[B-Greek] Teaching mi verbs first

David McCoy davidmcy at io.com
Wed Aug 1 14:32:08 EDT 2007


Hello:

I will also be teaching a first year Greek class at our church this Fall, 
using Mounce's Basics of BIblical Greek, so I appreciate being privy to 
this discussion.

I have a number of grammars and have had various contacts over the years, 
and have never heard of anyone teaching "mi" verbis first.  Carl's advice 
sounds great to me.

John, perhaps we can stay in touch, either via B-Greek if there are topics 
of interest to all, or offline just for mutual advice and encouragement.

Sincerely,
David McCoy

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 14:04:05 -0400
> From: Carl W. Conrad <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
> To: John M.Linebarger <jmlineb at comcast.net>
> Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Teaching mi verbs first
> 
>
> On Aug 1, 2007, at 1:18 PM, John M. Linebarger wrote:
>
>> Hello!  Deus  [Deo?] Volente, I will be teaching a first year Greek
>> class at our church this Fall, using Mounce's Basics of BIblical
>> Greek.  I have been advised by my teacher and mentor, Dr. Glen
>> Riddle, that it would be wise to teach mi verbs first instead of
>> omega verbs, because mi verbs occur all over the New Testament, and
>> because mi verbs are often an afterthought in the teaching of first
>> year Greek.
>>
>> The problem is paedogogy, finding appropriate exercises to teach mi
>> verbs that don't presuppose omega verbs and other moods having been
>> taught first.  Mounce teaches mi verbs last, and his exercises are
>> rife with things taught in the previous chapters.
>>
>> Two questions.  First, what does the group think about this
>> approach?  Second, what exercises and sources would you recommend
>> should I decide to go ahead and try to teach mi verbs first?
>
> (1) The rationale strikes me as fishy from the start: MI-verbs do not
> appear ubiquitously to any greater extent than do W-verbs. Of course,
> this is a NT Greek class, but a somewhat comparable approach in
> Classical Greek was the one used at University of Text at one time
> (Morgan?) that did Ionic dialect and read Herodotus for the first
> semester before shifting over to Attic, on grounds that there's no
> irregularity of long alpha and eta vowels in Ionic. It matters not a
> whit with what item you begin; you will find that you can't do
> exercises or readings without building them upon elements not yet
> introduced and needing explanations.
>
> (2) Exercises and sources -- if you decide to go through with this
> experiment:
>  (a) Whatever you do, don't create artificial sentences that aren't
> at least very closely based upon authentic Greek texts; (b)
>  (b) Choose source texts that only use -MI verbs, if you can find
> them. If you can't, then consider going back and starting with W-
> verbs; if you decide to do that, I would urge that you get quickly
> into contract verbs, inasmuch as they really ARE ubiquitous.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
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>

-- 
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