[B-Greek] Ancient Greek-Grammar war?

Bert de Haan b_dehaan at sympatico.ca
Tue Feb 28 18:29:42 EST 2006


On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 16:10:56 -0500
Carl W.Conrad <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
Wrote;
====
  Students who have learned by the traditional textbooks and
pedagogy know the paradigms and the rules of grammar and have learned
the vocabulary, but they attack the Greek text as a problem to be
analyzed, as a step-by-step hunt for the subject and the verb and the
modifiers and then a synthesis of the pieces rather than as an
integrated whole: they readily discern the Greek trees by genus and
species, but they are lost in the forest of Greek discourse.
====
(BdH)
I used to "attack" the Greek text that way untill someone told me to read 
the greek from left to right (sounds logical enough) without constantly 
jumping ahead to try and fill in perceived gaps.
This took a bit of getting used to but it certainly increased the enjoyment 
and the speed of reading.
It can only be done in Greek, i.e: without translating as you go.
(I do find if I get to a difficult sentence that I may have to translate in 
my mind on the first or second time around.)
This cannot be expected of someone who is just starting to read Greek, can 
it? ( Unless (s)he is memorizing whole phrases and that may not be a bad 
idea.)
Bert de Haan





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