[b-greek] Re: Read or Study?

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.&nbsp; I started teaching myself greek about 7 years ago (has it been
that long?).&nbsp; I find it in a way a most frustrating language.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I started Herodotus 3.5 years ago figuring that it
would be interesting in its own right.&nbsp; Since I started I have managed to
get to chapter 193 of book I.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It is like I am still on the steep portion of the learning
curve.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have a question on where I should go from
here.&nbsp; I am looking at 3 options.&nbsp; One would be to continue reading
Herodotus as I have been, as an unfamiliar text.&nbsp; Second, I purchased a
volume containing books v-vii by Loeb Classical Library which contains both the
greek and an english translating.&nbsp; It would be kind of like cheating, but I
could cover considerable ground by 'peeking' over at the facing page.&nbsp;
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.&nbsp;
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).&nbsp; The GNT was not
listed.&nbsp; My objective in going to Anabasis would be reading a text which I
could more easily read in large volumes.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Earlier this year, i read
1 Corinthians pretending I had never read it before and it was a very rewarding
experience.&nbsp; It took me about 8 weeks.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</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.&nbsp; In another question: what
level of proficiency is attainable?&nbsp; I am no where near to the point of
reading greek like an english newpaper.&nbsp; Maybe I'd have to be heariing it
all day long to be able to attain that level of proficiency.&nbsp; I frequently
remind myself that little five year-olds were running around chattering away in
this most challenging language.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</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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