From: Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Dec 29 1997 - 10:38:11 EST
At 02:41 PM 12/25/97 -0600, Edgar M. Krentz wrote:
>I like your question. And, YES, native speakers of Koine Greek spoke and
>understood it the way you do a foreign language or your own. I do not parse
>German sentences, I read them. I usually do not stop to parse a Greek
>sentence in the NT after atudying and reading clasical and Koine Greek for
>54 years.
But to communicate what you understand intuitively to someone who does not
understand it, or someone with a different understanding, the grammatical
terminology is very helpful. And the grammatical terminology helps draw
attention to the features which are important to note for a good intuitive
understanding of the Greek.
>That's the way it is with discussions on b-greek. If someone asks a
>question about a particular Greek term or syntactical relationship, then I
>have to stop and bring to expression the underlying, unexpressed thoughts
>that lead me to a particular interpretation. It is when I have a question
>arise about a term or phrase that I have recourse to syntax, lexicon,
>parallel passages, etc.
I remember reading an introduction to a dictionary that said, roughly,
"people like me don't really use dictionaries; dictionaries are there to
help people like you learn to talk the way people like me already do." I
thought there was just a little hubris involved in that statement, but
there is a real germ of truth.
That said, I must confess that my Greek is still very much at the point
that formal syntax is extremely helpful for me. In German, which I speak
much better, I haven't thought about formal syntax for a long time...
Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com
Little Greek Home Page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/koine
Little Greek 101: http://sunsite.unc.edu/koine/greek/lessons
B-Greek Home Page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
B-Greek Archives: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek/archives
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