Morphology, Syntax, Phonology, and Textual
> > Transmission. Mohr Siebeck, 2004. XX, 732 pages (Wissenschaftliche
> > Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament / 167) ISBN 3-16-148290-5. cloth
> > 129.00 Euro); there's Geoffrey Horrocks' book (Greek: a history of
> > the language and its speakers, 1997), which is, unfortunately, now
> > out of print. Neither of these focuses upon pedagogical concerns as
> > such.
> >
> > Carl W. Conrad
> > Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
> > 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> > cwconrad2 at mac.com
> > WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
> >
> > ---
> > B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> > B-Greek mailing list
> > B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
> >
>
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