Passive Voice Problems

Surprisingly, I started over in Greek: An Intensive Course with my new friend, Wesley (also from the B-Greek forum).

We’re doing a mixed study, using the textbook as our grammar review, doing the translation exercises on our own, meeting on Skype or Hangouts to do the exercises a second time orally (without reference to our work from the week) and to read Greek texts together. Right now we’re in chapter 5 of the book of Galatians. Afterward, we’re going to read through Philo’s On Cherubim (Περὶ τῶν Χερουβίμ) before we choose something from the classical period.

At this point, we’ve gotten back to unit 6 – certainly the easiest unit so far. We’ll be meeting on Saturday to finish up this unit, and then we’re moving on. I still find myself struggling with passive forms. I can easily recognize them, but forming them isn’t so easy. For example, look at this exercise from the book:

(Unit 5) II.3. If you had been sent by the citizens to the island sacred to the goddess in order that the men in the country might be guarded, you would not have been stationed in the market place.

When I look at this, I see that it’s what we would have called a “third conditional” when I was teaching English – what is termed the past counterfactual or past contrafactual in Greek grammar. That is, it is talking about the past and saying what might have been different in a different situation. For example, I didn’t have money when I was in high school. But, if I had had money, I would have bought myself some nice shoes. In this case, “you” weren’t sent by the citizens to the island, so you weren’t stationed in the market place. The form of the past counterfactual is as follows:

εἰ + aorist indicative → aorist indicative + ἄν

This sentence has two passive aorists in its main structure (“you were sent” [from πέμπω] and “you were stationed” [from τάττω]). Additionally, the purpose clause (“in order that”) also has a passive verb in the optative, either present or aorist (“it _ be guarded” [from φυλάττω]). Everything will be connected from these verbs. Here’s the basic form:

εἰ ἐπέμφης [ἵνα φυλαχθεῖεν/φυλάττοιντο], ἐτάχθης ἄν.

Of course, the “you” could be plural here, but I’m going to go with the singular. All we have to do then is fill in the blanks.

εἰ τοῖς πολίταις ἐπέμφθης εἰς τὴν νῆσον τὴν τῆς θεοῦ ἱερὰν ἵνα οἱ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ φυλαχθεῖεν/φυλάττοιντο, ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ οὐκ ἂν ἐτάχθης.

I can understand the parts of the sentence well enough and construct them into what seems to me to be meaningful Greek. However, getting to the passive forms takes me a bit of thinking. I know that ἐπέμφθην, for example, is one of the principle parts of πέμπω, but it’s not easy to get to the sixth principle form of each verb as they come. I just need to get used to placing all of the principle parts in memory. This will be harder as we get to the verbs that have so-called “deponents” (as much as this term is despised) in tenses other than the present.

In my studies through Ἀθήναζε and Greek to GCSE, I have found that I have a real aversion to the passive and middle voices. As soon as I’ve gotten to that place in both textbooks, I have stopped moving forward. I’ve now finished the main presentation of the passive voice in Greek: An Intensive Course, and I’ve decided to push past it even if I can’t produce all of the passive forms with ease. I know that it’s going to get even messier, and the contract forms are coming up, but I really need to make it through this textbook.

Has anyone else noticed this about the passive forms? That you just stop when it comes to them? Do you have a way to get around it?

Thanks!
Ἰάσων τοῦ Ἰωάννου

More Hansen & Quinn Study

I canʼt believe that itʼs been over two years since I first posted about Hansen & Quinnʼs Greek: An Intensive Course. On my own I made it through Unit 6. Itʼs an amazing, if not quite difficult, textbook. In addition to the difficulty of it, I engaged myself in teaching Hebrew consistently every Saturday afternoon instead of studying through the Greek textbook - with the result that I didnʼt continue to pursue my Greek study. However, I have just found someone who is willing to study through the text with me, and we had our first meet-up on Skype this past Saturday. Weʼll be meeting for the second time this weekend, during which meeting weʼll be going over Unit 1.

If anyone has suggestions about how to make the grammar come to life for us, we would appreciate it. So far, weʼve discussed doing a couple of things:

1. Go over our translations of the exercises for each unit, including translation into English and also into Greek.
2. Adding a couple of our own English-to-Greek translations based on the vocabulary and grammar covered up until the unit that weʼre working on.
3. Verb drills to review forms quickly from memory.
4. Augmented readings in the Greek New Testament and soon other Greek works.

Iʼm using Quizlet to put up the vocabulary lists, together with audio for each lesson. The course is listed here if youʼre interested in looking at what Iʼve put together. Let us know in the comments if you have any suggestions for how to use the text in a better way.

εὐχαριστῶ ὑμῖν τοῖς ἐμοῖς φίλοις.
ἔρρωσθε,
Ἰάσων τοῦ Ἰωάννου

Silent Greek World

I’ve noticed recently that the world of online Greek studies has gone silent. I’m not sure if this is due to the end of the school year or if people aren’t producing as many things for online consumption as they were a couple of years ago, but it’s not just my blog that has gone silent.

Mark Lightman (Markos33AD) used to make all kinds of fun videos that he uploaded to YouTube, but his last video was uploaded more than a year ago. Similarly, the online social media site ΣΧΟΛΗ (sxole.com) has had almost no activity over the last year. It was really becoming quite popular for a while, but it’s nearly died out. The B-Greek forum has very little activity, and GreekStudy has a couple of groups currently working through Herodotus and Xenophon, but it’s also operating with limited activity. I’ve done what I can to get some activity up on ΣΧΟΛΗ recently, but nothing started up.

The only site that I’ve noticed maintaining activity is the CARM Biblical Languages forum, which is less geared at language learning and more directed at using the biblical languages to inform theological opinions. The forum has been dominated for the past couple of years by an Internet troll who calls himself “John Milton” on CARM and “Isaac Newton” on Textkit. Although he represents the worst type of person with whom to interact with regard to the Greek language, he at least keeps the CARM forum moving. It’s sad because the world would be better off without such trollish behavior, but at the same time it’s good that CARM has some activity while the rest of the ancient Greek online world has so extremely slowed down.