[B-Greek] learning greek KATA english
frjsilver at optonline.net
frjsilver at optonline.net
Tue Jun 12 19:38:48 EDT 2007
Dear Friends --
We have to start *somewhere*.
The native language of those who study any form of Greek is an inevitabilty, but I guarantee that having first well learned the grammatical structure of French or Spanish, or -- especially -- Latin, will provide students a _Gestalt_ or framework on which to plot their gradual appreciation of the subtleties of grammar. This is most especially true of native speakers of Modern English, whose grammar is almost entirely determined not by inflection, but by syntax.
Going 'cold turkey' into Greek is, of course, possible, but I wouldn't recommend it unless there were no other options.
You might be interested to know that the articles hO, hH, and TO function well as pronouns in Modern Greek, especially in the oblique cases.
Inflections of hEIS/hEN serve as the indefinite article just as well now as they did in earlier forms of Greek. Please let's not make the mistake of thinking that the absence of the definite article in Greek is always of a force equivalent to that of the indefinite article in English. Absence of 'the' does not always equal 'a'.
BTW: Who is Funk? That's not a very Greek-sounding name....
Peace and blessings to all.
Father James Silver
Monk James
Orthodox Church in America
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl W. Conrad"
Date: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 5:13 pm
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] learning greek KATA english
To: Elizabeth Kline
Cc: greek B-Greek
>
> 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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