Poking the hive.... a question about using an interlinear
Posted: March 4th, 2023, 4:14 pm
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
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