[B-Greek] On Fluency, Aspirations and Choices

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Oct 8 15:12:44 EDT 2008


On Oct 4, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Michael Aubrey wrote:

> 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 ARTOS (ἄρτος)  
> and the loaf sitting in the kitchen doesn't exist in any student's  
> mind. There is only a relationship between the lexemes  
> "ARTOS" (ἄρτος)  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!

This was only four days ago -- I write on Oct. 8 -- but it still seems  
to me to cut to the core of how the different stances on pronunciation  
and its bearing on successful pedagogy or acquisition of a meaningful  
command of Greek. It's not far removed in spirit from what I wrote in  
a post to the list on Feb. 28, 2006:

"One problem I noted previously about the metalinguistic grammars is  
that, to the extent that they are written in the alien language of the  
student, they are oriented excessively toward conversion of Greek  
idiomatic structures and usage into alien idiomatic structures and  
usage: one learns from grammars how to translate at least as much and  
often far more than how to understand the original Greek construction  
and usage. They foster the understanding of reading Greek as DECODING  
an alien cryptogram. I am convinced that successful language  
instruction, however conducted, ought to lead to THINKING, so far as  
possible, in the alien language. And I do suspect that goal would be  
fostered by using the language being learned -- ancient Greek -- as  
the language for grammatical accounting -- or at least, underscore the  
distinction between UNDERSTANDING Greek and TRANSLATING it into one's  
native language."

There's been a lot of lengthy give-and-take in this latest of our  
recurrent go-rounds on getting the pronunciation scheme right when  
learning Greek and how it bears upon the degree of success in  
learning. In general I have found the recurrent discussions of  
pronunciation of Biblical Greek predictable, boring, and not really  
likely to sway opinions of readers away from the pronunciation they've  
learned or the way they think the matter of pronunciation bears upon  
their ability to read Biblical Greek (or other historical phases of  
the language).

It is as the old saying expresses it: "You pays your money and you  
takes your choice."

What B-Greekers share is some degree of investment in acquiring skills  
in the Biblical Greek language in order to read Greek Biblical texts.  
What differentiates B-Greekers with regard to this investment is just  
how much they are willing to invest in acquiring those skills and just  
what constitutes, in the perspective of each aspirant, "reading" Greek  
Biblical texts.

I have no idea of the percentages of those aspiring to "read" Greek  
Biblical texts falling into the different categories, but I think  
there are at least three such categories:

(1) "minimalists" who will be content to glean what they can from  
interlinears (including "reverse interlinears"), parsed Greek texts, a  
brief introductory course in Biblical Greek or self-study of a  
textbook such as Mounce or Machen, perhaps an intermediate reference  
grammar and an inexpensive dictionary that is little more than a  
glossary; they tend to be essentially "decoders" who work toward  
solution of the Greek text as a cryptogram to be solved and rendered  
in an acceptable "translation"; at worst, they hold some mystical  
notion of some single meaning attaching to each Greek word and a  
notion that the meaningful thought is the aggregate sum of the  
meanings of the words expressing it; the Greek Bible is the outer  
boundary of their focal concern, and even the LXX is of concern only  
insofar as it illuminates the GNT; the highest aspiration of the  
"minimalist" seems to be to re-read the books of the GNT again and  
again, perhaps to achieve one's own perfected translation of the  
whole; these are the people to whom "analytical" GNT's and Biblical  
software packages pander, offering them a tempting illusory experience  
of "reading and understanding" the real Greek Biblical text.

(2) "maximalists" who aspire to intimate familiarity with the Biblical  
Greek as it was spoken and  written in its own era, grasping what is  
written as the thought finds expression in the flow of the text,  
voicing the sounds of the language as they were spoken and heard in  
the Hellenistic-Roman era in the eastern Mediterranean area, reading  
not only Biblical Greek texts but other contemporary Greek texts as  
well as earlier and later Greek texts; they will make use of the best  
lexical and grammatical reference works available and aspire to make  
sense of the Biblical Greek texts as compositions intended to be read  
aloud before an audience attending to a SPOKEN language, a language  
that its writers and its hearers use not only in their ecclesiastical  
communities but in their everyday life in the secular world;

(3) "wannabes" -- probably the great majority of B-Greekers -- who  
have begun the study of Biblical Greek in hopes of reading and  
understanding the GNT as it was intended by its original authors and  
as it was understood by its original listeners (not silent readers,  
but listeners to a text that was heard). With respect to Greek  
pronunciation, the "wannabes" are not quite sure what they want in  
terms of authenticity. Some want to use the pronunciation of modern  
Greek because they know that when the GNT is read aloud in the  
Orthodox churches, it is "understood" (more or less) by the  
congregations of modern-Greek-speakers -- it doesn't matter that  
several vowels and diphthongs are pronounced in the same way; others  
want to voice the Greek text in such a manner that the sounds of all  
the consonants, vowels, and diphthongs are clearly distinct from each  
other -- that's the virtue they think they see in the Erasmian  
pronunciation, regardless whether the actual language was ever sounded  
that way in the linguistic history of Greek. This involves a certain  
commitment to the artificial conventions of a traditional orthography  
belonging rather to classical Attic rather than to Hellenistic-Roman  
Koine (distinct sounds of E and AI, of OI and I, of U and OU, etc.,  
etc.). Our helpful editors of the GNT have neatly printed out our  
Greek text in the orthography of classical Attic, whereas those who  
look closely at Hellenistic-Roman papyri and the earliest codices of  
the GNT must face a text in which spelling reflects actual  
contemporary pronunciation as much or more than traditional Attic  
orthographic conventions. "Wannabes" are confused about pronunciation,  
and I think that's why this thread on pronunciation has never yet come  
to any conclusive consensus. I think we just simply don't have any  
agreement about whether the Biblical Greek text is essentially a  
literary text or the deposit of a language that was spoken and  
intended to be heard aloud.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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