In a Sea of Greek: Learning Is Language

The boat motored out three miles from shore. There I dove, alone, into this ocean of Greek.

I can swim. I’m not Katie Ladecky, but I’ve got some stamina. I like to study and I love the Bible. But I’ve never swum this long or this far. Sink or swim are my options.

If I swim on, if I don’t give up my stroke, by God’s grace, I will reach the shore. The final exam is May 17th. But if I let up, if for a single week I just show up, I will sink.

Because Greek is like math. It grows on itself. If you can’t nail your basic addition and subtraction facts, it will be hard to multiply and divide, much less solve complex equations.

So I need to know my articles. All 24.

Which is why “I’m still swimming” is my answer when friends ask,

“How goes the Greek?”

To those few of you who have prayed that my brain will soak this up like a sponge, thank you. To those of you who shake your heads, I don’t blame you. And to the three or four of you who know Greek, it helps me to know that you know.

You did this thing. It can be done. 

Apart from the 6 hours I now spend on Saturdays and the couple hours on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and the walks that now include my baggie of note card “declensions for memory,” I’ve been thinking a lot about learning, and, in particular, learning a new language. 

“Learning anything is really learning a new language.” That’s what my 21-year-old nephew said when I asked him, “What’s new?” Daniel is an independent contractor. He came up for the weekend last month. I had told him about my brain bursting with Greek. 

Learning Is Language

Watching him print invoices Saturday morning and hearing him troubleshoot a tricky dryer vent with my husband was proof that Daniel is well on his way to learning the languages of both business and remodeling.  

Daniel was onto something. Whenever we dive deep into a new subject, it really is a new language. It might not have foreign letters like ψ, φ ζ, or π but it is unfamiliar, and without effort and instruction, the words are meaningless. 

Why Swim in Greek?

1. The Greek language is a gateway to a world I love.

It takes me one step closer to the world of the New Testament. Greek brings me closer to the original.

I told you about reason one in my last newsletter. But now two more reasons are clear. 

2. Learning Greek forces me to slow down.

While this isn’t the original reason I enrolled, it only took my 20 minutes into the first class period to see this huge “why.” Learning Greek forces me to slow down, an area in which my friends know I desperately need to grow. The U.S. Department of State labels Greek as a “Category III–Hard Language” for native English speakers.

I agree. 

I need to go slowly and take note. They go together. Learning Greek demands that I do both. How else will I see the rough breathing mark over the alpha in ἁμαρτιῶν or the accent over the omicron here in αὐτὸς or notice the same neu at the end of ἁμαρτιῶν and αὐτῶν, indicating the genitive case, also feminine and plural.

3. Learning Greek is humbling.

Dr. Moore called on me to translate and parse in the second class. My heart raced. I plotted a way of escape. The silence was deafening. No one came to my aid. 

So I guessed.

“Present active indicative, third person singular?” My odds were good. Present active indicative were 95% of the verbs we knew.

“Well done, Abigail. Now what’s the lexical form?” 

It hasn’t gotten easier and I have made mistakes.

Just when I get one declension down, along comes the next.

There is always the possibility of inducing pride. I must constantly be on guard for that. But so far, learning Greek has been humbling. I’ve had to depend on God for discipline to study, for a mind like a sponge, and for hooks on which to hang all these inflected endings.

It is the hardest mental thing, loving God with my mind thing, that I’ve done in quite some time.

But I love it. Αλλ᾽ ἐγώ️ ❤ ️Ελλάδας. I love Greek. 

Learning About Learning

Every sentence is a puzzle to solve. The pieces fit. The word endings are nubs that make the words, the pieces, fit. Pronouns and their antecedents, nouns and their adjectives, articles and their nouns, verbs and their tenses—every inflection matters. 

As a speech-language pathologist, I use minimal pairs to help my students hear, and then to say, sounds. Minimal pairs are words that differ phonetically by only one sound like “zoo” and “zoom” or “suit” and “soup.” “Zoo” is different from “zoom,” and “suit” is not the same as “soup.”

In Greek, Theos and Theon and Theou and Theo have different meanings, too. 

There is nothing random about Greek, not a breath mark, accent or iota. Nothing. 

1. Learning Means You’re Sensitive (In a Way)

But until you can hear it, it all means the same thing—or nothing. Because we need to become sensitive.

I’m starting to think that learning is simply becoming sensitive to what we were insensitive to before. The stretch and spin of my sourdough, the slight pause from a new friend that means she’s inviting me in, and the “own” sound that probably means dative case in Greek.

I’m learning. I’m becoming more sensitive.

Learning is the process by which I become sensitive to what I was once numb. 

Greek could have been Hindi or Portuguese. But not anymore, because my eyes are seeing and my ears are hearing. I am learning, and it is not all Greek to me. 

I only grow more sensitive because I keep grasping for hooks. Finding few, I attach my own.

2. Learning Means You Found Hooks (Or Made Some)

Good teachers help us grow mental hooks. The colors of the rainbow stuck because there was a man named ROY G. BIV.

But try hanging your jacket on the wall without a hook. That’s me learning derivations for εἰμί. They slide right down the wall. I can read them 20 times and I still have to peek at my note card for 21. 

They didn’t stick. They don’t stick because there was no hook. 

But I’m still afloat in this sea of Greek.

Prior knowledge becomes hooks for new learning. Coats slide down the wall without hooks. I have nubs for accusative, dative, and genitive endings. Substantival, attributive, and predicate nominative were not prior categories of adjectives to me. Who knew there was a “predicate position” that might be at the beginning of a sentence, but also might not be?

But by grace and with a good instructor, I’m growing hooks.

Dr. Moore Knows

So far, six weeks in, Dr. Moore has only shown us what he wants us to know. Of verbs, he has only introduced us to the infinitive and the present active indicative.

Two months ago, mind you, I couldn’t recite the Greek alphabet much less recognize a Greek verb. One month ago I had the alphabet down and could spot verbs, but hadn’t a clue how to parse a word or diagram the simplest sentence. Diagramming is called “flowing”—as in river into rolling Greek ocean. 

My stroke slows way down with parsing and flows. I doggy paddle on those. 

But that’s not my point.

It’s not so much that I’m learning, or that learning is hard work, but that Dr. Moore decides what is taught and when. The instructor decides the sequence and pace. Dr. Moore decided I should study present active indicative verbs first, and learn first and second noun declensions next.

Dr. Moore knows Greek. He knows what I need to know and when. He knows that if I can memorize the 24 definite articles cold, it will make the inflected adjectives and pronouns easier. 

Dr. Moore knows what I need to know, because he knows what’s ahead. 

And if it’s true of Dr. Moore, with God how much more!

Still Swimming

Some think learning Greek is a waste of time. Others think using foreign words is “high-falutin.” 

Both could be. The Lord knows the heart. 

As for me, I’m still swimming. But I know God wants us to grow up and get out of the sea, “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves” (Ephesians 4:14). I know that “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

We need not read, or speak, that truth in Greek. 

But I am certain that one can grow in a Greek sea. 

“One might say that the knowledge of languages other than one’s natal tongue is what education in fact is, whether one aspires to be a plumber or a physicist . . .

What is certain is that no one will grow his mind until he begins to take serious notes on the Great Dissertation, not all of which is in simple English.”

—S.M. Hutchen, “Language Notes”

What “language” are you learning? Where are you becoming more sensitive to something which you were once you were deaf? I would love to hear.

Comment? Question? Connection? Contact Abigail at joyfullypressingon@gmail.com