From: Randall Buth (ButhFam@compuserve.com)
Date: Tue Jan 08 2002 - 18:36:20 EST
TW IERKER
CAIREIN
(Please excuse the resending/rewording I had an email 'glitch'.)
>
>But I have doubts concerning your method. Classic Greek isnt just any
>language, its a dead language, an language not spoken or written for
>thousands of years. Knowledge in greek comes froe careful studying of the
>sedimentations not from lively participation in ongoing communication.
When
>we start to write in greek we arent actually reliving the good old days
>but rather, at best, poorly imitating that that ones was.
>
>Jerker Karlsson
The above is exactly the challenge.
Please notice that the above actually mixes two concerns.
1. It is true that our knowledge comes from carefully sifting though old
'sedimentations'.
2. But that doesn't mean that we need to teach it that way.
Consider the other side:
every language is equally dead in a classroom. The students come in
without the "code". The teacher, hopefully, controls the code, pretty well.
When we teach Bib. Hebrew we actually use TWO teachers for much
of the time. Two teachers, both of whom share "the code", are able to
respond to each other in appropriate ways. Students who are watching
are able to learn things that are difficult to teach directly.
e.g. "sameaH"/"`atsuv" 'happy'/'sad' with approriate acting.
A: "ha-`atsuv atta? B: "`atsuv"
A: ha-sameaH atta? B: SameaH, eni `atsuv/
Our biggest problem i the field of Greek studies is that teachers do
not control the code to a high/fluent enough level to shift into more
effective
modes of sharing the code.
So if we can teach Russian or Chinese in a classroom, why not
ancient Greek? One typical excuse is "perfectionism"--i.e., we can't know
if the teacher is perfectly controlling ancient Greek. Actually, we
can assume the opposite--the teacher will make many mistakes. But the
students still learn at a much faster rate. Any natural language learning
is actually on a continuing track of self-correction. Things get better
and better for the student, expecially as they read lots of original
text and bump into idioms and structures that they have either been
looking for or struggling with. Learning is deeper and sticks longer than
when taught through another language. Teaching Greek through English,
Swedish or Hebrew would guarantee misconceptions on a grosser scale.
I've certainly seen this with Hebrew. The misconceptions that arise in
Hebrew by learning through a foreign language continually arise in my
classes at Rothberg (Hebrew U) with foreign students. Anyway, my
main point is that classrooms make all langauges "dead". It is up to
teachers to bring students up to a FLUENT "state of the art". And that
probably requires restructing the way we teach Greek.
a quibble:
" an [sic] language not spoken or written for thousands of years"
Actually, people were writing a 'high language' until relatively recent
times. Josephus probably didn't speak like he writes. Throughout the
Byzantine period the elite and educated continued to write a
"classic-izing"
Greek. We don't use that material to 'prove' meanings and structures
from ancient times, but those people certainly knew their Greek to write
such material. And they would have had a much easier time perusing the
old material than people incapable of conversing in the 'old style'. Even
more remarkable, during the Byzantine times those people were handling
that high language with only a modern phonology plus "/y/" (i.e.
[OI] and [U]).
ERRWSO
Randall Buth
www.biblicalulpan.org
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