[B-Greek] learning greek KATA english

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jun 12 17:11:51 EDT 2007


On Jun 11, 2007, at 2:46 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:

> Funk BIGHG
> Lesson 5: The Article
>
> #120 For the most part, the article functions in Greek as it does in
> English. A number of the idiomatic uses of the article in Greek can
> be learned by observation, and will occasion no difficulty.
>
> ****
>
> The way I read this statement it seems very misleading.
>
> First, there are numerous and highly significant functional
> differences between the English and Greek article. Second, where the
> Greek article performs a function not characteristic of the English
> article calling that idiomatic seems to imply that English is some
> sort of standard by which Greek should be judged. Funk devotes far
> too many paragraphs and even pages to discussion of the English
> language.
>
> Learning Greek according to English isn't learning Greek.
>
> This falls into the same category with translation exercises which are
> so endlessly popular. Every time someone in a bible student or pastor
> offers a "new rendering" in English of some Greek or Hebrew text I
> wonder what it is they are trying to accomplish. Translation is a
> process of coercing the target language into a form that will do
> justice to the source text. It is all about the lexical resources and
> syntax of the target language. Also, there are a host of translation
> professionals out there doing reasonably good work. It takes a decade
> or more (after College) of continuous professional training to become
> a "certified" translation consultant. Learning to read Greek is a
> completely different goal with a completely different set of
> objectives than being a translation consultant.

I've been pondering this comment for some time and wondering how it  
is that I can agree with so much of it while at the same time  
wondering whether it is really a meaningful comment upon what Funk  
actually wrote in Lesson 5 (and in Lesson 6 immediately following).

§120 in Funk's Lesson 5 actually reads as follows:

"120. The Greek article was originally a demonstrative pronoun (it  
was so used in Homer). It was subsequently weakened to the status of  
article, then serving merely as a pointer. Cf. the article _der_ in  
German, which serves as article, relative and demonstrative pronoun;  
in English _that_ is both demonstrative and relative and is related  
to the article. In Greek the article is definite. Greek does not,  
strictly speaking, have an indefinite article (corresponding to _a_,  
_an_ in English).

"For the most part, the article functions in Greek as it does in  
English. A number of the idiomatic uses of the article in Greek can  
be learned by observation, and will occasion no difficulty."

This strikes me as (a) an accurate and succinct statement of what hO/ 
hH/hO has been and is in ancient Greek. It does NOT strike me as an  
indication that what will follow is an account of the way ancient  
Greek works based fundamentally on the way English grammar works.  
Moreover, if one considers what actually follows §120 in the  
remainder of Lesson 5 there is a pretty clear representation of how  
the ancient Greek article and the ancient Greek relative pronoun are  
like each other and different, with helpful hints about keeping the  
similarities and differences between them in mind. §1240 does give a  
"word list" for the Lesson with "the" suggested as an English  
representation for hO/hH/hO and "who, which, that" suggested as  
English representations for hOS/hH/hO.

Lesson 6 presents an account of "The Article as Structure Signal." I  
won't cite the opening paragraphs (§§125-1252). Although there's one  
English illustration, these paragraphs are focused upon how the  
article functions in a grammatical system generally and in ancient  
Greek specifically. In what follows the chief types of usage of the  
article in Hellenistic Greek are set forth; there are 19 examples  
presented, each drawn directly from the GNT; not one of them is  
translated into English.

While I must confess that I have myself in list-correspondence often  
enough offered up my Englished version of how I have understood a  
Biblical Greek construction, I've done it to illustrate how I think  
the Greek construction works rather than to offer the English as some  
sort of "solution" to the problem represented by the Greek  
construction. I think that I have myself disparaged the process of  
what is called above "Learning Greek according to English"; in  
particular I have complained about the multiplication of  
subcategories of adnominal genitives in Wallace's GGBB --  
subcategories that seem named and characterized in terms of English  
constructions used to convey them. Perhaps I am blind when I examine  
Funk's BIGHG, but I really don't think it is adequately characterized  
as "just another instance of learning Greek according to English."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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