I’ve added a brief, simple note to lesson 18 on the usage of the Future Active Indicative. If you’re using the grammar, you should take a look at it.
Recommended post at ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ
I highly recommend reading Mike Aubrey’s recent post on Dionysius Thrax over at ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ.
He’s also posted his first installment of thoughts on the SBL panel discussion on Deponency. I was unable to attend this year, but am glad to hear that a consensus appears to be arising around the approach to Greek voice that I have tried to reflect in my lessons on the Aorist Middle and Passive (Lessons 19, 20, and 21).
Καλὰ Χριστούγεννα (Merry Christmas in Greek)
I wish you all a wonderful Christmas.
The folks over at Omniglot.com provided a recording of the phrase in the title of this post that was used here from 2010 to 2015. My link to that recording ceased to function this year, so I replaced it with a recording of my own. Click the triangle below if you want to learn to say “Merry Christmas” in Hellenistic Greek.
| New audio added November 25, 2016 |
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| m4a
AAC mp3 |
Thanks to Omniglot.com for providing the audio that was used in this post from 2010 to 2015!
| A note on pronunciation added in 2014: |
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| The pronunciation from Ominiglot.com was done using Modern Greek pronunciation. While there are several important differences between Modern Greek and the way the language was spoken in the Hellenistic Period (Koine), none of those differences impact the pronunciation of καλὰ Χριστούγεννα. Of course at the time of Jesus and Paul no one would have said καλὰ Χριστούγεννα since Christmas was not yet celebrated. When it did come to be celebrated, though, early Christians would have pronounced this phrase the same as it is pronounced today in Greece. |
| A note on spelling (Added 12/15/2015) | |
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| There is one small difference in spelling of the Christmas greeting between 300 CE and the present: the system of written accents has been simplified. Contrast the following spellings. Can you see the difference? | |
| Modern: | Καλά Χριστούγεννα |
| Hellenistic: | Καλὰ Χριστούγεννα |
Input and Output in Acquisition of Hellenistic Greek
In earlier posts I have mentioned the notion of Comprehensible Input and its crucial role in language acquisition. Now I want to address a different issue that has equal implications for teaching and acquiring Ancient Greek: the distinction between receptive and expressive language, also called the input/output difference.
In acquisition of an additional language, reception precedes expression. That is, a student’s ability to understand develops much faster than her or his ability to speak. The ability to read develops faster than the ability to write. While research has clearly demonstrated this, it’s quite easy to see for anyone whose ever taught a modern language to any degree of fluency. Students that have a great deal of difficulty speaking German in class can nonetheless understand what the teacher is saying in German at a significantly higher level. Students who struggle with writing in French can nonetheless read French texts with grammatical constructions well beyond the ones they are able to write.
Now let’s think about the implications for teaching Ancient Greek. What is our objective? I think it is quite uncontroversial to propose that most Ancient Greek classes are focused more on reading than on writing. What we want our students to be able to do is read fluently, not write fluently. That is, our objective is most clearly aligned with reception, not expression.
While we might disagree over how beneficial it is to have students speak or write in class (output), these activities are clearly not our goal in and of themselves. Since our goal is reception rather than production, we could argue that having students learn to speak Ancient Greek is not a productive use of time (though some would disagree). Still, hearing Greek spoken clearly is a good use of time. It provides, in addition to reading, input that is useful to the student. Of course, the quality of this input must be high to be of real value. It must be comprehensible input.
I would love to hear comments from any of you who have experience relevant to this question. Have you been asked to speak or write (output) Greek in your classes? How helpful did you find that experience? Have you had instructors who spoke to you (input) in Greek? Did you find it helpful? If not, what was the nature of the way the instructor spoke? Were you able to understand based on the context? If not, it was not really comprehensible input.
It is my view that speaking to the class in Greek WILL aid acquisition so long as what is said is comprehensible based on the context in which it is spoken.
El Diccionario Griego Español
An article by Elvira Gangutia explaining the origin and progress of the Diccionario Griego Español, the largest diccionary of Ancient Greek produced to date, appeared in 2007 in Arbor: Ciencia, Pensamiento y Cultura. You can download a PDF version of the article at http://dge.cchs.csic.es/bib/arbor.pdf. It’s written in Spanish, of course, but there’s a (very rough) translation of the abstract at the beginning of the article. If you can read Spanish, the article can be quite informative.
Here’s my own abstract and comments:
There was a significant revival of Classical studies in Spain in the 1960s. A part of that revival was the recognition of a need for a Greek lexicon directed at university students and faculty. Under the direction of professor Rodriguez Andrados a small group of researchers began work on the project. They quickly realized that the volume of Greek documents available had increased considerably since the most recent lexica were produced. The job was simply too massive for such a small team.
They broadened their objectives, embracing new fields of study and new methods. The research team was expanded, and the first few volumes of the dictionary began to appear. As computer resources began to emerge, these were incorporated, allowing both faster processing and greater reliability. The web has proved a vital tool in recent work on the lexicon.
The enormous scope of the work has not permitted a quick conclusion to the project, although it has received considerable acclaim. So far, seven volumes have appeared (one since the writing of Gangutia’s article).
The latest volume covers ἐκπελλεύω—ἔξαυος. There’s an enormous amount left to be done, but what’s available now is a significant advance over previous efforts. When will a similar project get underway in English? We can only hope.
Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament
A few weeks ago, Mike Aubrey announced on ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ the release of Steve Runge’s new book, Discourse Grammar of New Testament Greek. To see the announcement, visit his blog at ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ.
This is a ground-breaking work, in that it approaches grammar from a linguistic perspective not previously employed in a full grammar of Biblical Greek. Notice the subtitle: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis.
Summer Attic Greek Classes?
I had a question today from a grad student needing to take an Ancient Greek course (Attic) this Summer. Do any of you know where a good course is being offered at an affordable cost?
Mark Janse on Hellenistic Greek
I have added eight works by Mark Janse to my Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics. (Thanks to Mike Aubrey for providing the bibliographic information on six of them and a lead to the seventh.)
Dr. Janse is Research Professor in Asia Minor and Ancient Greek at Ghent University. He has written extensively about the history of Greek and related issues in Linguistics. The publications that I have added to the bibliography are ones that consciously apply a specific insight from Linguistics to the study of Greek from the Hellenistic period, or in one case from the Classical period where no similar work has yet been published for Hellinistic Greek.
Here are the items I added:
Janse, Mark. “Aspects of Bilingualism in the History of the Greek Language.” In: J.N. Adams, Mark Janse & Simon Swain (eds.), Bilingualism in Ancient Society. Language Contact and the Written Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, 332-390.
________. “The Distribution of the Enclitic Personal Pronouns in New Tetament Greek in the Light of the Septuagint and the Modern Greek Dialects of Asia Minor: A Structural-Functional Analysis.” PhD. dissertation: Ghent University, Department of Latin and Greek.
This dissertation is available from Dissertations Abstracts International 58 (1997) 776-C. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
________. “La phrase segmentée en grec ancien. Le témoignage des enclitiques.” Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 86.1 (1991) XIV-XVI. Paris: Klinck sieck.
________. “La position des pronoms presonnels enclitiques en grec neo-testamentaire a la lumiere des dialectes neo-helleniques. In C. Brixhe ed. La koine grecque antique I (1993), 83-121. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy.
________. “Phonological Aspects of Clisis in Ancient and Modern Greek.” Glotta 73 (1995-1996) 155-167. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
________. “The Prosodic Basis of Wackernagel’s Law.” In André Crochetière, Jean-Claude Boulanger & Conrad Ouellon (eds.), Les langues menacées. Actes du XVe Congrès international des linguistes, Québec, Université Laval, 9-14 août 1992. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1993, Vol. 4, 19-22.
Originally presented as a paper at the 15th International Congress of Linguists, Quebec, August 9 to 14, 1992.
Creve, Sam, Mark Janse, and Kristoffel Demoen, “The Pauline Key Words πνεῦμα and σάρξ and their Translation.” Filología Neotestamentaria. Vol. 20 (2007), 15-31.
Mike Aubrey has himself done a good amount of work on Hellenistic Greek Clitics and reached similar conclusions. He has posted several discussions at ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ.
Using Pinax and Django for Collaborative Corpus Linguistics (Greek)
If you are interested in web design and the possibilities it presents for collaborative work in Ancient Greek Linguistics, you must see James Tauber’s BibleTech2010 talk (embedded below). It’s almost an hour long, but well worth the time.
James begins by explaining Django, a core tool for managing basic functionality on a website. He then explains Pinax, a product that runs on top of Django to power much of the functionality of social networking sites. He finishes this discussion, though by presenting the possibilities of using this combination to power collaborative work in corpus linguistics, using Biblical Greek as his example.
He is developing precisely the kind of tools needed to do the lexicon project I have in mind. Here’s the talk. Feel free to comment on its implications for Greek Linguistics.
Using Pinax and Django For Collaborative Corpus Linguistics from James Tauber on Vimeo.
Comprehensible Input
The video below demonstrates Stephen Krashen’s influential notion of “Comprehensibe Input” far better than I could explain it. Watch the video, then read the discussion below.
How could this perspective be applied to teaching Ancient Greek? I am certain that Krashen is correct in his assessment of the nature of language acquisition, but teaching an ancient language presents some special problems that make his method extremely difficult.
No materials designed specifically to support this kind of teaching exist for Hellenistic Greek as far as I know (though some limited attempts have been made). My own online grammar is certainly not suited to this purpose. I wrote most of it far too long ago. It is focussed on learning Greek, not acquiring it (See “Acquiring and Learning Greek“).
I would like at some point to begin to create materials to support this kind of instruction for Hellenistic Greek, but that’s a major project that is going to have to wait quite a while.