[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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