[B-Greek] Songs for teaching Greek

Louis Sorenson llsorenson at hotmail.com
Thu Jul 2 23:08:09 EDT 2009


Hello all, 

One of the things I plan to do this year in a beginning class I am teaching is to use songs to teach Greek.  Over the last 6 months I have been trying to translate some of the modern worship songs into Koine. These songs are well-known, popular and often have choruses and refrains that are sung repeatedly. These are songs which people 'want' to sing. 

In addition to just having students sing the songs, I am trying to figure out how songs could be changed by the students and used as a kind of Chreia which they can manipulate by changing the person, mood, voice and substituting other vocabulary.  This is all new to me (I am not a musician nor singer; although I can play the piano a little and hold somewhat of a tune.  I just teach classes in a local group, and I'm not a professor or anything similar).  

For those who are interested, the latest song I've tried to translate is Awesome God by Rich Mullin. The chorus, which now stands as a song on its own, starts 'Our God is an Awesome God'.  I've also added some 'Chreia' suggestions and alternate line options for this song. I'm just putting it out there to see what other people can do with it. I hope to have 10 songs by the end of the year which are perfected and have the Chreia alternatives.  

The Songs can be found at http://www.letsreadgreek.com/songs/ .  Some songs need significant rework; I've gotten better over the last several months in matching the meter/beat. Greek words often have more syllables than the corresponding English (e.g. love AGAPH), so sometimes significant changes need to be made when translating.  Hopefully I have gotten the accents correct, I've strived hard to be correct. Let me know if you find errors or have suggestions. 

Awesome God can be found at http://www.letsreadgreek.com/songs/awesomegod/awesomegod.htm

Louis Sorenson

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