[B-Greek] Dialogos Got Milk?
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 14 19:13:07 EST 2010
Carl wrote:
<We may get to the point when we will no longer expect
transliterations of text cited in Greek font, but we aren't there yet.
For now, the rule still stands...>
Hi, Carl,
I wrote my bit about G.A.L.A. on another forum, Dialogos,
where we are not required to transliterate. I don't know
how it wound up on B-Greek, but I had nothing to do with it.
What is it that Bob Dole, then Chairman of the Republican
National Committee said about the Watergate break in?
"It happened on my night off."
I already responded off-list in Greek to Niko's fine response
to my post. I invited him to join Dialogos and I hope he
will. Donald Cobb and I have been urging people for
months to write on Dialogos with very little success.
When some writing in Koine finally does break out, it
happens on the wrong list! So, if people want a place where
they can write in Greek without having to transliterate, contact
me off list and I will get them fixed up on Dialogos.
But as long as I am here, I wanted to respond on list
to one thing that Randall wrote. I will make it quick.
This being Valentine's Day and "Black Sunday"
(the first Sunday without Pro Football,) I have a lot
to do today...NOT!
Randall wrote:
<Nice discussion>
Hi, Randall,
Thanks for the compliment. What I wrote PERI GALAKTOS
was your idea, both in form and content. Dialogos is your
baby, for good or ill ("Frankenbuth?")
That is to say, I am sold. I am one of you. The truth
does lie in a Buth. (Don't you think I should get some
more props for this? Come on, a tri-lingual pun? Don't
tell me you have not used this little DWRON PARA MOU.)
I have found that writing, listening to, and speaking
Greek has helped my reading. It makes the text seem
a little more familiar. You notice little things that you would
only notice after actively producing them. Long ago you thought
you knew the forms, but you know them a little better now,
or in a different way, and this allows you to read the easy
stuff very quickly and save your mental energy for the rare
vocab and tough constructions. Here's something else weird
about G.A.L.A. I have found that for some reason WRITING in
Greek has really helped my ability to HEAR Greek read, You
were right about there being these parts of your brain that
need to be opened up by Living Language Methods.
It's not that I ever really doubted Buthianism. But you know
that bit about Adult Baptism: "Do I believe in it? I've actually
seen it done." I wanted to see it done and now I have.
Also, I always found, never you, but some Buthians, a little
smug about the whole thing. I always sensed that some
people who pushed Living Language Methods never themselves
did the hard work to see if they work. It's worked for me.
Having been for years a reader only, I now find that I spend
about half my time on the G.A.L. I'm not sure if I would recommend
that ratio for everyone nor if I will keep it up. I still find reading
tremendously important, as I know you do. Don't forget I spent
much of 2009 reading all of the Iliad and half of the Odyssey.
I can't prove for sure that THIS is not why my Greek has seemed
to take a bit of a quantum leap.
A little update on my PROSFORA: Right now I am involved in
two Greek Speaking Groups. Donald Cobb and I send each other
conversational Koine audio files which we make. It's great because
you can pause them while you figure them out and after you
listen to them you can put them on your MP3 player. These
help you internalize even more than Rico or Buth because they
are MORE real. Anyway, Cobb says he switched from Erasmus
to Buth a year and a half ago. I can understand him perfectly and
he can understand me perfectly. It's just not an issue.
The second group is me and two other ladies who are sort
of beginners/intermediates. We just started. They don't know it
yet, but they are the control group to see if adding speaking at an
earlier level will really amp up reading ability. They are both
Erasmian, but one of them conflates W and O at various
times. The other is sort of opposed to breathing marks on
the ground that they are not part of the autographs, but she
aspirates HTA and yet no other vowels. When she told me this,
I said, "So, you say hHMIN but UMIN?" She said yes and I
responded just the way one should. I did not say "Well, why
do you do that? It's not consistent. Neither goose nor gander.
It's not authentic. No historical Greek ever spoke that way."
I just nodded and found the whole thing interesting. Everyone
has their own idiolect. Cobb sometimes slips back into Erasmian
and I find that more and more I am conflating O-W because Rico
does this and because of all of Sorensen's darn songs which get
stuck in my head and because I still listen to your John a lot. I haven't even
asked Cobb if he is happy with having made the switch, because one
of the things I like about this guy is that we never, EVER talk ABOUT
using Koine; we just do it. γ.α.λ.α εχομεν. G.A.L.A EXOMEN
ελπιζω οτι συ και ο οικος σου καλως εχουσι.
ερρωσο.
ELPIZW hOTI SU KAI hO OIKOS SOU
KALWS ECOUSI. ERRWSO
Mark L
FWSFOROS MARKOS
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