[B-Greek] PUSHING and PULLING
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Thu Aug 27 11:06:12 EDT 2009
One of the challenges of working on internalizing Greek is finding simple
situations that call for decisions on language choices.
What signs would you put up on a door in Greek where one would say
'push' and 'pull'
in English?
You have thirty seconds for the quiz. (a joke)
If a person was learning any modern language they would probably learn
'push' and 'pull' within the first couple of weeks of being in a situation
where the language was spoken. How many Koine students can relate
to this in the language?
[[Background: with the 'Gospels in the Galilee' workshop coming up this
31March to 11April I need to be preparing materials and making decisions.
It can be fun. For example, at QibbutzTzuba we have used
ANOIKSON and KLEISON for telling someone to open or shut a door.
But the Galilee will be different (besides going from a 4 hour/day class
to a 12-hour/day workshop) ]]
So what about a nice glass push-pull door looking out over the sea?
One must decide on the best word choice and then, of course, one needs
to get the aspect right, which might mean a special form.
If you chose WQEI~N for 'to be pushing' and 'E'LKEIN' for 'to be pulling', then
we are on the same page.
And like so many of the common words
that any two or three year old would learn,
we need to say:
ὤσον ἕλκυσον
WSON ELKYSON
So now we can get into the breakfast room and do all the OQEIN-ing and
ELKEIN-ing we want.
And it's so much fun to demonstrate WSON
and ELKYSON
so that everyone immediately understands.
EILKYSAS THN QYRAN? KAGW WSA.
ERRWSQE
IWANHS
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
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