[B-Greek] Ancient Greek-Grammar war?
Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
donaldrvance at mac.com
Tue Feb 28 19:04:35 EST 2006
Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
Oral Roberts University
dvance at oru.edu
donaldrvance at mac.com
On Feb 28, 2006, at 7:15 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>
snip
> Of course the fact is that "You done good!" is NOT wrong; it's not
> standard or literary grammar taught in the schools and in upper-
> middle-class families but it is what is actually spoken by no few
> people who understand what they're saying and are understood by
> those to whom they speak.
>
> I rather doubt that the grammatical approach really enables one to
> shrink the learning of an alien language -- especially one that is
> learned fundamentally and almost exclusively as a dead WRITTEN
> language -- to 18 months or less. I've met with a very few students
> who learned Greek and learned it well enough to read it with ease
> with a couple years of devoted application.
>
The second point first. My experience in teaching the last few years
is with Hebrew and the approach DOES work. In 18 months I have
students at the point where they can read the text with felicity
except for vocabulary acquisition which comes from reading more text
(as you already observed). But grammatically, Hebrew is much simpler
than Greek. In my current first-year class, we are finished with the
essentials of Hebrew grammar, while the first-year Greek class is
still covering participles. (We're about halfway through the second
semester.) By the end of 18 months, students can read their Hebrew at
a level that most 15-year old high school freshmen can read English.
If you allow the use of a dictionary, like a good college graduate
would use for difficult English text, then they are reading the
Hebrew at the level a college graduate reads English, and in much
less time than the two decades that the college graduate needed. Even
in Greek, we have all had that one student that simply gets it and
can read the text with remarkable ease. On the other hand, students
in the seminary who use an inductive approach to learn Hebrew, do NOT
learn it. The Hebrew is more of a pointer to the English text that
they already know than a text that they translate. BTW, to avoid this
problem in Greek Exegesis, we read the Didache. The vocabulary is
virtually all NT Greek and the text is interesting. AND the students
could read it, thus indicating that they had learned Greek, at least
rudimentarily.
As to the first point, actually, of course, "You done good!" IS
wrong. Just because a hearer can decipher what the speaker intends to
convey does not make the sentence correct. Just because linguists
wish only to describe and are loath to prescribe does not make
prescription wrong. Further, the lack of precision in sentence
construction can lead to serious misunderstanding. That language
evolves and changes I do not deny, nor am I advocating the setting up
of the English equivalent of Académie Française or the less well
known Florentine Accademia della Crusca. But the fact that most
parents coach their children constantly ("'I am,' sweetheart, not 'I
is.'") about the fundamentals of grammar belies the idea of only
standard vs. non-standard. It is wrong in that it violates the rules
of English grammar.
snip
> UNDERSTAND the text for exegesis? How are they to UNDERSTAND the
> text for exegesis if they can't follow the thought-flow of the
> ancient Greek?
Simple. By understanding the codification of syntactical
relationships that Greek morphology indicates and by understanding
the syntax of the language that grammar describes. In other words,
decoding the text. You spoke earlier of some students approaching the
language as a code that needs decoding. Why does that approach
necessarily imply less understanding? That doesn't follow, in my
opinion. I would rather translate an ancient Greek fable (available
online thanks to the tireless efforts of Laura Gibbs: <http://
www.mythfolklore.net/aesopica/index.htm>) than watch TV (except for
Boston Legal, my TV vice) precisely because it is so much like
solving a puzzle. Simply because I approach the text in that way, it
does not follow that I cannot follow the thought-flow of the text. I
don't think in Greek, but I can follow the thought-flow of ancient
Greek. We don't know how Egyptian is even pronounced, so how are we
supposed to internalize it? Yet Egyptologists are quite adept at
following the thought-flow. We are not sure of the pronunciation of
Ugaritic, but I assure you I can follow the thought-flow of it. In my
translating courses I insist that students parse each and every word
and THEN make sure that their translations fit the parsing. You made
the point of how often students can parse but still do not understand
the text as evidenced by the fact that they cannot render it into
good English, a pitfall that my approach seeks to avoid. Why should
the ability to rework a text in Greek (as in a substitution drill) be
any more indicative of understanding the text than the ability to
render it into good English? They both require understanding the text.
Nevertheless, substitution drills and questions about the text in
Greek requiring answers in Greek are valuable and pedagogically
effective. The fact that I WANT to internalize the language makes it
clear that I share your opinion that one who can "think" in Greek
understands the text in a different and often, though not always, in
a more thorough way. But, internalization without understanding the
underlying grammatical structure offers no advantage. As all of us
who teach know, students who cannot write a grammatical sentence
cannot, as a rule, think clearly either. At the very least they are
less able to develop a complex thought and communicate it to others.
I agree with you that we need both approaches, but I would do it in a
different ratio than what I infer you would, based on your posts.
>
> 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/
>
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