[B-Greek] Can learning Romanian help you learn Greek? (was Fw: B-Greek Digest, Vol 97, Issue 7

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Thu Jan 6 13:02:40 EST 2011


Vasile wrote:

<Indeed, one cannot learn the Greek middle by trying to understand the
particularities of the Romanian reflexive. I just meant to say that it
could be helpful for one whose language does not have this tool to see
how a 'living' language use some similar construction. One advantage
is that you can ask any Romanian about the meanings/details, etc. of
such constructions and get a full understanding of the thing. This
idea was not prompted by some sudden inspiration of mine but by the
fact that I noticed that many aspects related to the Greek middle
voice are just natural to me as a native Romanian speaker, whereas for
others a lot of analysis is necessary before it is clarified.>

Hi, Vasile,

There are two separate questions here, both worthy of discussion.  The first is 
whether learning a little about Romanian, or any other language, will really 
help you understand Greek any better.  Linguists like to do this.  They like to 
explain a Hebrew construction by some analogue to Navaho.  The problem is that 
one doubts how well the linguist knows either language,  and at any rate,  since 
the reader knows no Navaho or anything about Navaho, the whole thing just leads 
to more meta-linguistic abstraction, which is the argument for sticking to the 
target language.

The other question is which native language will best prepare one for learning 
Greek.  You obviously know Romanian better than I ever will, so of course it is 
helpful to YOU.  And it may well be, that Romanian, since it has a middle, is 
one of the better native languages to start with to learn Greek.  I would think 
German and Russian, because they are somewhat inflective would also be good.  
Italian might be good for a vocab base. 


But I will say this.  English is probably the worse native language to have if 
you want to learn Greek.  Why?  Two words:  Word and order.   The English brain 
is programed to think that if something comes first, it is the subject.  If this 
word is CLOSE to this, it must GO with that.  It is very hard to get over this 
and begin to internalize the infinitely looser Greek word order.  It can be 
done, but Lord, it takes much time and re-programming.  Starting with a language 
with a freer word order would be a huge help, I think.  How free is the Romanian 
word order?

 Mark L



FWSFOROS MARKOS




________________________________
From: Vasile Stancu <stancu.c.vasile at gmail.com>
To: Shirley Rollinson <rollinsondr at yahoo.com>
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wed, January 5, 2011 10:50:19 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Fw: B-Greek Digest, Vol 97, Issue 7

Hi, Shirley,

Right, there are complications beyond the basic function of it. Even
in my language, middles (or reflexives, as they are labelled) may have
quite different meanings than their active couterparts. For instance,
the middle of 'catch' means something like 'I agree to participate' or
'I do dare do it'.

Indeed, one cannot learn the Greek middle by trying to understand the
particularities of the Romanian reflexive. I just meant to say that it
could be helpful for one whose language does not have this tool to see
how a 'living' language use some similar construction. One advantage
is that you can ask any Romanian about the meanings/details, etc. of
such constructions and get a full understanding of the thing. This
idea was not prompted by some sudden inspiration of mine but by the
fact that I noticed that many aspects related to the Greek middle
voice are just natural to me as a native Romanian speaker, whereas for
others a lot of analysis is necessary before it is clarified.

Vasile Stancu

2011/1/6 Shirley Rollinson <rollinsondr at yahoo.com>:
> YASSAS Vasile !
> When dealing with Middles, there's a further complication - they may have a 
>different meaning to the Active/Passive.
> eg.  ARXW / ARXOMAI   I rule / I begin   - both to do with being number one and 
>at the head of the line, but if one does not know the usage it is not something 
>one can work out by logic.
> Every language has its own peculiarities.
> :-)
> Shirley Rollinson
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Mesaj redirecţionat ----------
> From: Vasile Stancu <stancu.c.vasile at gmail.com>
> To: Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
> Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 22:52:19 +0200
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] SIKELOS OMFAKIZETAI What kind of middle?
> There is a proverb in some of our villages in Romania which reads
> something like, 'Well, you have done a business like Pista with the
> vinegar'. ('Pista' is a Hungarian diminutive masculine name - very
> common in some places). Suppose this proverb were discovered after
> 2000 years: there are good chances that nobody would understand its
> meaning if there was no testimony on that by somebody who lived in
> those times. Now, this is my testimony for the reseachers 2000 years
> from now:  Pista found out that vinegar may be obtained from wine, so
> he started a 'new business': he transformed all the wine he had in the
> cellar into vinegar in the hope that he would make good money out of
> that. His neighbours learned about Pista's new enterprise and assigned
> his experience to anything that was a bad business. And now this
> proverbs applies to anything which is unprofitable business.
>
> It might be (this time I am joking...) that our Sicilian guy just
> found that he could make pickles, for instance, of the grapes, and not
> only wine, so he decided to harvest the grapes while good-sour.
>
> Vasile Stancu
>
> P.S. On middles, I believe that there could hardly be a definition -
> however extensive - that encompasses all possible meanings and facets
> of it. As an alternative method of study, why not study other
> languages (that are currently spoken) like Romanian, where there are
> three voices, active, passive and reflexive. The latter one is very
> much similar to the Greek middle. We have, for instance, a verb for
> 'laugh'; but also a middle for of it - something like 'laugh oneself'.
> However, for 'smile' we only have the active - no middle. Then
> sometimes one says angrily to another who happened to have laughed at
> him: 'Why are you laughing yourself?' Then the other says, jokingly,
> 'I did not laugh myself; I just smiled myself...' How to explain such
> details apealing to such formulas as 'in his own interest', or 'for
> himself'? Cannot, I guess... But using middles in so many examples
> that can be found in other languages (like Romanian), would widen
> one's mind on that, without having to apeal to all those funny
> categories that have been defined, which prove, at times, to be quite
> limited.
>
>
> 2011/1/4 Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>:
>> Thanks, Carl and Stephen.
>>
>> I think I understand the proverb better now.  To produce sour grapes for
>> oneself, for one's own interest, is comic paradox and it is not surprising 
>that
>> the middle is found only here.  The proverb in the form quoted in LSJ has an
>> ellipsis, κλεψας KLEYAS or the like, so the Sicilian, having stolen something
>> worthless, finds himself with sour grapes, which he himself produced, but for
>> naught.
>>
>> One is tempted to call this the comic middle.   The only other example which
>> comes to mind is the cuckold, of whom it is said, even though he is  male,
>> γαμεῖται  GAMEITAI.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  Mark L
>>
>>
>>
>> FWSFOROS MARKOS
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Stephen Carlson <stemmatic at gmail.com>
>> To: Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
>> Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>> Sent: Sat, January 1, 2011 11:08:34 AM
>> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] SIKELOS OMFAKIZETAI What kind of middle?
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com> 
wrote:
>>> LSJ defines ὀμφακίζω (OMFAKIZW) "to be unripe, properly of grapes" and 
refers
>>>to
>>> Isaiah 18:5 where the active is found.  Then it goes on to say "in Mid.,
>>> Σικελὸς  ὀμφακίζεται the Sicilian steals sour grapes, proverb. of one who 
>will
>>> steal anything worthless, Epich. 163 Ahr., cf. Aristaen. 2.7 Erasm. Adag. p.
>>> 240."
>>>
>>> I don't get how the middle is working here.  If the active means to produce
>>>sour
>>> grapes, how does the middle come to mean steal sour grapes?  I understand 
>that
>>> this is a free translation, but what is going on here?  Is this some special
>>> kind of a middle that I am unfamiliar with?  Are there other examples?
>>
>> According to TLG, this verb occurs in the MP only here in this
>> proverb, which is cited multiple times and explained as stealing
>> something worthless (whence the explanation in LSJ).
>>
>> I'd view it as a middle: "the Sicilian sours," presumably because he
>> stole sour grapes and ate them, leaving a sour taste in his mouth.
>> The Sicilian is experiencing the sourness of the grapes, so I'd
>> consider this a middle of perception (per Allan's classification) like
>> γεύομαι GEUOMAI ("I taste").  The LSJ's proposed gloss of "steals
>> sours grapes" comes from the explanation of the proverb, rather than
>> anything inherent in the verb or its morphology.
>>
>> Stephen
>> --
>> Stephen C. Carlson
>> Graduate Program in Religion
>> Duke University
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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