Mike Aubrey April 1, 2009 Musings, Other

Clarifications

I decided I should clarify some things about my blog posts:

I am never comprehensive – even when writing a series because I typically don’t ever finish them
Details are typically not dealt with in 500 words or less.
My perspectives on Greek grammar comes from someone who is significantly more interested in teaching Greek to translators/linguists than teaching it to seminary students.
Finally, I know a lot less than I pretend to know.

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1

Nick Norelli on April 1, 2009 at 7:13 pm
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#4 sums up my entire life. 😉

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- 2
  
  Mike Aubrey on April 1, 2009 at 8:49 pm
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  you and me both.
  
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3

Carl W. Conrad on April 2, 2009 at 2:14 am
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If it is not impossible to deal with any topic conclusively, it is nevertheless exceedingly difficult. Everything we write is not much more than a progress report on our thinking about a subject.

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- 4
  
  Mike Aubrey on April 2, 2009 at 12:46 pm
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  Wise words, Carl. Thank you.
  
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5

Davis on April 2, 2009 at 10:28 am
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What do you see are the main differences between teaching seminary students and teaching translators?

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- 6
  
  Mike Aubrey on April 2, 2009 at 10:51 am
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  Its mainly that translators and those planning on going into translation missions work already have the linguistic and grammatical background for studying the language.
  
  Its like this: In Mounce’s first year grammar, he provides discussions of English grammar before discussing the Greek. This functions as a sort of way to provide hooks for students to hang the Greek grammatical discussion on. But at the same time, its partially not helpful because English Grammar and Greek Grammar do not coincide.
  
  In contrast to that, when a student takes Grammatical Analysis at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, they learn how to recognize and analyze grammatical constructions and patterns well beyond the English language. This is because the goal of the classes there are to prepare students who are going to an unstudied minority language to both study and learn the grammar while also learning the language for communication. Such a goal requires a significantly larger view of grammar. So in effect, translation/linguistic students already have the hooks for learning Greek, but many of the hooks are vastly different than the ones Mounce provides through English comparison.
  
  The secondly major different is a direct result of the previous. Because of the classes and studies taught to translation/linguistics student tradition grammar text books like Mounce are extremely foreign for the students – both in how inflectional morphology (e.g. case & number) and syntax (particularly phrase structure which is never touched on) are represented.
  
  On top of all of that, there is the issue of how languages are learned. Translation/linguistics students are also taught language learning methods that have significantly more in common with what Randall Buth is doing than what is done in virtually every other 1st year grammar available. So to teach translation/linguistics students with a traditional textbook leaves the students frustrated because they know there are better and easier ways to learn the language. After you’ve flown once first class on an airplane, the thought of flying coach will never have any appeal to you ever again.
  
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7

brianfulthorp on April 2, 2009 at 2:46 pm
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I know know what I need to know so that I can pretend to know what I am talking about…

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