[B-Greek] Rules for reading Latin perhaps applicable to Greek
frjsilver at optonline.net
frjsilver at optonline.net
Sat Mar 3 08:19:05 EST 2007
Hear! Hear!
To paraphrase what someone wrote me not long ago: It's unhelpful to do an autopsy on fragments of a dead language and expect them to mean anything.
Greek is not a dead language, anyway.
Let's go for the meaning first, and see how the grammar *assists* the meaning -- not how the grammar *makes* the meaning.
Father James Silver
Monk James
Orthodox Church in America
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl W. Conrad"
Date: Saturday, March 3, 2007 6:32 am
Subject: [B-Greek] Rules for reading Latin perhaps applicable to Greek
To: B-Greek
> I've just come across a downloadable PDF poster entitled "Rules
> for
> Reading Latin Prose" from _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_ by
> Dexter
> B. Hoyos. The poster can be downloaded at
> http://www.txclassics.org/
> rulesposter.pdf , the book itself ( 58 p.) is available for
> $7.00 at
> http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~glawall/cane.htm (scroll down to
> the
> section entitled "Pedagogy."
>
> I haven't read it, but judging from the "Rules" set forth on
> that PDF
> poster, I would guess that this might be an inexpensive and
> useful
> resource for students of Greek: most of the principles would be
> the
> same, I think.
>
> I'm not trying to promote the book so much as one theme that it
> evidently states very clearly. I particularly approve of Rule
> #5: “If
> translating, translate only when you have seen exactly how the
> sentence works and what it means. Sub-rule: Do not translate in
> order
> to find out what the sentence means. Understand first, then
> translate.” It is abundantly evident that much of the teaching
> of
> Ancient Greek -- perhaps especially the teaching of Biblical
> Greek --
> has focused on translating MORe than on understanding, perhaps
> on
> translating RATHER THAN on understanding. So also the resources
> employed -- grammars, word-lists or "shorter lexica" seem
> focused
> upon the reformulation of a Biblical text in English (not
> necessarily
> intelligible English) -- or some other target language.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad2 at mac.com
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
>
>
> ---
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>
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