[B-Greek] "WRITE, WRITE WRITE' (was "Suggestions Please!")
Paul D. Nitz
paul.d.nitz at gmail.com
Sat May 28 08:53:33 EDT 2011
Louis, Carl, Randall, and others,
Lest the the authors of this thread think they are only having an internal
conversation and "preaching to the choir," know that some of us lurkers are
eager sponges! Thank you, thank you.
I'm a fledgling at thinking Greek and a babe at composing. I'll certainly
try the North & Hillard. In the mean time, I'm anxious to start to express
myself and communicate (through internal 'conversations,' Schole, or
otherwise).
In my own living language acquisition experience, I used the LAMP method
(Brewster). Much of the techniques that that might be summed up in this
way:
- - Learn "need to know" thoughts and USE them.
(Grammar will mostly come naturally as your brain recognizes patterns)
- - Construct audio exercises to speed up learning of forms.
(Mimicry, substitution, and comprehension drills)
I have a good idea of how to carry out the latter on my own.
In the case of learning "need to know" thoughts, I have a bit more of a
challenge.
Let's say I want to convey,
"That was interesting, tell me more," or
"What do you think about Herman Cain?"
How do I confirm that what I come up with is not my own
manipulation of the Greek into my English structure?
With living language acquisition, it's easy. I just need a native speaker.
He or she doesn't need to be expert. They just need to help me to convey my
little thought in a natural way in their language. But how to do it with
Koine?
- I could look in the Koine phrasebook on Schole (thanks Carl) but may not
find what I want.*
- I could try to find a similar thought in the GNT and mimic it. But how
would I know if this phrase I found is the normal/default way of saying my
thought or some special stylistic phrasing? I'm afraid of internalizing
WRONG Greek.
Maybe I just need to wait until I get more Greek in my head and then I'll
smell whether it is coming out as good Greek or not.
Any thoughts?
PD Nitz
* On a sidenote,
I have downloaded the Koine phrasebook from Schole. Thanks much for your
work on that, Carl. Many stock phrases language learners would use are
there.
Some are missing. I'm thinking of short thoughts such as,
How do you say...?
Can you use xxxx word in this way?
What's the difference between saying.. and ...?
Please explain. etc.
(Some phrases I will never use, but may learn for sheer self-entertainment,
such as: "The beer has a whang of tar in it. ὄζει πίττης ὁ ζῦθος ὀξύτατον."
I'm picturing Carl having a good chuckle as he composed that one! By the
way, is it literally, "the beer smells of tar sharply"?)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Sorenson" <llsorenson at hotmail.com>
To: "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>; "B-Greek List mail to all"
<b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>; "Randall Buth" <randallbuth at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 12:52 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] "WRITE, WRITE WRITE' (was "Suggestions Please!")
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list