From: Chuck Tripp (ctripp@ptialaska.net)
Date: Tue Feb 05 2002 - 02:22:39 EST
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This thread is a few days old but it caught my
interest. I started teaching myself greek about 7 years ago (has it been
that long?). I find it in a way a most frustrating language. I know
two others besides my native language, and I have to say that I find greek by
far the most challenging of my non-native languages. I adopted a strategy
of reading extra-biblical greek texts I was not familiar with in order to a)
gain experience interpreting greek texts which I am not 'reading into' the text
what I 'know' it says, since much of the biblical text is familiar to me and b)
try to gain a feel for the meaning of words words and how the language is
structured in non-biblical settings.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I started Herodotus 3.5 years ago figuring that it
would be interesting in its own right. Since I started I have managed to
get to chapter 193 of book I. I can see that I am moving along more
quickly but I am not yet reaching one of my objective of reading large amounts
of greek text. It is like I am still on the steep portion of the learning
curve.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have a question on where I should go from
here. I am looking at 3 options. One would be to continue reading
Herodotus as I have been, as an unfamiliar text. Second, I purchased a
volume containing books v-vii by Loeb Classical Library which contains both the
greek and an english translating. It would be kind of like cheating, but I
could cover considerable ground by 'peeking' over at the facing page.
Another would be this: i have seen on a web-page that Anabasis by Xenophon was
rated as a 1 on as scale of 1-10 of relative difficulty of Greek texts.
Herodotus was rated 5, Theucidides (sp?) was rated a 10 (a friend of mine who
has read some of it says it is really difficult). The GNT was not
listed. My objective in going to Anabasis would be reading a text which I
could more easily read in large volumes. As to my currentl rate of
reading, I can read chapter of Herodotus in about 2 hours or maybe 1, sometimes
in 5 minutes depending on what is thrown at me. Earlier this year, i read
1 Corinthians pretending I had never read it before and it was a very rewarding
experience. It took me about 8 weeks.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I am curious on feed-back on which approach would
be the best or perhaps an alternate approach. In another question: what
level of proficiency is attainable? I am no where near to the point of
reading greek like an english newpaper. Maybe I'd have to be heariing it
all day long to be able to attain that level of proficiency. I frequently
remind myself that little five year-olds were running around chattering away in
this most challenging language.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Chuck Tripp</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Kodiak, Alaska</FONT></DIV>
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