[B-Greek] Fwd: Porter Beginning Greek Book

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Sun Aug 2 14:37:53 EDT 2009


On Aug 2, 2009, at 10:50 AM, Randall Buth wrote:

> maybe the meta-term 'internalize' doesn't communicate..

Randall,

I think there are more options than SLA and grammar-translate.  
Frankly, my current experience tells me that students who "learned" a  
modern language using SLA have more trouble learning an ancient  
language than students who learned English grammar using something  
like Charles Fries. Regardless of how you start out in beginning  
greek, you will at some time need to be able to do grammatical  
analysis, otherwise you will not be able to interact with 2000 years  
of exegetical tradition. SLA might put off the pain of learning  
analysis to a later date, but you will just pay the bill next year or  
five years later.

I agree that translation exercises are bad. The more you stay away  
from english the better off you will be. That said, I will admit that  
in struggling with difficult passages in Sophocles and Thucydides a  
good literal rendering in my native tongue is something like reading a  
commentary on the text. The goal isn't to produce another translation,  
but when the going gets really difficult having one or two good  
translations can help you conceptualize what the Greek text is saying.

If someone can read Agamemnon **for the first time** without any  
reference to a translation or any other kind of commentary, then then  
give them the Nobel Prize or what ever, but the rest of use will still  
need some help from our native language tools.

I know, the classic retort is "but you really don't understand SLA"  
followed by another thousand words. I have heard this before.

Thank you,


Elizabeth Kline







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