[B-Greek] Teaching languages alive in the classroom
Hugh Donohoe Jr.
justusjcmylord at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 5 12:38:19 EST 2008
Eric,
I was aware that I was using artificial and authentic
in two different senses. I value Modern Greek. After
being confronted with its significance I felt
integrity compelled me to know it. The Katharevousa is
as much Koine as Classical. The Atticizing movement
has kept classical and biblical idiom in the thought
patterns of Greeks down through the centuries. You
cannot read Jannaris, Hatzidakis, Shipp and Caragounis
and minimize its importance. So Eric, in practice I
have embraced your model of pedagogy since Dr. Buth's
method is not available to me at this moment.
ex animo
Hugh Donohoe
Hugh,
Yes, that is ironic, and partly because it involves a
different sense of the
terms artificial and authentic from what I'm trying to
use. What you are
describing, i.e. Modern Greek with artifial issues, is
what I'm calling
authentic. It's a living language experiencing various
pressures and
counter-pressures, including the tensions of holding
to some standard from
the past versus going along with some of the changes
that have crept in.
This mish-mash is what I call authentic, and what
makes it into books is
usually cleaned up quite a bit. These books are read,
however, by people
familiar with the street language as well, and to
various degrees writers
make allusions to or are influenced by what goes on in
that street language.
I'm not trying to suggest that we try to make Koine
alive, since I don't see
how that's possible. I do feel, though, that fluency
in Modern Greek would
be very useful.
In Indonesia I felt that becoming fluent through
immersion even in a very
unrelated language really opened my eyes to a lot of
things I hadn't been
aware of before, and my learning of Greek progressed a
lot faster after
that. After that experience I've hoped that I'd have
the chance to learn
Modern Greek and Hebrew through immersion as well.
Eric
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