Burying the bad old system, part 3

For the sake of readers who use Microsoft Windows in the USA, I am not putting any marks on the Greek letters in this message.
Revision note, 12/31/2006: I moved the book by Saffire and Freis to list #3.

First, instructors of ancient Greek must be
real teachers of foreign languages
to linguistically adult (post-puberty) students.
Not every good Classics or seminary professor
and not every good graduate student
is a good teacher of foreign languages to adult students.

Second, textbooks must be chosen and assigned
on the basis of their conformity to decades-proven
principles of teaching foreign languages
(especially languages that mark case, number and gender
on every noun and adjective)
to adults,
not merely on how correctly the books show a person
who is already linguistically gifted
how to give the parsing label to any Greek word.

For choosing textbooks, I am developing three lists.
Here they are at their current state of development.

1. βιβλια κοινα
της μεθοδου της κακης τε της παλαιας τε
1. Some typical books
of the bad, old system:
J. G. Machen, New Testament Greek for Beginners
C. Pharr and J. Wright, Homeric Greek for Beginners
S. W. Paine, Beginning Greek: A Functional Approach
H. Hansen and G. Quinn, Greek: An Intensive Course
N. C. Croy, A Primer of Biblical Greek

2. τα βιβλια τα αριστα (τοις διδασκαλοις τοις αριστοις)
της μεθοδου της κακης τε της παλαιας τε
2. The best books
(for the best teachers)
of the bad, old system:
R. Schoder, V. Horrigan and L. Edwards, A Reading Course in Homeric Greek
M. Balme and G. Lawall, Athenaze
The Joint Association of Classical Teachers, Reading Greek

3. τα βιβλια τα νικακοτα
την μεθοδον την κακην τε την παλαιαν τε
3. The books that have defeated
the bad, old system!
P. Saffire and C. Freis, Ancient Greek Alive
D. Mastronarde, Introduction to Attic Greek
W. D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek

The books on list #1 need to be re-categorized.
They are excellent intermediate textbooks
or reference guides, but they are torture tools
against true beginners.

Administrators or department heads
who designate a book on list #1 as a primer
are perpetuating the perpetration
of the 24-century-old linguistic hazing system,
teaching new generations of students to hate Greek.

Adminstrators and department heads
who care equally about teaching and scholarship
do not need to be told that enjoyment of the language
is necessary for winsome scholarship
about texts in the language
and for the continuing existence
of the non-specialist audiences
who happily help to keep Classics
and academic religious studies funded.

Nor do real teachers need to be told to remember
the hard work of mastering Greek.

I have read comments on the Internet like,
"Greek is not supposed to be easy,"
from professors who are defending
their continuing perpetration of 24 centuries
of linguistic hazing. A professor who makes such a comment
confirms for me some stereotypes of nasty academic politics.

The message I hear behind, "Greek is not supposed to be easy," is,
"It's more important to weed as many students as possible
out of Classics and seminary programs than it is
to train more generations of good clergy, good secular scholars
and happily interested non-specialist audiences
who might help to keep us specialists employed."

I am not saying that Greek can be made easy;
no foreign language is easy to master
for a beginner who starts after puberty,
and Greek is one of the harder ones
for native speakers of English
both to start into and to master.

I am saying that the pointlessly painful,
24-century-old system now has replacements:
methods of hard but rewarding work.

I am advocating that this replacement be made real
in more public schools, private secular schools,
private religious schools, secular colleges and universities,
religious colleges and universities, seminaries,
and adult education efforts in houses of worship.

If the instructor is an exceptionally good teacher
of foreign languages to adults, it might be possible
for most students in a course using a book from list #1
not to end up hating the language. However, that
would take an exceptional teacher!

The books in list #2 are painless enough
if the instructor is in fact a teacher
of foreign languages to adults.
Under an instructor who is only a scholar
and not a teacher, students would experience
as much pain with the books in list #2
as with the books in list #1,
with the result that a large percentage of them
would still end up hating the language.

The books in list #3 are good enough
that even an instructor who is unproven
or is a scholar of the non-language-teacher type
using one of these as a primer
would not teach students to hate the language.

Rhetoric: with and without words

The English word rhetoric
(stress on the first syllable, silent letter "h")
is borrowed from an ancient Greek word for public speaking, based on one of the verbs that is translated "speak" or "say" in English. The first syllable of that Greek word was similar to the first syllable of another ancient Greek word that is translated "flow," but those two words in fact came from different Greek sound/idea roots.

Ever since humans began speaking, public speakers have always had purposes or goals for speaking: they want to change the contents of the minds of the people in the audience, whether to influence them to do something, entertain them with drama or jokes, give them news, or teach them something.

With the rise of Critical Theory (see the Wikipedia article in English, and read the definition that is not limited to the analysis of literature) in Western universities since World War II, the definition of "rhetoric" has been expanded to mean any and all efforts to influence the feelings, thoughts and will of people by both verbal and nonverbal communication.

I treat Critical Theory (CT), which I understand in only a very limited way, as an occasionally useful tool. I understand that CT is a non-supernatural (materialist) system for viewing all human interactions in terms of the power used by the various parties, and exclusively in those terms; the influence of Nietzsche's thinking is clear in CT.

Jesus of Nazareth has my loyalty, so I do not give CT my ultimate loyalty as many American academics, journalists and publishing-house editors do today. Nevertheless, because CT asks good questions, I find it useful sometimes. One good result of CT, in my opinion, is the expanded definition of the word "rhetoric."

Burying the bad old system, part 2: What Are the Problems?

Repeated note: Because the Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems still represent writing other than English in different ways, I cannot include the marking system for modern editions of ancient Greek writing. I can give you the regular lowercase and uppercase Greek letters, but not the breathing marks, pitch marks or subscripted letter iota.

I have seen two problems with the bad old system
of teaching Greek.

One is economic and political: how educational institutions
assign instructors for courses in beginning ancient Greek.

Classical literature, philosophy, archaeology,
the theology and history of Judaism and Christianity,
and Jewish or Christian Biblical text scholarship
are of course fields that demand detailed,
nuanced study and analysis. An effective scholar in any
of these fields may or may not be an effective teacher
of foreign languages, especially for a language as challenging
as Greek.

Unfortunately, because of the economic, bureaucratic
and internal-politics limitations of educational institutions,
inexperienced instructors and experienced scholars
who are not effective language instructors can be found
teaching introductory Greek courses.

The other problem with the bad old system
is purely linguistic:
there is no escaping the fact that the Greek language,
both ancient and modern, performs complex changes
to its word forms (a little more complex
in ancient texts) in order to express the relationships
between the words in an utterance very clearly.

Other languages do this too: Latin,
classical Sanskrit, Old Norse, Old English,
modern German, and most modern Slavic languages.

Nevertheless, Greek courses are more famous
than courses in those others
for causing headaches, discouragement and worse things
when the teaching method is bad. Even ancient complaints
in writing by native speakers of Latin who suffered
while learning Greek from the very taskmasters
who defined "old school"
have been passed down to us.

English does this the most to verbs and personal pronouns
(We gave him it yesterday. You give us them every week.),
and a little bit to nouns (day, days, day's, days'),
but not to adjectives (big cow, big bull, big cow's, big bull's,
big cows, big bulls, big cows', big bulls').
However, Greek does this much, much, much more:
to every verb, pronoun, noun and adjective, every time.

Here are some examples in the prose style
of either the "Golden Age" Attic or Hellenistic Koine dialects:

η ημερα η μεγαλη
the great day

της ημερας της μεγαλης
of the great day

ταις ημεραις ταις μεγαλαις
for the great days

ο ποταμος ο μεγας
the great river

του ποταμου του μεγαλου
of the great river

τοις ποταμοις τοις μεγαλοις
for the great rivers

το δωμα το μεγα
the great home

το δωμα της μεγαλης
the home of the great one (great lady)

το δωμα του μεγαλου
the home of the great one (great gentleman)

A table or chart of the variations of forms
of a vocabulary word is called a "paradigm."

Most paradigm tables for the ancient forms of Greek nouns
have eight or ten positions.
For δωμα, the Attic and Hellenistic paradigm is

singular:
nominative case δωμα home, subject of verb
genitive case δωματος of/from home, of/from a home
dative case δωματι in/at/for home, in/at/for a home
accusative case δωμα home, direct object or limit of motion
plural:
nom. δωματα homes, subject of verb
gen. δωματων of/from homes, of/from some homes
dat. δωμασι in/at/for homes, in/at/for some homes
acc. δωματα homes, direct object or limit of motion

The paradigm charts for most adjectives and several pronouns
have 24 to 30 different positions because the representations
for cases and numbers must be multiplied by the representations
for the three gender distinctions. For μεγας, "great," the Attic
and Hellenistic paradigm is

singular: masculine, feminine, neuter
nom. μεγας, μεγαλη, μεγα
gen. μεγαλου, μεγαλης, μεγαλου
dat. μεγαλωι, μεγαληι, μεγαλωι
acc. μεγαν, μεγαλην, μεγα
plural:
nom. μεγαλοι, μεγαλαι, μεγαλα
gen. μεγαλων, μεγαλων, μεγαλων
dat. μεγαλοις, μεγαλαις, μεγαλοις
acc. μεγαλους, μεγαλας, μεγαλα

In words that have paradigms similar to μεγα,
the letter ι (iota) at the end of the dative singular forms
is often printed under the previous long vowel letter
("subscripted") in modern editions of ancient texts.
This is because Greek speakers seem to have gradually dropped
this particular use of iota from their speech
during the 600 years between
the reign of the Greek-loving Macedonian
king/emperor/general Alexander the Great
and the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine I.
There is clear evidence from stone inscriptions
from before Alexander's time that the dative singular iota
was indeed pronounced with no confusion
with the nominative plural ending for native speakers.

For δωμα, the iota at the end the dative singular, δωματι,
has always been pronounced because δωμα belongs
to a different paradigm pattern from μεγας.

Paradigm charts for Ancient Greek nouns, pronouns
and adjectives are painful for beginning students who are
native speakers of English because the paradigms
for those types of words in English cannot be made
into similarly-shaped charts (except perhaps the personal pronouns).

For verb forms, the paradigm charts also have many positions;
however, most English-speaking students find the verb paradigms
easier to learn. Nonetheless, there are also easier ways
to present Greek verb forms,
as proved by W. D. Mounce.

The 24-century-old system for Greek
maximizes the number of such charts
to be memorized and frequently reviewed.
This is painful and unnecessary,
which is why I call it the "bad old system."

These charts cannot be avoided, but their number
can be greatly reduced by teaching rules
that group the words and the forms
into the fewest charts necessary.
Better systems for teaching Greek,
such as the system by W.D. Mounce,
keep the charts to a minimum this way.