![]() * Note also that χείρ, ‘hand’ functions metonymically for δάκτυλος, ‘finger’. It is important to remember just how much of all language, including your own, is conventionalized and idiomatic. With jewelry, clothing, and other objects that extend all the way around a body part like a hand (or also the foot in the example below).* Students might find usage like this confusing. Greek conventionally construes the landmark χεῖρες as containers even when the trajector is not physically contained and held by the hands. ![]() This next one might seem unusual and unexpected from an English-speaking perspective. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:31) I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over into the hands of the Romans (Acts 28:17). Greek seems to consistently use εἰς whether we might use either ‘into’ or ‘in’. We use the English preposition ‘into’ in contexts such as “He coughed into his hand”, “Dad slipped some money into his hand” or as below with less concrete expressions involving capture and imprisonment. When prisoners are transferred from one group to another, they are ‘handed off’, ‘handed over’, or ‘put into their hands’. When someone hands you something, it is put into your hands. They function as containers for what they grasp. Human hands are commonly used for grasping objects. Examples below are taken from the New Testament, but the descriptions are based on larger patterns in Ancient Greek. Below are some of the more salient uses of χείρ, ‘hand’ that lend themselves to this type of experiential learning. What if instructors were able to build lessons for Greek prepositions around physical actions that students could perform themselves? This method would tie the meaning of the prepositions not just to rote memorization, but to physical behavior. The datasets we have compiled make it fairly simple to pull out prepositional phrases where the object of the preposition (the landmark) is a person’s body part. We (Rachel & Michael Aubrey) have been working on research projects involving Greek prepositions (see: Greek prepositions in the New Testament). One way of splitting this Gordian knot is by encouraging students to physically engage with the language using their own bodies. Yet it can also be quite difficult for teachers trained in traditional grammar and methods to adjust to more communicative approaches to language learning. The goal, instead, is getting students into actual comprehensible input, where learning the language simply happens: the student learns the language because they experience it. ![]() The more creative and interactive we can make our language learning the more we can move our students away from rote memorization of flashcards to actually learning Greek. Creatively engaging students in language learning can be an ongoing challenge for those who teach Greek. ![]()
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