[b-greek] re: Greek Grammar in GNT

From: Suedaleg@aol.com
Date: Sat Sep 15 2001 - 02:55:08 EDT


Sirs:

As somewhat of an amature historian and student of the way we all
communicate, this has been an interesting thread. Following is my opinion on
the idea of "good" or "bad" grammar, and it relates to our understanding of
what the New Testament writers were trying to say.

In our education industry, we have unfortunately tried for way too many years
attempted to make young students conform to somebody's idea of what is "good"
grammar. This Somebody must have lived somewhere between London and Boston
(stuck in the middle of the ocean) because this grammar did not really
address how us Iowans learned to speak English from our parents, and most of
us were too far accustommed to speaking "Iowan" to permanantly learn this new
"Atlantean".

The truth is that grammar should, as much as possible, describe the usage
and not used to judge an individual's usage or level of literacy. If one
should travel around the English speaking parts of the world you will hear
many forms of grammar, all of which are easily understood in the location
where ir is used. These are all standard for the location.

If Peter's usage is different from what most of the Grek writers of the
eastern Mediterranean it should be labled as non-tradition or non-standard
rather than "bad". Labeling it incorrectly slanders the writer whose only
goal is to express himself, and makes it more difficult for the student to
understand what the writer is trying to express by bogging him in
technicallities.

I have found that even Paul and Luke used non-traditional forms to express
themselves and we learn the emphasis by those non-traditional forms.

by the way - poetry is non-traditional language form used to emphasize the
writer's perception.

Thanks for letting me put in 2 cents.

Dale Greenlee

ps. Sometime you should read Beowulf in the original English. Then you may
understand why I think we should not try to lock ourselves into "standard"
language. "Standard" can only describe language, not form it.

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