Language Tales

One of the many benefits promised to us from learning Biblical Greek was that we would also understand English grammar for perhaps the first time. I say this because most students of my generation didn't get much grammar growing up, beyond the simplest 'a noun is a thing', and 'a verb is a doing word'. It was out of favour with the education makers during my schooling years. Supposedly its now back in though, because they were asking some questions on an episode of It's Academic the other day, that I wouldn't have understood until last year.

I have certainly picked up heaps of grammar through learning Greek, but I've also learnt some of it through surprising means. I recounted last year how I discovered the importance of conjunctions. And this year I'm adding to my learning by discovering the value of verbs. I had an unseen translation in a Hebrew exam the other day, the only problem was, there was a heap of verbs in it that we had never been taught but were expected to decipher from context. I didn't know them, didn't know the passage well enough to fake it, couldn't work them out, and so I left them blank. It makes for fun reading. Moses.... top.... mountain.... the LORD our God... into... law... Moses...

Verbs are extremely important to communication.

___________

Now, I was at the wedding of some dear friends last week. During the sermon the minister asked us if love was a verb or a noun. My first thought was, 'I can tell you if you'd like me to consult my Greek Bible'. My next thought was, 'From what I know of Greek, it is extremely clear whether a word is a noun or a verb'. But then I thought, 'That's probably not why he was asking the question'. Knowing the difference between a verb and a noun, isn't everything.