Page 1 of 1

Poking the hive.... a question about using an interlinear

Posted: March 4th, 2023, 4:14 pm
by Sebastian Satkurunath
Hi,

I'm a bit nervous about asking this and waking a hornet's nest, as I've picked up that general opinion of interlinears is quite low, but I'm not sure whether the way I use one is unhelpful, and if so what I should be doing instead.

My main use case is when I'm looking at a verse and there's a form that I don't recognise, and can't figure it out from the very rudimentary grasp I have of morphology at this stage. My first port of call is to look through the reference bit at the back of my textbook and try to find something that looks similar and work out whether that fits, but if I can't work it out that way I go and find the verse on https://biblehub.com/interlinear/ and it tells me that it's a passive aorist subjunctive, or a pluperfect -μι verb and I go "Okay, that's why I didn't recognise it", and read enough of the relevant chapter to be able to figure out what it means, and maybe even how to spot it the next time around. (Or it tells me that it's a form I should jolly well know by now, and I feel a bit embarrassed and spend some time drilling before going back to the text.)

Is this bad? Is there a different approach that would be better? If this is fine, what is it that I shouldn't do with interlinears?

Cheers,

Sebastian

Re: Poking the hive.... a question about using an interlinear

Posted: March 4th, 2023, 6:19 pm
by Jason Hare
What you’ve described is not what most people here oppose in the use of an interlinear. You’re trying to figure out the parsing of a given form, to understand where it came from. Many who use interlinears simply use them to their own detriment. If you’re using it like this but trying to stay in the language and treat the language as a language per se, then you’re doing it right. Don’t worry!

Re: Poking the hive.... a question about using an interlinear

Posted: March 5th, 2023, 7:08 pm
by Stephen Carlson
An analytic dictionary is good for this as well, and the online equivalent is Perseus's Morpheus: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?lang=greek

Re: Poking the hive.... a question about using an interlinear

Posted: March 6th, 2023, 10:13 am
by Sebastian Satkurunath
Thanks for the reassurance Jason, and for another useful tool Stephen. I have told myself I'm not allowed to buy any more dead tree books until I've sent the measurements for our new bookcases to the carpenter, but maybe I'll reward myself with an analytic dictionary when that's done ;)

Re: Poking the hive.... a question about using an interlinear

Posted: March 6th, 2023, 10:44 am
by Devenios Doulenios
Stephen is right about the usefulness of an analytic lexicon. Another online source that is helpful is http://www.greekdoc.com/bible/index.html. It has the parsing info and also brief lexicon entries on the meanings.

Re: Poking the hive.... a question about using an interlinear

Posted: July 20th, 2023, 6:32 am
by Danny1979
The greekdoc site unfortunately is no longer available, but I found most of it still online at https://greekdoc.github.io/

Re: Poking the hive.... a question about using an interlinear

Posted: July 24th, 2023, 9:20 am
by Devenios Doulenios
Glad the Greekdoc site is still available in some form. Will bookmark the new site.