[B-Greek] On Fluency (Greek NT audio)

Jeffrey T. Requadt jeffreyrequadt_list at hotmail.com
Sat Oct 4 22:42:46 EDT 2008


As an educator (albeit, an elementary one) who took 2 traditional years of NT Greek in undergraduate school, as well as having informally studied it since 8th grade with the help of adults, a 22nd edition Nestle-Aland, and a few good resources, I would agree completely with what Michael says here. In an earlier post, Randall mentioned the link between spoken fluency and reading fluency. I think sometimes students of NT Greek (and aren't we talking about it as a language, not just the ability to read the NT?) forget that reading and writing and speaking and listening are all forms of language (the many linguistic scholars on the list can correct me in this, but I think they would agree). Two of them are expressive (speaking and writing), and two of them are receptive (listening and reading). Each one involves real language; that is, they involve the communication of ideas through representation. The writing/reading system involve visual representations, while the speaking/listening system 
Involves oral/aural representations. The visual system in English, Greek, and other alphabetic systems uses a range of symbol-sound correspondences that are not always the same in every word (e.g., "th" in English can sound differently in different words, as can "gh"). Also, when it comes to homophones, homonyms, and homographs, the different symbol/sound correspondences get increasingly complicated. What is so fascinating to me is how incredibly amazing our human brains are at constructing meaning out of all of it. Even in pictographic languages, like Chinese, the brain still constructs meaning from visual symbols, even though the symbols may not represent a correspondence to specific sounds. So whether I'm reading in Greek, French, or English, my brain is taking what I see and making it mean something. That's why often we make "mistakes" without realizing it--we read something that the author didn't actually write, but because our way of reading it makes sense, it doesn't even occur to us. Only when something doesn't make sense, and the process breaks down, do I stop and say, "huh?" and go back and reread more carefully.
But the more we treat NT Greek as a "code" rather than a real language that was actually communicated between real people, the less we will expect it to mean something. I can't think of any language that people (not computers) use to communicate with each other that involves only a written component. When my students are figuring out a word, I always ask them, "does that make sense"? I expect them to "make it a real word" after they have tried putting some of the sounds together. If it doesn't sound real to them, then it probably isn't making sense, which means that they're not really reading.
This brings me to thinking about "mastering NT Greek." When I think of "mastering" a language, I visualize someone who can read any text in that language with reasonable fluency and control of meaning. For example, I would say that I have mastered the English language, largely as a result of it being my native language. On the other hand, I speak French fairly proficiently, but I don't know that I've really mastered it. I never got to a very high degree of understanding the literature that I had to read--too much difficult vocabulary, unfamiliar culture, etc. That's why I agree completely with Michael that the vast, vast majority of instruction in NT Greek does not produce masters of the language--only "code breakers". Not only that, but doesn't it usually produce people who can only "translate" the New Testament, something they could already have as a finished product in English in a gazillion different versions? I don't think our institutions really do that great a job of producing Greek language users who can read any ancient text they come across, or even any 1st century text they come across, or even any 1st century Hellenistic Jewish religious text they come across. We're usually just stuck to the New Testament. So what was the real point of learning Greek? All the exegetically important points of any passage have been completely mulled over in dozens of reference works and journal articles. If that's really the purpose of learning Greek, then I don't need to learn Greek. But if my purpose is to be able to construct meaning from the text, if I want to interact with the apostle Paul, if I want to be able to infer and predict and make connections with other texts and really, really, develop a deep meaning of the text, then I MUST, absolutely MUST, be able to read it in the language it was written in--and that involves far more than either knowing how the letters are supposed to sound or knowing that ARTOS means "bread." That really is why I started to learn Greek in the first place, but unfortunately I don't think that will ever be a reality for me. This list is a leisure activity for me, not part of my career. I just don't have the time--by which I mean, of course, that I choose to spend my time on other things. And because I don't spend a great deal of time reading new and old Greek texts and constructing meaning from what I see and hear in my head, I don't think I'll ever really get to a decent level of proficiency. Quite sad, I'll be the first to admit, but it is what it is. 
One more point on the idea of learning NT Greek as a modern Greek. I think (and I could very possibly be wrong) that it is a mistake to treat Ancient Greek, Koine Greek, and Modern Greek as three different languages. Yes, they have/had different ranges of vocabulary and grammar, but aren't they all just different phases/ages/epochs of the same language, "Greek"? Just like English has had different periods, such as Old English, Middle English, Elizabethan, etc., but it's all still English. In fact, I was amazed to come across a copy of Wycliffe's New Testament (translated in the 1300s) with modernized spelling (not grammar) and understand virtually everything. Once the spelling had been taken care of--those symbol/sound correspondences, a huge stumbling block had been removed. The more I could treat what I was reading as real language, the more my brain could process it. I think the same applies to Greek. Just like native English speakers are probably in the best position to begin to understand Shakespeare, aren't native Greek speakers in the best position to begin to learn Ancient Greek? I'm afraid that learning Koine the way Randall Buth describes might be too much for some people, myself included--especially since, unfortunately, we really don't have any audio recordings of pronunciation from the actual time in a variety of dialects. But if I really wanted to learn to read Koine Greek, and on a mastery level, it makes a great deal of sense to me that I would need to learn modern Greek first in order to be able to THINK in Greek. Then I could THINK in Greek while reading Greek documents of any period, whether Herodotus or Philo or James.
The more we treat it as a real language, with real sound/symbol correspondences, with real meanings behind those sounds, spoken and heard by real people, and written and read by real people, the more we will understand--and far more deeply, too--what we read.
And, once again, I've rambled on for far too long. I guess that makes me a teacher.

Jeff Requadt
Tucson, AZ

-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Michael Aubrey
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 11:11 AM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [B-Greek] On Fluency (Greek NT audio)

The vast majority of students in the US who learn Koine in seminaries and universities don't learn the language. What they learn is a method for translating in their heads every word and phrase that they see. There is no internal comprehension of the words. The relationship in students head between APTOS and the loaf sitting in the kitchen doesn't exist in any student's mind. There is only a relationship between the lexemes "APTOS" and "Bread." That's not reading - or if it is, its barely reading. Its more like learning a code than anything else.

I've done modern language methods for other langauges - and after three months, my Russian was better than my Greek had been after a year!

Mike
http://evepheso.wordpress.com

       
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