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Using Michel Thomas to study Koine Greek | ||
Tags: Ancient Greek | Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| polywannabe Newbie United States Joined 5315 days ago 35 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 13 14 August 2011 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi there,
I'd like to start learning Koine Greek. I was thinking about using the Michel Thomas course to help with Greek grammar. Now, I am fully aware that the course is about modern Greek. However, my understanding is that koine Greek grammar is a simplified version of the modern Greek. I really don't get along with regular grammar books - they are usually too technical for me. However, I really like the Michel Thomas approach when it comes to grammar. Do you guys think this is a valid method, or am I barking up the wrong tree here? I should mention that my sole purpose is to be able to read the new testament as it is a requirement for graduate school. As for Vocabulary, I was thinking using SRS or Anki type software - apparently only about 300 words occur 70% of the time so it seems doable to use anki for this. Any suggestions? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes  | Message 2 of 13 14 August 2011 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, Koine is not a simplified Modern Greek. If such a statement makes sense at all, one could use it the other way round, Koine was the more ancient version and over time became Modern Greek, which is morphologically less complex. You may want to get some information about the timeline Homer - Platon - Koine/NT - Modern Greek (a simplification, of course), e.g. here: Greek Language - Wikipedia
You still have to study the basics if you don't want to guess only. But by using a bilingual edition or just by comparing your English version to the Greek text you can get an easy start.
I don't think you need a sophisticated software for such a relatively low number of words ;-) I like the idea of acquiring the most common words first, personally I use many frequency vocabularies, but 300 words are not more an absolute minimum, you need much more for an elementary comprehension, I don't want to give any absolute numbers, well, let's say 2000 for a start, but I am not willing to argue about this number ... There are countless books which list the most common words, prepared by experts, so I don't know if creating an Anki list by yourself is a good idea unless you can do it very fast, with little effort. Anki is a good application, some people love it, I tend to get superficial when I use it, so I don't use it, but you can always try and see if it works for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| polywannabe Newbie United States Joined 5315 days ago 35 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 13 15 August 2011 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So are there no parallels between the modern Greek grammar and the koine Greek grammar?
Yes, I was thinking about doing an assimil type of exercise where I compare the Greek with the English translation and also listen to an audio version for the pronunciation. Although, I believe there is an actual Assimil based course for Ancient Greek. However, I'm not sure how close it gets to Koine Greek (which is a subclass of Ancient Greek). In addition I believe it's in french only. Is there a painless way to learn the grammar? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 4 of 13 15 August 2011 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There are parallels, of course, but modern and koine are separated by some 2000 years, only ... Greek shows an amazing stability in its development, but the difference is huge. Someone who learns classic Greek of the 5th century can read the new testament with little effort, the changes are relatively minor, but the same person does not even get the gist of a modern text. So if you want to read the NT, Michael Thomas is just a waste of time, frankly speaking.
Yes, it is French, and if you were able to use it you would be rather well equipped for the NT, much more so, at least, than after a Michael Thomas course.
I think you should better jump in and see what it is really about than make a lot of more or less educated guesses, which may be rather misleading. Can you read the script? Won't you have a teacher, as you need it for school? Have you looked at the wikipedia article mentioned above? By reading the different articles about the different versions of Greek you can certainly get an excellent overview and are in a better position to judge the amount of work you have to expect. Greek, even the modern version, has a lot of morphology one must study, if this is pain or not, who knows ... If pain is a synonym for effort, then the answer will be no, I guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| polywannabe Newbie United States Joined 5315 days ago 35 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 13 16 August 2011 at 7:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you very much.
I'll take your advise and "jump in"... I'll probably have better questions to ask afterwards. Thanks again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5565 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 6 of 13 16 August 2011 at 9:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The little koine I know (and I never studied it seriously) comes from spending a summer going through John Dobson's Learn New Testament Greek - if you finished that book you would have a good foundation without having to pick up all the endless verb tables found in traditional grammar translation methods.
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| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 7 of 13 16 August 2011 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I read koine/NT Greek a fair bit. I began by studying classical, and then took a class in NT Greek. The transition is fairly smooth that way.
As far as vocabulary is concerned, 300 words will get you almost nowhere. As mentioned before, there are several books which list NT vocabulary by frequency. All the words used 10x or more in the NT totals about 1100 words, and all the words used 5x or more totals about 1800 (if I remember correctly). For reading the NT, I believe that is sufficient, as you can pick up the less frequent words as they come up. For comparison, I believe the total vocabulary of the NT is about 15,000 words. [EDIT: I have been corrected. The total vocab of the NT is about 5425 words.] However, instead of learning by frequency, it might be a better strategy to pick a few key passages of the NT, and learn the vocabulary for those passages, and do a lot of work with those texts. Sakae Kubo's "Reader's Greek-English Lexicon" is brilliant in this respect. It lists all vocabulary used less than 50x, verse by vers. Whenever I am going to study a passage or a book, I use Kubo and first learn the vocabulary I don't already know. I know of only one introductory textbook which is relatively painless, and that is Peter Jones' "Learn Ancient Greek". It is a classical book, but many of the examples given are from the NT. I'm not familiar with Dobson's book mentioned above. It looks very good, but might be more difficult. It would probably work well after or alongside Jones' book. When you've studied through a learning book, an excellent review grammar is David Allan Black's "It's Still Greek to Me". And if you are planning to use your Greek for any kind of NT studies, you really ought to read D.A. Carson's "Exegetical Fallacies", to get a good idea of how not to use Greek. Don't let the title put you off, Carson is a good writer and a great scholar. Edited by Jeffers on 22 August 2011 at 11:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 13 16 August 2011 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Understanding 70% of words doesn't mean understanding 70% of the text. Consider: I was ___?? detained. It's probably not "not" or "never", because they are in the top 300 words. However, the meaning of the sentence changes dramatically when you pick one of the following: obviously unavoidably infrequently illegally lawfully nevertheless 300 words is a starting point, nothing more. Most of the top 300 words are grammatical function words and aren't well-suited to SRS memorisation. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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