[B-Greek] Etymological fallacy?
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 19 15:07:19 EST 2008
And while on the subject of childish pursuits and Greek, you might find this of interest -- or not.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/26505
george
gfsomsel
… search for truth, hear truth,
learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth,
defend the truth till death.
- Jan Hus
_________
________________________________
From: Joseph Weaks <j.weaks at tcu.edu>
To: B- Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 2:59:12 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Etymological fallacy?
I think a big part of the problem is that as a teacher of Greek to
beginning students, it is too tempting to over-simplify for the sake
of pedagogical advantage. Etymological & transliterative cues play
such a role in vocabulary learning. I think this applies equally to
both deductive and inductive process. It goes like this:
Teacher: "Yes, well, LUW means 'to release or loose'."
Student: "I'm never going to remember that."
Teacher: "You can find it in in English words... 'analysis' is ANA+LUW
which is to 'break up' something so you can analyze each part."
Student: "Excellent. I understand."
Teacher: "Right, you UNDER+STAND it, meaning that you stand under the
concept in order to gain perspective on it."
Student: "Huh?"
And, once we've learned vocabulary through such reliance, it's
difficult to move away from it. When I was a [Greek-learning] child, I
thought like a child, but now...
Cheers,
Joe
Rev. Joseph A. Weaks
Minister, Raytown Christian Church
Ph.D. Cand., Brite Divinity School, TCU
On Nov 19, 2008, at 1:26 PM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:
> I like Carl's comment that there seems to be no way to convince
> people regarding the ety. fallacy. I'm afraid the problem is that
> etymological "gold nuggets" are one of the leading reasons why people
> get interested in Greek, and they desperately want to believe in
> them.
---
B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
B-Greek mailing list
B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list