Over on twitter, our friend Travis asks the somewhat provocative question

Almost every single Communicative Greek resource I’ve ever seen commits a very basic error with naming. According to John Lee, Greeks said: τὸ ὄνομά μου or ὄνομά μοι but NEVER τὸ ὄνομά μοι. How has literally everyone missed this?!

I myself have certainly been guilty of violating that ‘rule’ (I note that Lee places ‘rule’ in quotation marks within his paper, and I’ll talk about too), and I think this provides a good occasion to reflect upon errors, idiom, communicative methods, and related things.

Lee’s article

John Lee’s article is worth reading. In short, he observes that the LXX and NT consistently use τὸ ὄνομα + genitive, but ὄνομα + dative, and that this pattern is consistent with an almost universal pattern in Greek from Homer to the Koine period, starting to break down in the 2nd century CE. He then formulates this as a ‘rule’, and suggests that it is proof of the LXX and NT authors having good Greek idiom, whether native or native-like. Lee also, importantly, notes that he hasn’t seen this ‘rule’ formulated anywhere before – not within Greek literature, and not in grammatical works on Greek.

Types of ‘error’

First of all, I think it’s worth realising that there are various degrees of error, and I think violating the ὄνομα rule is very low down the scale. In fact, I wouldn’t call this an error, I would call it non-native idiom. In particular, this represents a completely understandable and comprehensible pattern of language. If you said, ὄνομα μου or τὸ ὄνομά μοι to a native speaker of 1st century Greek, I have zero doubt that you would be understood. Maybe they’d correct you, maybe they wouldn’t, but there’s zero failure of communication there because in this instance the difference between a possessive dative and a genitive is a rather minute nuance.

There are other types of errors, though, and some are failures of idiom, others are ungrammaticalities. It is very common among contemporary Latin speakers, especially those influenced by American speaking circles, to use the phrase tecum sto (lit. “I stand with you) to mean “I agree with you”. This phrase isn’t attested classically with this kind of idiomatic meaning, there are quite a few other phrases that would do better service. But it’s widespread. Personally I think this non-native usage is a slightly higher level of problem, because it’s shifting to the realm of meaning, and reinforcing a non-idiomatic construction. But even here, you shouldn’t be a jerk about it, interrupting Latin conversations to rant at them for their barbarisms.

The type of errors that speakers today of historical languages should most be concerned about in their own speech, are ungrammaticalities. παύομαι τρέχειν for “I stop running” is right on the verge of being categorically ungrammatical. Yes, you might be understood by a native speaker, but they are going to pause and mentally check for a second. If they were given a nice little linguistic field test, they’d mark it with an asterisk for ‘ungrammatical sentence’.

Why we all ‘got it wrong’

Why did almost all communicative teachers of ancient Greek get the ὄνομα rule wrong? And why is tecum sto so prevalent? Let me deal with the latter first, and highlight a genuine danger for contemporary speakers of historical languages. As best I know, tecum sto was picked up by some American speakers (sorry American friends), and circulated reasonably widely among them, and because of the nature of spoken-Latin events and circles, it has been widely reinforced and now forms part of some speakers standard phraseology. Even very proficient speakers use it commonly, to the chagrin of purists.

This illustrates a feature of contemporary speaking circles – the number of contemporary Latin and Greek speakers is relatively small, and in the age of the internet things can spread rapidly and decisively. Terrence Tunberg suggested the word acroama / ἀκρόαμα for ‘podcast’ and it was taken up by Latin podcasters within the week.

So, what about τὸ ὄνομά μοι? I would suggest that we all ‘missed’ this for a simple set of reasons. Firstly, Ancient Greek is now an undead language – it’s spoken, but it does not have intergenerational transmission nor is it used actively as the daily language of a residential community. Secondly, although (as Lee does) you can search the corpus of AG literature to find lots of examples of ὄνομα usage, the simple exchange τί ἐστι ὄνομά σοι; would happen countless times in a speaker’s life if they engaged in life with a Greek speaking community, but it is not so frequent in literary texts. Thirdly, it’s not that Lee noticed a rule that we were all ignoring, it’s that Lee formulated a consistent idiom pattern that no-one had formulated in explicit writing for 2800 years. Fourthly, it suggests something subtle about article usage that had escaped us. Fifthly, this kind of non-native idiom sometimes occurs among contemporary AG speakers due to Latin interference. That is, while not all AG speakers have Latin or are stronger in Latin, many are, and their Latin sometimes shapes their Greek.

Proof that you communicative folks are terrible

Now, at least regularly I hear some people pipe up and say, “Look, this is why you can’t teach communicatively! How could you confidently teach ancient Greek as a spoken language if you can’t even get the ὄνομα rule right??”

To which I would reply τὰδε· Every communicative teacher I know is well aware of the issues that face us about linguistic accuracy, the corpus we have access to, what linguistic data is ‘missing’ because there is no intergenerational + daily life speaking community with continuity (setting aside the important questions about the role of Modern Greek). It’s not that we are ignorant or are ignoring those challenges, we’re just not convinced they are defeaters.

Given that Lee is the first to point out explicitly this ‘rule’, I don’t think you could reasonably complain or blame anyone for not knowing it. You certainly couldn’t say grammar teachers were doing a better job – I’ve never read or heard a grammar teacher formulate the rule!

Do better

Please take this section-header tongue-in-cheek. Communicative teachers of AG (and Latin) are interested in norming their learners’ and their own speech to a literary corpus. That’s almost always been true of Latin, and it remains true of AG. We’re not aiming to revive the language and then see it become a modern spoken language that goes on to evolve independently. So there is an inherent conservativism, or a gravitational ‘centre’ to our language use, and that center is the literature we are interested in.

And so, as I have said before, the thing that more than anything will norm our speech patterns, is regular and consistent exposure and immersion in authentic ancient Greek (and Latin) literature. That is incumbent upon teachers in particular – they need to be spending considerable time reading and reflecting on ancient texts. It is less incumbent upon learners, because they should be getting as much comprehensible input as possible, at the easiest possible levels, and that learner-oriented material should be being produced by teachers who are norming themselves to the literary corpus I just mentioned. That’s how you ensure that Latin and AG produced by contemporary speakers continues to conform to usage patterns of thousands of years ago.

Secondly, we need good linguistics. Although I am definitely on record as saying that explicit grammar is of little to no use for acquiring languages, I am very in favour of ongoing, rigorous linguistic work on ancient languages, and that this understanding of Latin and Greek should then be brought to bear, especially on teachers and teaching. Lee’s paper is a great example, it has refined all our understandings of a pattern that we didn’t explicitly know existed, and teachers and speakers can now consciously adjust their usage to reflect that norm, which should then be reinforced among learners.

Thirdly, this is one reason LGPSI exists freely available for you to read and critique, instead of waiting umpteen years for me to finish it, publish it, and then get lambasted for errors. There are definitely errors in LGPSI right now. But it is there for people to read and send me corrections and suggestions at any time. Even now, I have been going through and subtly conforming it to the ὄνομα rule.

Fourthly, remember to be gracious to speakers of ancient languages. Classics and Biblical Studies have enough snooty jackasses already.

Lately I’ve been talking here and there about a few things that all interrelate, so I thought I’d try to bring them together in one post, with a pitch at the end.

Reading Easy Greek

I spend a lot of time these days reading quite easy Greek. Obviously this includes reading and re-reading textbook material (primarily but not exlcusively Athenaze) with students, but also in some of my own time, I am reading easy Greek as much as I can. It’s this that I recommend to people as a key element in getting lots of comprehensible input, and it’s this that is going to propel your Greek forward in general. If you can spend 5 minutes reading a passage in which you comprehend basically everything, or need to look up just a handful of words along the way, you’ve done wonders for your Greek. Incidentally, this is why I’ve moved to start telling my students about halfway through Athenaze that it’s time for them to start working on additional readings.

Transcription

I also recently spent some time talking about why you might spend some time transcribing Greek texts. I think this does a good deal of good in focusing you on a text, and developing typing skills as well as spelling and accentuation sensitivity. So when I personally am reading easy greek, some of that is transcribing easy greek and then re-reading it, proofing it, and adding a few notes in for my own benefit.

Where to find Easy Greek?

Honestly one of the best things you can do is scour 19th century and early 20th century Greek Readers, such as those listed here. That, and reading any connected narrative text in textbooks helps too. Some authentic texts could be considered easy, depending on your own level. Then there are people writing modern content in ancient Greek, for example.

What if there were more ‘Easy Greek’ for everybody?

This is essentially why the Greek Learner Text Project exists and came about. Through discussions with James Tauber and I, it became clear that if we consistently digitised Greek-Learner texts, and developed annotated versions of those texts, they could become part of a personalised, difficulty-structured, reading platform, which would know what you know, and offer up texts, and reading supports, to give you Greek that was just that tiny step up that you needed. But to do that we need digitised texts, and especially lemmatised texts.

You could help:

Whether you transcribe a text, or OCR it and proof it, or read through another text and help lemmatise it, or even just proofing in general, these would all help the GLTP move forward in getting some complete texts at least to the point of digital and lemmatised, which is the starting point for some exciting transformations of them. If you’d like to help and don’t know how to start, get in touch and we can help you do so.

Series forward: One of the things I’m interested in doing more of, is promoting those involved in generated new, original authored materials for Latin and Ancient Greek. I hope this will spotlight some of the amazing work being done and produced, and encourage you to go and read it, support these individuals, and participate in literary production and consumption in the languages!

Interview forward: I first came to know András through a couple of the Latin discords, and I have seen him go from an absolute beginner in Latin, to a reasonably competent speaker, all from diligent study of LLPSI and involvement in conversational voice-chats and study-groups. That he has come so far, so quickly, and is now involved in instructing others, and producing Latin content himself, is a real testament to the effectiveness of a focused, CI-based, approach to a language, and to András himself. Okay, on to the interview!

1. So, András, tell us a little bit about yourself, and your previous experiences with languages.

I grew up in a family of musicians, spending my childhood years among instruments, in choirs, and buried in my violin practice. I could’ve pursued music but, due to many and complex reasons, I left my hometown to study English instead at a very good high school in Hungary. Besides English, I also picked up some German during my adventures in Bavaria, which I have since mostly forgotten.

I never went to university, but freelanced for a while, doing image manipulation work and creating websites for a variety of clients from around the world. I moved back to my hometown and was trying to figure something out. After a series of bad experiences, I wanted something else.

I got a job offer to help research alternative teaching methods for abused students, and after a year, found myself teaching English to the very same students.

I carried on doing that for three years before, due to changes in our educational system by the government, I lost my job and had to find something else again.

I am confident in saying I know English very well. As much as I want to credit my school, I picked up English on my own and was speaking it on a conversational level at around the age of ten. I decided I could continue teaching English, and I set up online courses. This was last summer, when I was already studying Latin. I’ve been teaching ever since.

2. What was your impression of Latin prior to your serious foray into learning it.

First of all, I did attempt to learn Latin in high school on my own, which lasted for a few weeks. After falling in love with a certain someone, I quickly gave up on my Latin studies.

My second insight into Latin is something I don’t actually remember. I released the full story of this in email format, but the short version is, still in high school, I managed to write four lines of correct Latin on a very drunk night. We’re still investigating how that happened.

My impression was, especially coming from a background with English etymology, that it was a very harmonious language. As much as it was the Romans’ speech, I mostly associated Latin with the medieval period and with classical music, of course. I definitely didn’t think I would laugh at the obscenity of Catullus and Janus Pannonius a few years later.

That’s about what my impression was. I didn’t have an interest in Classics, and Latin was only one of those what ifs back in high school.

3. Tell us a bit about how you initially got started on learning Latin, and especially your experiences with Familia Romana, and with conversational groups.

It was an accident. About ten months ago, my body broke down. The doctors couldn’t do anything with me, it was right in the pandemic. I moved back home to my mother and tried to do something useful in-between crying and generally suffering.

I think I was having a conversation with a friend when the idea came to try and read Caesar. He told me some interesting stories about his time up in Great Britain, and I wanted to find them for myself. I just asked, how hard can it be? And now here I am, about ten months later.

After figuring out that reading Caesar was indeed not a light afternoon activity, I remembered some sites back from high school that were either in or about Latin, and tried to find them. Most of them are either gone or they didn’t come my way this time, but what I found instead was so much better.

I found LLPSI on April 28th and began reading Familia Romana in earnest. I believe I joined the Discord servers, one dedicated to LLPSI, the other a general Latin community, when I was at chapter three. I really found the book and the communities at the same time, but I didn’t dive in immediately.

My first idea was to just start writing in a channel designed for beginners of Latin. I thought I could find anything I didn’t know on the internet, and what I couldn’t I could ask. I was right, people were extremely helpful, and I quickly got up to speed.

In the meantime, I also started attending reading groups to go through the book with other people. This went on until August, where I actually took over one of these groups. I tried out conversational Latin in the very beginning of June. That was an experience. I really began conversing at around the end of July, the beginning of August.

That’s also about the time where I branched out and started consuming other Latin, outside of Familia Romana. Ørberg’s book remained a sort of benchmark, along with Caesar, with which I could measure where I was with my Latin. I really only finished Familia Romana in November, due to laziness and getting my Latin from elsewhere. But I read the last six chapters in one sitting.

I think Familia Romana is the best book out there for self-studying Latin. It’s built up really well, even with the difficulty spikes sometimes, and gets you through the most important grammar points through the story it tells. What I would also recommend is to read whatever you like or what you can alongside with the LLPSI series.

Doing it this way gave me more challenges, but, I believe, also a more rounded knowledge of Latin. These combined with my daily conversations, I was well on my way to learn the language.

4. Where do you see your Latin ability now – things you’re able to do and areas you’re still working on?

I can hold an everyday conversation, and I can read easier or more straightforward authors, with a dictionary. I think the biggest area where I’m lacking is vocabulary. Because of the hundreds of hours of speaking, and Hungarian being my native tongue might help with this too, I don’t have too much trouble with syntax. I can read poetry alright, sometimes even easier than prose due to poems’ succinctness. From another angle, reading Cicero now is about as difficult as reading a new chapter of LLPSI, only I lack the useful margin notes Ørberg carefully puts in his books.

It’s a big frustration that I can sort of sight-read everything but miss the meaning because most unabridged Latin is not comprehensible input at my level. I think the best thing I can do is work through Roma Aeterna, the second book of LLPSI, and attending my usual reading groups and conversations. I would say it’s a grind, but if it is one, it’s an exciting one. Honestly, I feel like a sports player talking about this, but really all it takes is to show up every day. That’s what I’ve been doing and it’s what I plan to do.

I’ve been trying myself at telling entire stories in Latin on my own. It’s something I find to be a lot more difficult than having a conversation, because I have less immediate feedback, and less time to think about how I’m going to reply. It also works my vocabulary, what with all the words I need to actually use actively to narrate a full tale.

As Medus sings in Familia Romana, «non via longa est Romam», but it sure is full of hurdles and adventures!

5. You’ve recently begun a number of creative endeavours producing Latin-language content, what are they and what are you envisaging for the future?

It all started during the summer, where we had a discussion, you, Jessica, and me, about how there are holes in what content is available for students of Latin to consume. I made a few videos on YouTube without really having a plan with them. Among those is a video about the video game Neverwinter Nights, a visit to some Roman ruins, and some Latin dubs of film scenes.

I was also planning on sharing my Latin notes, because many people have been asking for them. The real problem with that was, I didn’t really take notes. You might guess what sort of a student I was back at school. Instead, I began writing a short-lived Weekly Latin series, available both on my website and on Patreon. I think it was a good idea, but there wasn’t enough to say every week, and I didn’t want to push myself too hard just to get enough material for an article.

After surviving Christmas, I began preparing new things in January. Things I was doing anyway or that I thought would be fun. My Latin dubs received more and better feedback than my readings or my Neverwinter Nights video, and from that I realised there is a serious lack of Latin entertainment. What better way to give back to the community than to create entertaining videos but entirely in Latin?

The preparations for those videos are mostly done, but my laptop recently had an accident. Some of those videos will be published later than planned. I’ve been trying to figure out what to put out while I get spare parts for my laptop, and we’ll see what I can come up with.

I don’t want to share too much because I don’t want to make empty promises, but I can say I’m planning two series, one involving comedy, the other some very delicious recipes.

Replacing Weekly Latin, I created an email list where I share Latin stories. The difference in motivation is substantial because I tell these stories in various Latin chats anyway. So, instead of clogging up conversations with hundreds of Latin words, I can write these stories down separately and send them out. They’re mostly from my past, because a roller coaster is a comfortable cradle compared to the craziness my teenager years were, both in a good and in a bad way, but I’m planning on sending a few fictive ones as well if inspiration strikes me such. The entire catalogue of these emails is available for Patrons.

6. If people want to hear more from you, in Latin, where should they be looking?

I’m active in a number of places. There are the Latin Discords, of course, along with my own Discord server I created for Patreon.

There is my email list, where past the automated introductory email, I only send content in Latin, and I reply to everyone who chooses to respond to my stories.

I’m also on Twitter where, even if I sometimes retweet English content, and might reply under other people’s tweets in English, I tweet exclusively in Latin.

It’s rare these days, but sometimes I can be found in the weekly Latin chats on Zoom.

Lastly, there’s my YouTube channel, which, as inactive as it’s been lately, will see more content in the following months.