I would like to do some observations on John M Moe's last posting,
to clarify my point of view once and (I hope) forever:
> Could I suggest that, as a mater of
>courtesy, (as opposed to law) responses to posts be in the language of the
>post to
>which they respond.
Well, at least in my case, I am afraid it is not a matter a
courtesy. Otherwise I 'll be writing on Greek syntax with Gildersleeve's
style. It happens that I don't have the skills to write in English without
ugly mistakes and, even when I think I can compose a comprehensible text in
English, most of the times I wouldn't have the time to translate it. So, at
least for me, most of the times it is a question of writing in Spanish or
not write it at all.
>But as a 56 year old parish pastor struggling with Greek, Hebrew, German,
>and Latin I am not in a position to begin learning a new language at this
>point.
I can't understand this. Tolstoy learned Greek at his eighties and
I can guarantee you that Spanish morphology is far simpler than Greek. I
can see no reason why a learned person could not learn more than one
language after his 70s. Besides, usually you don't need to *know* Spanish,
Italian, French, etc. (where "etc" stands for a language belonging to the
same linguistic branch your native langage belongs to) to read something
written about *your own field of study* in that language. Usually all that
you need is a basic knowledge of that language, some patience and maybe a
dictionary.
>If Spanish is going to become a prerequisite for this list I'm (sadly) out
>in the cold.
Here I am definitely lost trying to follow the argument.
I would rather say that a) I think there is a chance that somebody
exists in this list who can read Spanish and find some piece of useful
information in the postings from people with real interest in BGreek who
can not always write a well formed text in English b) you are surely not
loosing much if you can not read my postings. c) Spanish will surely be a
very minoritarian language in use in this list for the years to come.
I would ask anybody who protest against the use of other languages
outside it's own in the correspondence to this list to try answering *his
own postings* in a foreign language of his choice several times. This
exercise may give you the feeling of what it is like to write publicly in
English when you are not an English-speaking person (but you are
nevertheless interested in the List's contains).
Now let's come back to AT/NT Greek.
___________________________________________________________________
Daniel Rian~o Rufilanchas
c. Santa Engracia 52, 7 dcha.
28010-Madrid
Espan~a
e-mail: danielrr@mad.servicom.es