[B-Greek] "WRITE, WRITE WRITE' (was "Suggestions Please!")

Louis Sorenson llsorenson at hotmail.com
Sat May 28 06:52:59 EDT 2011


Louis (me) wrote
> 2) Write, Write, Write in Greek. How and Where? There's a site called
> SCHOLE (http://www.schole.ning.com) where you can start talking (writing)
> to other people interested in KOINE. Don't be scared. Just write a few
> words. Everyone on that site knows it's hard to start writing. No one cares
> if you spell something incorrectly or it is not grammatically correct, anyone
> who started on that path had made all those blunders, they don't care about
> making/reading mistakes, what they want/enjoy/are thrilled with is that someone
> else out there is learning Greek better and is talking to them in Greek. 
> It's what many of us on SXOLE live for. Once you start using Greek to communicate,
> it soon becomes easier and easier, and more and more exciting. Soon you'll find
> it is a really enjoyable endeavor. 


Carl Conrad wrote....
I personally think this needs some qualification, to wit: one should aim not simply at 
writing in Greek but rather at writing in GOOD Greek. I know that there's an
alternative view here: "Go ahead and start writing -- it doesn't matter whether
you write correctly or eloquently, so long as you make yourself understood."

My contention, however, is that, if you REALLY want to make yourself understood
in the Greek language of the era that you want to emulate (Koine, Classical Attic,
Homeric, Byzantine, whatever), you should strive to emulate the writing of those
ancient texts that you admire and that you think express meaningful content in
a style that you find clear and free of unusual or unnecessarily complex usage.

How do you do this? It wouldn't hurt to work through the earlier sections of 
the classic textbooks of Greek composition such as North and Hilliard at the
TextKit site: hhttp://www.textkit.com/greek_grammar.php -- and note that
there are answer keys for the composition textbooks offered there. The earlier
sections of North and Hilliard focus on the standard constructions, offering 
simple rules (including alternatives, where they exist) and phrases or simple 
sentences to reformulate in Greek; the later sections offer connected prose 
paragraphs from classic English literary and historical writing. Students who 
haven't done any writing of Greek other than the translation exercises in a primer 
can acquire in this manner a command of essential tools for building standard 
and intelligible Greek sentences. Writing paragraphs is another step, precisely
because of the many Greek particles that are used to link clauses together 
(I think many would say that the standard unit of composition in English is
the sentence, but in ancient Greek it is the paragraph: PERIODOS, the
ancient Greek word for "sentence" really means something like "a complete
circuitous course from beginning to end."
.................
So I don't think it matters precisely what you read and write, but if you
care to write something more than Pidgin Greek that's as much English
idiom and word-order as it is ancient Greek, go at it systematically and
employ authentic ancient texts, Biblical or non-biblical, as your model,
and make an effort to learn to write in the style of one or more writers
that you really like.

Randall wrote...
However, it needs to be remembered that writing is slow. It
allows one to review the encoding process. It is also secondary
to speech encoding in natural language acquisition. Most writers
first start speaking their language before good writing. If we want
people to be good and attentive readers, we will also train
them in writing to sharpen those skills. And if we want people to
be good readers and writers, we will train them to speak so that
the whole process is better and more deeply internalized. And
speech interacts with listening in the same way that writing and
reading interact, except that speech and listening take place above
certain threshhold speeds. Something takes place and builds
'very deep' when a language is processed at the speed of speech
or faster.

Thank you, Carl, for pointing out the need for encoding, even in
a field where the decoding is the goal.

Louis (me) writes

I just read AT Robertson page 48.  He sort of speaks to this issue....

We must assume in a language that a good writer knew how to
use his own tongue and said what he meant to say. Good Greek
may be very poor English, as when Luke uses ἐν τῷ εἰσαγαγεῖν τοὺς
γονεῖς τὸ παιδίον Ἰησοῦν (Lu. 2:27). A literal translation of this
neat Greek idiom makes barbarous English. The Greeks simply
did not look at this clause as we do. "One of the commonest and
gravest errors in studying the grammar of foreign languages is
to make a half-conjectural translation, and then reason back
from our own language to the meaning of the original; or to ex-
plain some idiom of the original by the formally different idiom
which is our substantial equivalent." Broadus was the greatest
teacher of language that I have known and he has said nothing
truer than this. After all, an educated Greek knew what he
meant better than we do. It is indeed a great and difficult task
that is demanded of the Greek grammarian who to-day under-
takes to present a living picture of the orderly development of
the Greek tongue "zu einem schonert and grorren Ganzen” and
also show "in the most beautiful light the flower of the Greek
spirit and life.” Deissmann feels strongly on the subject of the
neglect of the literary development of Primitive Christianity, "a
subject which has not yet been recognized by many persons in its
full importance. Huge as is the library of books that have been
written on the origin of the N. T. and of its separate parts, the
N. T. has not often been studied by historians of literature; that
is to say, as a branch of the history of ancient literature."

How do you grow from Pidgin to Fluent? Reading? yes. Writing? Yes, modelling 
good Koine (e.g. not the papyri). Do you need helps? Yes, of course. Are there
Koine Greek composition books? NO. Are there Attic Composition books? Yes.
 Is Attic similar to the NT Koine? Yes. Will Attic composition books help the 
NT Koine student? Yes. The biggest difference between Attic and Koine is 
the structure of the sentence, Attic has complex PERIODOI; Koine is simpler, 
but Paul still has lengthy Periods.

It seems to me the problem with most newer students of Koine is that they 
have not been encouraged to compose anything in Greek. Only to de-compose.
The adage "Criticism is easy, Creative contribution is hard" holds here. It's easy
to decompose a language. It's hard to compose, especially if you have no
experience doing it (e.g., your teacher of Greek never assigned you 
English to Greek exercises.) If you can compose with ease, it means you have
internalized many of the structures of the language. It does not mean your 
compositions do not contain 'Pidgin.' Phrases here or there may do that. But no
one is going to read a student's compositions as GOOD KOINE. The point is to
get the student to write, and to get the student to be aware that what he writes
matches or does not match passages in ancient Koine. It's teaching AWARENESS
that is hard. Teaching one's own self-awareness is a very difficult endeavor. Often
a person may model his native language more than the Greek. This is where a teacher 
comes in to point out the differences.

I'm hoping that those who are active on Schole can and will help those who are not
as proficient. I participated in a chat yesterday with a 1st year student. He had a lot
of structures internalized. He also had some gaps (e.g. did not know the word DEI δεῖ).
But if this student spent 5 hours on Schole talking back and forth with others (hopefully,
a person who knows Greek to some depth would be participating), he is not going to be 
less fluent, but more fluent. The biggest value of Schole, I think, is to internalize forms
and case agreement. The longer Periods and understanding complicated structures are
best learned by reading. 

Most language learning takes place with a student (1) by themselves or (2) interacting with
others who are fluent. But it is interacting that makes a person more fluent. It's using a language
that internalizes it faster. It all needs to happen in a checks and balances environment. There
are few of those out there. 





 		 	   		  


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