[B-Greek] grammar-translation

Sarah Madden sarah.r.madden at gmail.com
Tue Aug 4 14:59:47 EDT 2009


Marty --
I applaud your determination! But please do not remain discouraged! I was
discouraged myself when I first started learning Greek years ago, and now in
my spare time I tutor grad students -- both those who are struggling and
those who want to refresh their Greek skills. Early on, one of the best
pieces of advice I received was to read Greek daily (and at times out loud)
as part of my devotions -- and to start in the Gospel of John. John's vocab
is simpler than other books, the theology is immense, and it's packed with
action. These are all encouraging to new students.

I have created several handouts I could send you if you (or anyone else)
would like them:

   - Confusing Pairs (pairs of Greek words that students often confuse even
   if they are are not lexically connected, like KAIROS and KURIOS)
   - Greek Vocab list (it goes down to words that occur in the NT 19x or
   more) -- keyed to Mounce's grammar book for the first few pages, then purely
   in order of occurrence
   - Verb Parsing Chart
   - Greek Alphabet Tips
   - Diagram of John 1:1-5 (as a PowerPoint slideshow) -- based on Eric
   Sowell's work at http://www.lexelsoftware.com/

 When I read out loud, I like to read like it's a language because, well, it
IS a language, and we owe it to the text to read intelligibly,
accurately, and with passion.


Sarah ><>
CBS student, Lanahm, Md.
sarah.r.madden at gmail.com

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Martin F. Daly <
pastor at ruggleschurch.worthyofpraise.org> wrote:

> I find myself sadly discouraged and must make definite effort to press on
> with my desire to be able to read my Greek New Testament.
> I set that as a 10 year goal for myself 6 years ago and realize that I
> gave myself too much credit. I am miserably plodding along, yet am not
> wanting to give up.
> I have no grand illusions that I will ever achieve the level of some on
> this list, but am committed to a life of continued meditation in the
> text, relishing in the joy of
> discovery as new understanding dawns.
>
> EN CHARIS,
> --- marty ---
>
>   Elizabeth Kline wrote:
> > On Aug 4, 2009, at 8:30 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:
> >
> >
> >> It is ,alas -- my reaction, shared, I suspect by very few --,  the
> >> wave of the future in Biblical Greek pedagogy -- less so in
> >> Classical Greek pedagogy. There is no pretense of such fool notions
> >> as "thinking in Greek." Rather, it is: Parse, decode, and use the
> >> glosses to convert to woodenly-literal English, somewhat like an
> >> attempt to describe the taste of a cucumber or broccoli that one has
> >> only sniffed. Granted, this is a gross exaggeration, but there is, I
> >> think, more than a little truth in it.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Carl,
> >
> > I agree, it is "the wave of the future in Biblical Greek pedagogy"
> >
> >
> > On Aug 4, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Will Dilbeck wrote:
> >
> >
> >>  "Pragmatically, how can I go from translation to reading/thinking
> >> in Greek?"
> >>
> >
> > Will,
> >
> > The only evidence I can see that I have "internalized" greek is errors
> > in my english syntax. I tend to drop the verb "to be" and my use of
> > the articles has suffered. I also use some really strange word order
> > and drop out constituents which are not "optional" in english.  But I
> > make lots of other errors which don't lend themselves to this
> > explanation. I don't even dream of thinking in Greek, it isn't going
> > to happen. My aptitude for SLA is marginal to poor. I didn't do well
> > in modern languages when i was in school.
> >
> > Aptitude is one issue that Buth seems to have completely ignored. This
> > is a common fault found in "gifted people". They just cannot
> > understand what the majority of the populace is up against. Must of us
> > are not gifted people and learning Greek, Latin or Hebrew requires a
> > ridiculous level of time investment. Those who choose to avoid the
> > whole problelm and just use english tools for exegesis have a strong
> > pragmatic argument in thier favor. Why bother investing thousands of
> > hours to become a mediocre reader of Koine?
> >
> > .
> >
> > Here is a text David Black uses to illustrate the imperative
> > .
> > John 14:1 Μὴ ταρασσέσθω ὑμῶν ἡ καρδία·
> > πιστεύετε εἰς τὸν θεὸν καὶ εἰς ἐμὲ
> > πιστεύετε.
> > .
> > JOHN 14:1 MH TARASSESQW hUMWN hH KARDIA· PISTEUETE EIS TON QEON KAI
> > EIS EME PISTEUETE.
> > .
> >
> > Black used intonation and/or paraphrase in english to illustrate how
> > an exegetical decision about the ambiguous form PISTEUETE would play
> > out in four possible combinations of indicative vs. imperative
> > readings of PISTEUETE. It would be an interesting exercise to come up
> > with an alternative teaching method that could illustrate this point
> > without using translation alternatives.
> > .
> >
> >
> > Elizabeth Kline
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
> > 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
> >
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek<http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreekB-Greek>
> B-Greek <http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreekB-Greek> mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>
>


 --
Sarah ><>
sarah.r.madden at gmail.com
work: 301.429.8189



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