[B-Greek] Comprehensive 1c Bilingual Koine Greek Dictionary [*Webster's]
John Wilking
jcwilking at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 22 20:55:23 EDT 2008
Kimmo,
What is the difference between a Greek dictionary and a Greek/English one? The G/E is an extension of the first. It doesn't diminish Greek information, it communicates it intelligently to the learner. The formation of a Greek may be hindered by considerations of any other language. Can you imagine Webster's lexicographers thinking of French equivalents when they were "splitting" the sense meanings (lexemes) of a word?
The trouble is that at its best a 1c Koine Greek Dictionary would be far from perfect if it existed because our knowledge of that language is limited. Are we at the 85% stage of knowledge of the language? Who knows.
One group can be working on the 1cKGD (like Booth, Conrad, Kline), and another working on their drafts to translate into English.
This takes me to one of my last ideas: it is better to translate an existing mono than create a bi. Forcing a translating is forcing an explanation, a rephrasing, replacing one sense meaning with another. If it can't be translated (with some occasional encyclopedic information), then perhaps it is not properly understood. And since semantics rules grammar, even English speakers can help.
John
--- On Fri, 8/22/08, Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi> wrote:
> From: Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi>
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Comprehensive 1c Bilingual Koine Greek Dictionary [*Webster's]
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Cc: "Randall Buth" <randallbuth at gmail.com>
> Date: Friday, August 22, 2008, 6:30 AM
> On Friday Aug 22, Randall Buth wrote:
> > Greek-Greek dictionaries would both help and speed up
> your
> > learning of synonyms and their relationships.
> > bi-lingual is OK for a start, but you/we need
> Greek-Greek for
> > arriving.
>
> I am not sure I understand the whole rationale here.
>
> You can make a bilingual dictionary and organize it around
> target language
> usage (good for translation), or you can analyze the source
> language in its
> own terms and express that analysis in the target language
> (closer to the
> monolingual dictionary). If the dictionary is of the latter
> type, I don't see
> what difference it makes whether it is monolingual or
> bilingual, other than
> in accessibility. A monolingual one requires a greater
> fluency in the
> language, but does not require any ability in a second
> language.
>
> A Greek-English dictionary can include all the same info on
> synonyms and word
> relations that you might expect of a monolingual
> dictionary.
>
> The more important decision (perhaps) than whether to make
> a monolingual or
> bilingual dictionary is whether the dictionary tries to
> reflect the analysis
> of Greek as Greek or Greek translation equivalents in
> another language. In
> other words, is English or some other language used as an
> organizing
> principle, or is it an expression of Greek definitions in
> another language.
> Both are good, but for different purposes.
>
> This is not to deny that a good bilingual dictionary will
> have to analyze the
> target language carefully and that it will have a great
> influence on the
> dictionary (naturally), but rather to note that that info
> can be presented
> separate from the source language analysis.
>
> Kimmo Huovila
> ---
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