[B-Greek] Middle voice and passive construction

JFS bigjfs at hotmail.com
Wed Feb 7 23:28:19 EST 2007


It appears to me that Koine Greek is generally taught as if it were a dead fish.  We look at its entrails; count its scales, etc.  There is nothing wrong with that, but I suspect that after a while dead fish tend to stinketh.  I am attempting to learn the language as if it were a live fish, a difficult task.

 

Given that, what I attempt to do is re-learn what I have studied, but in a slightly different environment.  So I have put down the GNT for a wee bit, and have taken up Euclid's Elements.  I like the Elements, it is authentic Greek and not watered down child's speak.  It has a rather small vocabulary, so learning vocabulary does not interfere with learning the grammar and syntax.   It is doctrinally neutral, so it allows one to focus on the language, and the vocabulary is rather straight forward and re-enforces the  grammar and syntax (especially in the propositions, one reads the proposition, follow the directions and construct and figure using a straight edge and a compass).

 

Having said (or written) the above, I find reading the elements is going rather smoothly.  But there are some glitches.  For the noun system I only stumble over the dative case when there is no preposition involved.  What I mean by this, is that when I read a sentence, it comes along rather smoothly, but when I come to a dative case without being introduced by a preposition, then I have to stop and think before I continue on.  I suspect this is because in English we use the dative case (and ablative, etc.) with a preposition.

 

Likewise, in the verbal system I have no problem with the active voice, indicative mood.  But I do have to stop and think when I come across a middle voice form.  

 

Now in my simple mind, all passive forms imply a middle voice.  "The vase was smashed by a falling hammer" versus "A falling hammer smashed the vase."  When our ancestors (our language ancestors) invented English, they simplified the verbal system so that the middle voice could only be conveyed by the passive form.  In consequence, we have analyzed the form rather than the voice and have lost consciousness of the middle voice.

 

So when we read Greek (or Latin) and if the middle voice is in the format of the passive construction, we can read it in the English.  But if it is not in the passive construction, then we have no mechanism to convey that in English and it is deponent (deponent in English, not in the original Greek or Latin).  I suspect that is the reason that I stumble over this form.

 

My question is do other students also have problems with the middle voice, and for you who are fluent, do you  use or read the middle voice comfortably.

 

John Sanders

Suzhou, China



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