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200 Hours of Koine Greek | ||
Tags: Ancient Greek | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5337 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 9 of 31 08 December 2009 at 9:23pm | IP Logged |
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2 Hours
Spent time reading Matthew Chapter 3. Added some vocab to vocab software. Reviewed patterns and aspects of grammar (did this over a few week period). I am starting to slowly conclude that I need to simply set aside some time each evening to just spend reading. I am thinking that by reading I will get the best practice of patterns than working in grammer and trying to memorize word lists. However, I am thinking that it would behove me to continue to make lists of all the words I encounter that are not defined in the footnotes of my readers bible so that I can commit those ones to memory and try to inductively learn the rest. 194 Hours, 10 Minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5337 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 10 of 31 26 January 2010 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
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1 Hour 50 Minutes
I decided I need to quit being so lazy and actually set time aside specifically for working on Greek (since I seem to be able to get less and less done at work). So, today I spent 1 hour and 20 minutes reading part of Matthew Chapter 4 in my Readers Greek New Testament (I got up to the part where the devil starts quoting scripture back at Jesus, trying to get him to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple). As I went through, I wrote down unfamiliar words, and added those to Anki, and then had Anki quiz me. A number of days back, I spent 30 minutes copying out Vocabulary from "Lexical Aids for Students of new Testament Greek". I got down to words occurring 151 times or more. 192 Hours, 20 Minutes Remaining Lets see if I can fulfill rest of this time before September. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5337 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 11 of 31 27 January 2010 at 7:40pm | IP Logged |
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40 Minutes
Continued reading in Matthew Chapter 4. Found a bunch of words that were not listed in the footnotes that I was unfamiliar with. Added them directly to anki. Discovered (or rediscovered) that the future of αιρω (I raise up) is simply αρω. So I added two separate vocab cards in anki since I could see this throwing me for a loop again in the future if I do not learn it now. 191 Hours, 40 Minutes Remaining 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5337 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 12 of 31 14 February 2010 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
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2 Hours
-Listened to part of Matthew Chapter 4 being read several times, reading along with an interlinear text. -Listened and read along with my Reader's Greek New Testament. -Copied more vocabulary from the Lexical Aids book. -Read over the portion of Matthew 4 I have been working on. -Started copying out the portion of Matthew 4 and writing in the translation. -Began reading Arthur Sidgwick's "First Greek Writer", and toyed with one of the exercises. I am thinking it may be beneficial to start doing more writing exercises to help better internalize the language. 189 Hours, 40 Minutes Remaining 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5337 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 13 of 31 15 February 2010 at 1:23am | IP Logged |
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1 Hour, 25 Minutes
-Briefly did a bit of parsing out of my Greek workbook. Spent some time looking for answers to a couple of parsing questions I had, and wrote out the result as follows... originally to be posed as a question (which I then decided wasn't actually necessary), but I am thinking that it was valuable for me to just write it out anyway: In Matthew 4:4, it says ο δε αποκριθεις ειπεν. Now, I was reviewing the section of my textbook (Willam D Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek), and the paradigm charts indicate that αποκριθεις is a passive aorist participle (2nd aor., I believe). Now, this threw me for a loop because I was failing to take into account the fact that the lexical form of this word, αποκρινομαι is a deponent verb (meaning it appears in the middle/passive form). I guess I had been expecting it to show up in the middle form (αποκρινομενω, I believe) if it was to have an active meaning like the NASB translation suggests, but instead I find it taking on the passive form. So, I am assuming that deponent verbs always take on the passive form when that form is available (the only time it is really "unavailable" - as far as I can recall - would be in the present active indicative form where there the middle and passive form of the verb are exactly the same). -Added some more words from my reading to Anki, and started looking over them. 188 Hours, 15 Minutes Remaining 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5337 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 14 of 31 05 March 2010 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
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1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Time is a rough estimate today since I faced regular interruptions at work (namely, customers). I transferred a copy of Arthur Sidgwick's "First Greek Writer" from Textkit.com and the answer key to my Sony E-book reader and took it to work with me. As I had time (mostly, when it was slow), I read through the section about the use of the article (I found its approach to the use of the article with the adjective helpful: the adjective needs to have an article preceding it, otherwise it because predicative). Then, I went and started working on writing exercise one. One of the sentences I was translating into Greek went "I see many swans, which are bright and white". I think I translated it something like ορω τους πολλους κυκνους,ως εστι λαμπρον και λευκον". I am unable to determine if these last two words (λαμπρος and λευκος) should be in the nominative or the accusative since "I" am the subject (found within the verb ορω - I see), the swans (κυκνος) should be the predicate (ie - in the accusative), so should the adjectives which modify the κυκνους be nominative since they are coming after the stative verb "εστι", or in the accusative? If they should be in the accusative, I am thinking that they probably would then need to be plural as well, but this doesn't seem to make sense to me (partially, because it seems to me that I have never encountered such a thing before), so I am thinking that it probably needs to be in the nominative. Well, checking the key, it does indeed look as though that should be nominative, but it puts it as plural... so, I probably need to do a bit of re-reading, and try again another day. I also made a point of writing down all the new vocabulary that was to appear in this exercise, and even as I went to write this journal entry, was pleased that I was able to recall as many of the new words as I did. My favorite at this point was definitely σφοδρα (which means "very")... because it sounds so neat! It has been bouncing around my head for the better part of the evening. So, I am thinking that these exercises in composition may prove to be very helpful in improving my ability to read ancient Greek (by helping me better assimilate it as a whole). Anyway, I am thinking I should probably also add scripture memorization in with this (say... a few verse each week) to help with internalizing things here. 186 Hours, 45 Minutes Remaining 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5337 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 15 of 31 11 July 2010 at 7:03am | IP Logged |
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2 Hours
Well, after poking around almost uselessly at my Greek, I came upon a sudden burst of motivation from the following sources: the hope of being able to use my Greek down the road in Seminary, the thought of being able to just sit down and read my bible in Greek, the desire to eventually learn other languages (but wanting to finish what I have started with Greek), and having heard again of others who have done it. I think I have been finding the lack of motivation to be the hardest challenge with continuing my Greek studies on my own. When I was taking it as a class, the regular quizzes and classes provided adequate motivation to carry on. But now, being on my own, pretty much nobody notices if I do not make any progress. So, I'm trying to figure out the best way to maintain motivation at this point. One thing I am going to do is move to a simpler model of studying: namely, practice and repetition. I feel as though part of my problems stem from my desire to find a means of continuing my studies that produce instant results. But, I am finding that there is no such method. That being said, I am recognizing that where I am at a place where I should be able to start making significant progress without working any harder than I did when I was studying Greek in college (I would peg the required level of effort as being similar). Basically, my plan is to regularly listen to an audio version of the Greek New Testament (as I have been doing already) on my way to work as a means of beginning to internalize the language somewhat. Also, as I do this, I am going to start working through parts of the New Testament by translating the text into English (and practice parsing words). In my Readers Greek New Testament, words appearing under 30 or so times are defined in the footnotes, so any words I still have to look up I will write down (as well as interesting words from the footnotes), and try to work at building vocabulary. I think with practice, parsing will become second nature (parsing most nouns is already nearly second nature, so I don't see why Parsing Verbs cannot get there). As parsing becomes more automatic, and my vocabulary starts to expand, I think I will start to benefit more and more from listening to the New Testament in Greek. As it stands, on my commute to work, I often will pick out bits and pieces of what is being talked about. Now and again, phrases like "Συ ει ο χριστος" are completely and instantly understood. Anyway, that is what I have been doing for the "2 hours" noted here. I think returning to the basics and keeping in mind that if I practice I will start getting things (and not worrying/feeling like a failure when I don't get things right away), since that is how I have gotten to where I am now: practicing and getting used to things. Those are my thoughts as I try to get back into the game. Finally, I am considering contacting my former Greek Prof. and seeing if he would be interested in meeting with me now and again to hold me to account with my studies. Might help a bit. 184 Hours, 45 Minutes Remaining 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Theodisce Octoglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5697 days ago 127 posts - 167 votes Speaks: Polish*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Czech, French, English, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Portuguese | Message 16 of 31 11 July 2010 at 11:10pm | IP Logged |
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Adjectives should be plural- in many Indoeuropean languages nouns take the number according to their own. There's no such a rule in English so it can be tricky at first but you will get used to it. The adjectives are in nominative since they are preceded by the verb to be. It is so in Latin, but we the Poles put "good man" in instrumental in the phrase: "John is a good man". In Ancient Greek however the nominative is used.
I strongly suggest using audio. For many people it works perfectly and you can download some NT recordings legally from various sites. I definitely recommend putting high emphasis on reading. Folks who study Classics spend 5 years with grammar book just to be able to read absolutely nothing in original without consulting every word. I did predict what is going to happen. As skills increase, as more time has been spent, difficulties are easier to overcome and the pleasure increases s t r o n g l y. If you are afraid you spend 30 minutes dealing with a single sentence- don't worry, all the people do so to certain point. After two years in Greek I can read the Gospels without dictionary with about 80% understanding and I haven't worked hard. In fact, it was an approach disaster, but as I know more about the very process of learning, I become more efficient. Try to not pay very much attention to grammar forms. Try to predicate from the context the meaning of words. If you understand as little as two sentences in a chapter, you are still a winner: the sentences are yours, you have gone through them yourself, you've learned much more about the process of reading. I believe it works best when you have a sense of achievement, and a sense of achievement grows from your work. Make your work as independent as you can, open some chapters you like the most and enjoy it. If you don't give up, you w i l l succeed. Edited by Theodisce on 11 July 2010 at 11:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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