Emma's picture book idea

[Stephen Hughes]

Are you getting at something like this?

Sort of. Are these phrases that you are making up, or finding in Hellenistic texts? The images are good, and they suit the pictures, but I think it's pretty important to be using real texts from the time period.

Collocations or tenses?

The collocations of βιβρώσκειν with lion and crocodile are from LSJ - Homer and Galen respectively. The collocation βιβρώσκειν and κρέας is from the LSJ entry - Theocritus (not a "Hellenistic" genre but presumably he expected that his work have been able to have been understood by a Hellenistic audience) and that it matches the eating habits that I know of lions and crocodiles. The collocation of fox is by analogy with lion. Collocation of vulture or eagle is an assumption that βιβρώσκειν refers more to the devouring / consumption than to the biting - birds of prey rend strips of flesh from an animal rather than bite - which reflects my understanding of the nature of βιβρώσκειν.

τρώγειν is regularly used of eating plants and vegetables. I decided to use those two verbs rather than simply the ἐσθίειν for two reasons; to show the richness of vocabulary that Greek has, and because the pictures show animals in the process of eating rather than exhausting the food supply.

For the tense, no, I didn't try to preserve them. In Adult Modern Greek the "unmarked" form of the verb is the present tense, but in Children's Modern Greek, the form that we might call "aorist" is much more prevalent - i.e. the children see it as unmarked. The loss of distinction between first and second aorists is a major change in the language from Ancient / Koine to Modern. I think that the unmarked form of a verb depends on whether it is first or second aorist. τρώγειν is not an issue in that regard, but βιβρώσκειν is probably being stretched to be being used paradigmatically in the present. Probably a perfect form would be more idiomatic, but for the sake of consistence, and the fact that the pictures showed the process of eating, I chose present.

[Stephen Hughes]

ὁ ἀλώπηξ βιβρώσκει κρέας.

ἡ ἀλώπηξ ...

Sorry, I was taken by the ε -> η.

[Jonathan Robie]

I will add, however, that there is a greater danger that we'll end up with non-standard greek in the novel composition books.

And especially if we're talking about this as a good project for newish students of Greek, I think we would want to steer them towards using attested texts. There's plenty to work within the GNT...

I agree completely.

Later, advanced students can then branch out further, or perhaps partner them with some sort of peer-review process to validate the created texts.

Yeah.

ὁ ἀλώπηξ βιβρώσκει κρέας.

ἡ ἀλώπηξ ...

Case in point ;->

I do think we need to be able to make mistakes to learn. It's helpful when we can correct each other. It's best to work from attested sources so at least the templates we use accurately reflect the language.

[Jonathan Robie]

Keith Neely & team at FREEillustratedBible.com have illustrated the entire Bible, graphic-novel style. They've got the (English) Biblical text overwritten on the panels, and Michael Halcolm/Fredrick Long have also apparently partnered with them to publish a version using the Greek text. (I'm just checking out the Mark text now, and it's pretty rockin'!)

Indeed!

If someone is ambitious, this seems like an interesting avenue to explore. Who knows if they might be interested in licensing the raw image panels for use in some derivative works. That would definitely help get away from the 'photos can contain too much info' and 'photos are of modern stuff' issues.

I really, really want to see more open source materials along these lines ...

[Stephen Hughes]

Which is why I generated a bunch of phrases here: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/vie ... 121#p20464 - do you think you could do the same for some of those phrases?

Those phrases are based around the word Θεός. Asking for a pictorial representation of the divine would have to go either of a few ways - as children imagine God (somehow associated with their imagination of the minister, pastor or priest in their local congregation) , as we see God in nature (streams of sunlight coming through the clouds), or anthropomorphically (an old man "ancient of days" sitting on a throne in the clouds). Intangible qualities are also hard to represent graphically. Periods of time are also difficult to portray to the eyes. Perhaps you could choose a more readily representable range of subject matters to be used in this way.

That being said, phrases like δύο ἀνθρώπων or ἄνθρωπος πλούσιος could be represented in a number of ways.

[Stephen Hughes]

I will add, however, that there is a greater danger that we'll end up with non-standard greek in the novel composition books.

And especially if we're talking about this as a good project for newish students of Greek, I think we would want to steer them towards using attested texts. There's plenty to work within the GNT...

I agree completely.

Attested is not the same as standard.

[Stephen Carlson]

ὁ ἀλώπηξ βιβρώσκει κρέας.

ἡ ἀλώπηξ ...

Sorry, I was taken by the ε -> η.

It's just a payoff from reading my Aesop.

ἀετὸς καὶ ἀλώπηξ φιλίαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους σπεισάμενοι πλησίον ἑαυτῶν οἰκεῖν διέγνωσαν βεβαίωσιν φιλίας τὴν συνήθειαν ποιούμενοι.

καὶ δὴ ὁ μὲν ἀναβὰς ἐπί τι περίμηκες δένδρον ἐνεοττοποιήσατο, ἡ δὲ εἰς τὸν ὑποκείμενον θάμνον ἔτεκεν.

ἐξελθούσης δέ ποτε αὐτῆς ἐπὶ νομὴν ὁ ἀετὸς ἀπορῶν τροφῆς καταπτὰς εἰς τὸν θάμνον καὶ τὰ γεννήματα ἀναρπάσας μετὰ τῶν αὑτοῦ νεοττῶν κατεθοινήσατο.

ἡ δὲ ἀλώπηξ ἐπανελθοῦσα ὡς ἔγνω τὸ πραχθέν, οὐ μᾶλλον ἐπὶ τῷ τῶν νεοττῶν θανάτῳ ἐλυπήθη, ὅσον ἐπὶ τῆς ἀμύνης· χερσαία γὰρ οὖσα πετεινὸν διώκειν ἠδυνάτει.

διόπερ πόρρωθεν στᾶσα, ὃ μόνον τοῖς ἀσθενέσιν καὶ ἀδυνάτοις ὑπολείπεται, τῷ ἐχθρῷ κατηρᾶτο.

συνέβη δὲ αὐτῷ τῆς εἰς τὴν φιλίαν ἀσεβείας οὐκ εἰς μακρὰν δίκην ὑποσχεῖν.

θυόντων γάρ τινων αἶγα ἐπ’ ἀγροῦ καταπτὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ βωμοῦ σπλάγχνον ἔμπυρον ἀνήνεγκεν· οὗ κομισθέντος ἐπὶ τὴν καλιὰν σφοδρὸς ἐμπεσὼν ἄνεμος ἐκ λεπτοῦ καὶ παλαιοῦ κάρφους λαμπρὰν φλόγα ἀνῆψε.

καὶ διὰ τοῦτο καταφλεχθέντες οἱ νεοττοὶ— καὶ γὰρ ἦσαν ἔτι ἀτελεῖς οἱ πτηνοὶ— ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν κατέπεσον.

καὶ ἡ ἀλώπηξ προσδραμοῦσα ἐν ὄψει τοῦ ἀετοῦ πάντας αὐτοὺς κατέφαγεν.

ὁ λόγος δηλοῖ, ὅτι οἱ φιλίαν παρασπονδοῦντες, κἂν τὴν τῶν ἠδικημένων ἐκφύγωσι κόλασιν, ἀλλ’ οὖν γε τὴν ἐκ θεοῦ τιμωρίαν οὐ διακρούσονται.

[Stephen Hughes]

ὁ ἀλώπηξ βιβρώσκει κρέας.

ἡ ἀλώπηξ ...

It's just a payoff from reading my Aesop.

ἡ δὲ ἀλώπηξ

The question of connectives is another point to consider in a picture book. Are they on-by-one descriptions of pictures, or part of a more contiguous whole, punctuated by pictures?

It's just a payoff from reading my Aesop.

ἀετὸς καὶ ἀλώπηξ φιλίαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους σπεισάμενοι πλησίον ἑαυτῶν οἰκεῖν διέγνωσαν βεβαίωσιν φιλίας τὴν συνήθειαν ποιούμενοι.

καὶ δὴ ὁ μὲν ἀναβὰς ἐπί τι περίμηκες δένδρον ἐνεοττοποιήσατο, ἡ δὲ εἰς τὸν ὑποκείμενον θάμνον ἔτεκεν.

My original idea was to do a "Where do animals live?" example, but the vocabulary was too diverse for a first example.

[mwpalmer]

On "contains some novel compositions" vs. "contains only extant Greek text", I think the community will benefit from picture books of both types. But I think clearly marking which category a book belongs to will be useful.

I agree, Emma. I think both are useful, as long as we use appropriate care to insure that any phrases or sentences we use conform to the patterns that we find in the Ancient Greek literature. In fact, I can see benefit in using both "novel compositions" and extant Greek text in the same small picture book as long as we distinguish the two by providing citations for the extant texts. We might start with something like

εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν (Matthew 2:11)

IntoTheHouse.png (506.76 KiB) Viewed 21393 times

[I added the arrow to an image I believe to be in the public domain. It appears in several different places on Pinterest and is used on several different websites, none of which give a citation. If you have reason to think it is not in the public domain, please say so, and I'll immediately remove it.]

After two or three more similar phrases from the New Testament, the book could introduce "novel composition" phrases that follow the pattern of the extant text examples in order to take advantage of the students' knowledge of their own real world experiences.

Where I teach we use these types of picture books with great success to teach both English and Spanish. Students quickly acquire syntactic patterns as well as fundamental vocabulary they will need for more advanced tasks.

These materials work particularly well when the pictures make the meaning of the text easily comprehensible. Providing comprehensible input (language experience that is easily understood from its context, independent of overt teaching) is fundamental to second language teaching. Without it, students may learn vocabulary and syntax in the target language, but they seldom acquire it. That is, they seldom reach the point of being able to function in the second language without reliance on the first one.

I look forward to seeing and using these materials as b-Greek users produce them!

[Jonathan Robie]

I agree, Emma. I think both are useful, as long as we use appropriate care to insure that any phrases or sentences we use conform to the patterns that we find in the Ancient Greek literature. In fact, I can see benefit in using both "novel compositions" and extant Greek text in the same small picture book as long as we distinguish the two by providing citations for the extant texts.

I like that.

One way to use novel sentences is to build up to harder "real" sentences from the corpus. If the novel sentences are on the same page with corpus-derived sentences they are less likely to wander.