Flying Colours!

Well I’m about as chuffed as a teacher could be!

We had our first actual test on Sunday and everyone passed with flying colours. The test translations included many words not yet covered in class, but everyone rose to the challenge and put their newfound translation skills to the task—with excellent results.

Not that I was surprised; last week’s class exercise and all the homework assignments have painted a clear picture for me of a group of students entirely comfortable with the material.

Of course, I suspect one or two might’ve harboured a few private concerns. If so, well, this test proved those concerns unfounded!

Congratulations to all of you—Colleen, Joc, Larry, Raewyn and Trish—you translated like champions!


Okay, now that everyone’s an expert in the concept of noun and definite article declension, we’ll be changing gears for our next class—Lesson 7. We’re finally going to be looking at verbs. This means another foray into the dark and murky Land of Grammar. So bring your mining lamps and thinking caps...

Btw, I haven’t got the notes for L7 completed yet, so I’m not sure I’ll have them ready to post by Friday—if not, I’ll make sure you get them on Sunday at the start of class.

And speaking of posting, I’ve posted Lesson 6 now and added the latest Why Learn Greek to the WLG page.

God bless & congratulations again.

Ἰακωβος

Blog Update

I didn't get an email letting me know about the last blog post, so I assume you didn't either. Something wrong with Blogger's auto-alerts. I've posted this note to see if it'll activate the auto-alert. If you get this in an email, come to the blog and read the post below this...if you haven't already, of course.

God bless,
Ἰακωβος

Of Persons and Peoples

There wasn’t much left to Lesson 5 after we’d given everyone the masculine definite article at the end of L4; just a bit of explanation of a few of the different uses Greek has for the article. Most of this went without a hitch, but a small misunderstanding from last week’s homework was revisited when I used the sentence below as an example of how articles follow the number, gender and case of the nouns they describe:

ὁ ἀποστολος γραφει τοις λαοις τους νομους του Κυριου.

The apostle writes the laws of the Lord to the people.

Oh-oh! I’d used the dreaded “people” word!

The problem with λαος arose when everyone translated “τῳ λῳ” in last week’s homework as “to a person”, rather than “to a people”. When someone emailed asking why it wasn’t “person”, I made a fairly lengthy reply and, true to form, managed to muddy the already murky waters of confusion even more by saying, at one point, something along the lines of “in English the plural of people is peoples”. So, when I used the above sentence and translated the plural “τοις λαοις” as “to the people” rather than “to the peoples”, I was immediately called to account.

Now I’m going to try to clear the whole mess up. I’ve just investigated the matter thoroughly and have come up with the following:

I was wrong the second time!

Whenever a form of the plural λαοι is used, then the translation should be “peoples”. So the above translation should be “The apostle writes the laws of the Lord to the peoples.” And since that’s not what I intended to say, I should change the Greek—well done Trish for spotting that one and to Larry for goading me into checking. I stand corrected.

However, in the homework, the translation of “to a people” stands as the correct one against everyone’s “to a person”. And, just in case anyone’s tempted to argue that the general “to people” should be allowed, I’d just say that, well, if it’s singular...no, forget it, I’ll pick that one up another time.

Right.

Okay, back to business. In the last blog, I’d mentioned I’d be making a special announcement on Sunday. Well, I made it—we’re having our first test!

YIPPEE!!!

Okay, nobody actually said, “Yippee!” out loud, but I could tell everyone was stoked….no, really, I could…everyone…stoked…yes, they were…!


God bless,
Ἰακωβος

(P.s. The latest Why Learn Greek has also been added. jk)

Unpacking the Rest of the Cases

Last Sunday, in Lesson 4, we finally unpacked all the cases. We covered Nominative and Accusative in Lesson 3, so we did the Vocative, the Genitive and the Dative this time. Our 2nd Declension masculine nouns in ος chart is now complete. We even managed to squeeze in the masculine definite article forms from Lesson 5. Bring on the feminine and neuters!

The class was a bit of a panic for me—I couldn’t believe how quickly the time went! I think we’re going to have to start doing 5 hour lessons; there’s just too much to teach and too little time….

Okay, okay, okay, that was a joke. I’d never do that to you. Only Sandy could tolerate listening to me go on about Greek grammar for 5 straight hours.

Okay, okay, okay, that was a joke, too….

Next class I’ll cover the complete lesson on the masculine definite article; explaining more fully how articles are used for more than just saying “the” in Greek. As well, I’ll be introducing the verb form εστιν (he/she/it is) and explain the significance this type of verb has for the cases of the nouns on either side of it. There’s also going to be a special announcement.

How exciting does all that sound? Be there or be square…

Later today, I’ll post the Why Learn Greek illustration from Sunday. However, you can only have 10 of those page tabs per blog, so, in order to get as many lessons up there as I can, I’m going to put all the WLG’s on one tab (most recent at the top).

Oh, one more thing. Trish asked me what the Greek on the blog title was. It’s a snippet from the top of a page of the Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament in existence. The verse is John 7:40.


The red letters are what you can see above. The first epsilon of “ΕΛΕΓΟΝ” is missing because it was the last letter of the previous page.

ΕΛΕΓΟΝ ΟΤΙ ΟΥΤΟC ΕCΤΙ ΑΛΗΘΩC Ο ΠΡΟΦΗΤΗC.

The letters are uncial—uppercase. Notice the scribe has used the symbol C instead of Σ. If you put the whole thing in cursives, it’ll be easier for you to read:

ἐλεγον ὁτι οὑτος ἐστι ἀληθως ὁ προφητης.

The entire sentence looks like this (from the Textus Receptus):

πολλοὶ οὐν Ἐκ του ὀχλου ἀκουσαντες τον λογον, ἐλεγον Οὑτος ἐστιν ἀληθως ὁ προφητης.

Notice the TR doesn’t have the ὁτι (that) of the Codex. The translation of the whole line is “Therefore, hearing the saying, many of the crowd said (that), ‘He is truly a prophet.” Our part of the line is “…said that, 'He is...'”, with half of the word for “is” cut off.

Cool, eh?

God bless,
Ἰακωβος

Blue Case; Green Case Update

...Colleen emailed her Paihia Run/Walk time: 8km in 1hr/2min/30sec

Wow! And in class she didn't look like she'd even broken a sweat. Congratulations, Colleen!


God bless,
Ἰακωβος

Blue Case; Green Case

Our quick review of Lesson 3 turned into an hour-long explanation of both the terms used in the class and the organisational structure of the lessons. I’d realised that there was a fair bit of detail about the course that I hadn’t actually explained to the class. Some of these I might’ve touched on briefly in the Lesson notes and/or the Intro for Students, but others I’d more or less assumed the students would just know. There were also a few details which I’d only recently instituted.

One of these newly instituted details was the use of colour-coding: from now on I'm going to use a different colour of marker for each of the case endings when writing on the white board: blue = nominative; green = accusative; red = dative; purple = genitive. The idea is to make my conceptual style of teaching a little more accessible to our resident kinaesthetic lerner. I was greatly encouraged by the hearty reception the idea got from her...whew!

We also had a fun round of spot-the-typo in my review homework assignment.

hmmmm....Y'know, I sometimes get the feeling I'm learning more from this class than the students...

Okay, that's it for now.

Oh, Trish pointed out that there was something wrong with my "Email Me" link. Just had a look and, yes, another typo! All fixed now, Trish--your emails won't be getting returned anymore. I've also posted Why Learn Greek 5 (see link above).

Right, see you all (minus 1) for Lesson 4 this Sunday. Have a look at it and keep at those vocabulary lists.


God Bless,
Ιακωβος