[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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