[B-Greek] Teaching languages alive in the classroom

Kevin Riley klriley at alphalink.com.au
Wed Feb 6 00:23:57 EST 2008


I think we may be fooling ourselves if we think diglossia is a new situation
in Greek.  'Atticising' - or whatever we want to call the practice of
maintaining past forms because of some perceived deficiency of present
contemporary forms - started before the NT was written.  I would not be
surprised if we find some of the variants in Homer are due to exactly the
same process.  I am not sure that such a wide-spread phenomenon should be
called "artificial".
 
Kevin
 
-------Original Message------- 
 
From: Hugh Donohoe Jr. 
Date: 6/02/2008 3:00:56 AM 
 
Eric, 
 
The irony is: Modern Greek has its own artificial 
Issues because of the Atticizing of the Katharvousa. 
Of course Modern Greeks work comfortably between the 
Demotic and the Katharevousa. I guess learning a 
Modern language which is sufficiently artificial will 
Help you avoid artificiality in making Koine alive? 
I'm being a little facetious, but the truth is usually 
More peculiar than we realize. 
 
Ex animo 
 
Hugh Donohoe 
 
 .



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