Sam Parkinson
Posted: August 7th, 2018, 5:49 am
Hello all,
I'm finally getting round to an introduction, after a couple of months of lurking and a couple of posts. Finding B-Greek has been like finding a gold mine: there's just so much good stuff here. I've had to teach myself, and being able to learn from such an array of people who are far further on is marvelous.
I'm a pastor-in-training based in Glasgow (Scotland), and while I've done a variety of helpful study for preaching, have never had the chance to do a proper seminary degree. So I started teaching myself Greek around eight years ago or so, using Jeremy Duff's (underrated?) textbook. I'd never learned a language properly, and my formal English grammar was atrocious (despite being a professional editor...) so that was a steep learning curve. It took several restarts to get going, and by the time I made it to the end of the book I'd forgotten much of it.
Discovering the UBS reader's GNT, and memrise for vocab, helped me both start again and then make the transition to reading. I still need to go back and review formal grammar, but by now reading the NT is pretty fluid for the easier books at least, and it's easy enough that I'm now learning much faster. So I'm also jumping off into Attic (Italian Athenaze, Xenophon, Lysias) and enjoying that. I'd be making great progress if I hadn't decided to learn Hebrew too...
Discovering B-Greek, as well as Nerdy Language majors, Seumas MacDonald's blog, and various other sources has given me new enthusiasm to push forwards, as well as lots of good advice on tools, sources, readers, and heaps of great advice. I'm glad to be alive when that's possible!
Sam.
p.s. would a moderator kindly change my username to Sam Parkinson? I can't work out how to contact one directly, as I haven't posted enough to message any of you - at least as far as I can work out!
I'm finally getting round to an introduction, after a couple of months of lurking and a couple of posts. Finding B-Greek has been like finding a gold mine: there's just so much good stuff here. I've had to teach myself, and being able to learn from such an array of people who are far further on is marvelous.
I'm a pastor-in-training based in Glasgow (Scotland), and while I've done a variety of helpful study for preaching, have never had the chance to do a proper seminary degree. So I started teaching myself Greek around eight years ago or so, using Jeremy Duff's (underrated?) textbook. I'd never learned a language properly, and my formal English grammar was atrocious (despite being a professional editor...) so that was a steep learning curve. It took several restarts to get going, and by the time I made it to the end of the book I'd forgotten much of it.
Discovering the UBS reader's GNT, and memrise for vocab, helped me both start again and then make the transition to reading. I still need to go back and review formal grammar, but by now reading the NT is pretty fluid for the easier books at least, and it's easy enough that I'm now learning much faster. So I'm also jumping off into Attic (Italian Athenaze, Xenophon, Lysias) and enjoying that. I'd be making great progress if I hadn't decided to learn Hebrew too...
Discovering B-Greek, as well as Nerdy Language majors, Seumas MacDonald's blog, and various other sources has given me new enthusiasm to push forwards, as well as lots of good advice on tools, sources, readers, and heaps of great advice. I'm glad to be alive when that's possible!
Sam.
p.s. would a moderator kindly change my username to Sam Parkinson? I can't work out how to contact one directly, as I haven't posted enough to message any of you - at least as far as I can work out!