[B-Greek] "Crossing the Rubicon" (learning Greek NOT in English)

Elliot Poe Elliot.Poe at gmail.com
Tue Jun 19 17:47:51 EDT 2007


It's difficult to add to something so well put, but I would like to 
suggest that, although we students of Greek often find the particles 
easiest to translate, they make sense in Greek late in the learning 
process, after the Greek clauses before and after the particle are 
comprehended in Greek. True, one cannot picture the particles, but they 
still give one a certain feeling about what follows. In the case of 
particles, I would say we are after a feeling more than a picture. We 
all know in English what will follow when someone follows a positive 
statement with "But . . . ." Denniston tentatively defined a particle as 
"a word expressing a mode of thought, considered either in isolation or 
in relation to another thought, or a mood of emotion" (The Greek 
Particles, Second Ed. (Oxford), xxxvii).

I enjoyed the excerpt from "Crossing the Rubicon," and I aspire 
understand Greek in the manner of Greek described therein.

Yours,
Elliot Poe

????? ??? ????? ? ??????? ????? ?????,
? ???????, ?? ??? ?????, ? ????? ?????,
????? ????????????? ??????? ?????.

-Sophocles, Antigone, 707-709


Carl W. Conrad wrote:

>On Jun 19, 2007, at 3:59 PM, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I really like this, but it also points indirectly to a difficulty:
>>    
>>
>>>The very
>>>formula, "Naus means a ship," is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a
>>>thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, as behind navis or
>>>naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or
>>>oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.
>>>      
>>>
>>Ah, but what should we picture for DE, hOTI, hOU hEINEKEN (no, please
>>don't picture a Dutch beer!), or for various grammatical features?
>>    
>>
>
>I have no objection to Heineken beer, but I'd prefer Löwenbräu dunkeles.
>
>  
>
>>It's pretty easy for me to think in a foreign language with respect to
>>concrete nouns and verbs. It's much harder to do so with respect to  
>>all
>>these subtle things that constitute the greatest real differences  
>>among
>>languages. And these are harder to convey with some of the language
>>experience approaches. What pictures would RosettaStone use to convey
>>the meaning of MEN ... DE?
>>    
>>
>
>No, you don't use pictures; but you DO learn to think in terms of the  
>contrasts or parallelisms that are highlighted by MEN and DE -- and  
>you try to move, as soon as possible, beyond thinking in terms of "on  
>the one hand ... " and "on the other ..." You become familiar with  
>recurrent locutions such as LOGWi MEN ... ERGWi DE ... or POLLA MEN  
>KATHGGEILATO, OLIGA DE APEDEIXEN. You become used to the way these  
>things work by seeing them repeatedly in use, and you don't try to  
>picture them.
>
>  
>
>>At my current level of Greek, it's easy to stop thinking of nouns and
>>verbs in English, but all these rich little words, tense and  
>>aspect, and
>>the like really matter, and I find that I often use English or German
>>equivalents as a reminder of their meaning.
>>    
>>
>
>Well, OUN and GAR may take a little longer. I think I may have told  
>the story of a U. of Chicago professor who was writing a treatise on  
>GAR and had a young woman assisting him with gathering examples from  
>hither and yon in the far-flung archives of ancient Greek literature.  
>Over the course of much time she amassed thousands of index cards  
>referencing uses of GAR (that's the way the did it in those days  
>before computers) and, as might not be altogether unexpected, the  
>young lady soon acquired the nickname of Dr. X's "GAR GOYLE." While  
>the story may sound highly improbable, I've been told that it's  
>absolutely true.
>
>Carl W. Conrad
>Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>---
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>
>  
>




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