Why not start with modern Greek?

Jason Hare
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Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
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Re: Why not start with modern Greek?

Post by Jason Hare »

Randall,

I just received/saw your private message, and I understand your meaning. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

Yours,
Jason
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
JustinSmith
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Joined: June 28th, 2019, 10:06 pm

Re: Why not start with modern Greek?

Post by JustinSmith »

RandallButh wrote: August 17th, 2019, 11:53 am An interesting typo ... thinking boró. Amazing.
Perhaps you will help someone reconstruct the pronunciation a couple thousand years from now. ;)
RandallButh wrote: August 17th, 2019, 11:53 am Modern Hebrew biblical words/roots show up about 85% in a Hebrew newspaper, while I calculate closer to 60% for modern Greek. Helpful? Absolutely! Distracting for beginners? That's my call.

Incidentally, we have something similar in Arabic...
Interesting. One the one hand, I'd like to see a more official count. On the other hand, I find that believable because of the influence of Turkish and Indo-European languages, and modern technology. But I won't throw in the towel for one important reason: the medium. The national pastor of an evangelical church I attended in Athens was educated at Gordon-Conwell. When I asked him about this very question he told me that of the 5400+ words in the NT only 95 are not in use in some sense today. Obviously, "some sense" can mean a lot. But that is over 98%. Granted, he could not recall where he procured that statistic (I asked). But he preached expositional sermons twice a week and I think he, as both a native and an expositional preacher, would know if it was majorly amiss. Sure, some of those words may not be very common, but they could be emphasized in the classroom and undoubtedly reinforced in the Greek context.

I think your Arabic comparison is important. I recently sat through a thesis defense that looked into dialect transfer in Arabic (across the colloquials and also with MSA). Research is pretty definitive that those who want to read MSA would be better off starting with a colloquial dialect for about a year and then studying MSA, rather than starting with MSA. In my estimation, this would likely be the case with Greek—I just don't have the research to prove it yet.
RandallButh
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Joined: May 13th, 2011, 4:01 am

Re: Why not start with modern Greek?

Post by RandallButh »

RandallButh wrote: ↑August 17th, 2019, 6:53 pm
An interesting typo ... thinking boró. Amazing.
Perhaps you will help someone reconstruct the pronunciation a couple thousand years from now. ;)
And one must include mechanical keyboards. a person gets used to "ω" for "ν" because of the English "v". Same thing happens in Hebrew alot, like when one finds ץ at the end of a sentence for a period.
I think your Arabic comparison is important. I recently sat through a thesis defense that looked into dialect transfer in Arabic (across the colloquials and also with MSA). Research is pretty definitive that those who want to read MSA would be better off starting with a colloquial dialect for about a year and then studying MSA, rather than starting with MSA. In my estimation, this would likely be the case with Greek—I just don't have the research to prove it yet.


Go right ahead with research, just let the data lead wherever it does.
JustinSmith
Posts: 13
Joined: June 28th, 2019, 10:06 pm

Re: Why not start with modern Greek?

Post by JustinSmith »

RandallButh wrote: August 17th, 2019, 1:22 pm Go right ahead with research, just let the data lead wherever it does.
<<ὃ καὶ ἐσπούδασα αὐτὸ τοῦτο ποιῆσαι.>>
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