[B-Greek] Lining Out a Greek Text

John Sanders jfs at jfsanders.com
Sun May 27 04:47:04 EDT 2007


As one who is attempting to come to grips with Greek, I think this is an excellent format to use.
 
Having said that, let me continue, but the following should be taken as idle musings on my part.
 
I believe that there are two different skill sets to be applied here, one is the Greek; and the other is style.  We can see this in English itself.  I became aware of this a when I was reading the "Declaration of Independence" (a wee bit of time ago).  The style of writing was different.  not long ago I came across a web site titled "Greek Sentence Structure: Loose and Periodic Style" by Hardy Hansen.  This is one of those web sites I revisit every 4 or 5 months to refresh my understanding.  
(http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/class/rhetfig.htm).
 
He presents the elements of two different styles of speech (writing), a running style referred to as loose (Caesar, pre-20th century English writers) and Periodic (Cicero, Samuel Johnson).  One should read (or attempt to read) Samuel Johnson 
(see http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/displayprose.cfm?prosenum=9 for the Preface to his Edition of Shakespear's Plays (1765) for an example).  
 
I think reading this type of style requires a development of a skill set, we do not read this type of writing style routinely anymore.  So, just to get the mind in practice, I would recommend your system even on reading a lot of Samuel Johnson, Cicero, and others in this style, both Greek (and Latin) and English (and German, etc.).  I think that practice in various languages will help facilitate the mind to become acquainted and comfortable with this style.
 
John Sanders
Suzhou, China
 
 
 
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