ἀπόλλυται

[MarkAntony198337]

ἀπόλλυται

[seneca2008]

I would not want to discourage anyone from embarking on any project they consider useful. Nevertheless I have reservations about your approach as it seems focused on translation. I find the most useful threads are those which discuss specific grammatical issues which arise in reading where we have numerous posters (chief of these Hylander, mwh, bedwere etc etc) who offer much appreciated expertise. I also find useful those threads where the meaning of texts is discussed. Polished translation is I know of interest to many people but perhaps because I am so poor at it, I find it difficult to summon up enough enthusiasm. There are in any event many easily available translations on Perseus and in Loebs (or Budé for French readers etc)

In particular I wonder how helpful it is "to arrange the words of a sentence in their proper order before rendering it." Dealing with Greek or latin in the order it is written seems such a desirable objective that any rearrangement as a matter of course seems unhelpful. Its not a halfway post to reading as it comes but to my mind a step in the opposite direction.

Others have voiced their views on the unhelpfulness of interlinears. I have not found them particularly useful. And the chance to ask questions here I think makes their use doubly doubtful.They seem very much to orient the mind towards a solution rather than thinking a text through. Process is much more important than result, in my view.

I am glad you have read the Demosthenes thread. I started reading de corona but was sidetracked and in any event the majority wanted to read Aristophanes although that project like so many appears to have fallen by the wayside. I will post some questions I have about de corona when i have the time but my main reading in Greek is the Odyssey and so far I have been able to solve problems through the standard commentary. Having already studied the Iliad helps enormously.

My method of reading complex texts with intricate rhetoric (like Livy and Demosthenes) is to work on an electronic text using different coloured fonts and highlights to elucidate the structure. I also keep a running vocabulary at the bottom of text sections and include any necessary notes. It is a time consuming way to read especially as I frequently refer to commentaries, but it means that I engage deeply with the text as it stands. (I am sorry if the comments I make on other threads dont always reflect the thoroughness with which I prepare the texts I am actually reading.)

I guess my view will be a minority view but my main interest is understanding a text, translation seems to me a rather different activity. Having understood a text how you express this in another language seems to involve a huge range of choices which have less to do with the original text and more to do with other desiderata.

[mwh]

I second seneca2008.

[Hylander]

I agree with Seneca, too.

[seneca2008]

I may, for example, have got one part of the very example I have given here wrong: "τὸ χρῆμα τῶν νυκτῶν." Does χρῆμα indeed mean matter or affair here, or have I mistaken the nature of the idiom?

This nicely illustrates the problem of "translation". In English I am not sure I see much of a difference between "matter" or "affair" they are mostly interchangeable although of course there are usages where they mean different things. Rather than concentrating on a specific English word you need to get behind the meaning of the Greek. If you had consulted L&S you would have seen what the meaning was with helpful examples (including Ar.Nu.2!) :

3. used in periphrases to express something strange or extraordinary of its kind, ὑὸς χ. μέγα a huge monster of a boar, Hdt.1.36; “ἦν τοῦ χειμῶνος χ. ἀφόρητον” Id.7.188; τὸ χ. τῶν νυκτῶν ὅσον what a business the nights are! Ar.Nu.2;

[jeidsath]

I disagree with some of the other commentators. I found an interlinear very useful for about 2-3 months before I was adept enough at Greek to use a Loeb in the same way.

That said, there are many difficulties with the interlinear method, and I don't think that the world needs another one. Instead I would recommend Ilya Frank's method, which has come up on Textkit before, and is somewhat related to an interlinear. German example. A description of the method.

I wouldn't mind doing something similar for Greek. People seem to use it successfully for highly declined living languages.

[MarkAntony198337]

ἀπόλλυται

[Hylander]

The interlinear translations (aka "trots," "ponies") that used to circulate and are now available second-hand, despite their lofty and probably cynical professions of pedagogical utility, were really not designed for people who wanted to learn Latin and Greek--they were designed for boys (in an era when for the most part only boys studied Latin and Greek) who really didn't want to learn Latin or Greek, but were forced to, and tried to use short-cuts to prepare for tomorrow's classroom recitation, where they might be called upon to translate a set passage of Caesar or the Anabasis, at the risk of being subjected to withering humiliation or even physical abuse if they were caught UNPREPARED! (Memories of Mr. X's teaching methods in second-year Latin.)

" . . . to arrange the words of a sentence in their proper order before rendering it . . . " says it all. The proper order of the words of a Greek sentence is the way they appear on a page of Greek--they don't need to be rearranged to conform to English word order, and rearranging them is a hindrance, not a help, to acquiring the ability to read Greek. This is decoding, not reading.

People who really want to learn Greek or Latin should avoid interlinears.

[mahasacham]

What about a paraphrase of the text in a simpler form of the language like what we have for the Iliad by Doukas?

I often write notes in the margins of my Loeb that paraphrase a section I am struggling with. Sometimes it helps to simply untangle a Chiastic structure to determine if some the constructions are a predicative or an adjective construction.....like a Koine version of Plato....for the masses?

Similar things are being done on the B-Greek forum but instead of paraphrases people are given the English translation and then one must try and re-verse engineer the sentence back into the Greek and see how close it matches.

[MarkAntony198337]

ἀπόλλυται

[Hylander]

Never happened to me personally -- I was always prepared. And it fell short of corporal punishment for others, though not by much.

[daivid]

That the school that I was taught Latin used the cane is a big reason (possibly the main reason) I am learning Greek now and not Latin

[Markos]

What about a paraphrase of the text in a simpler form of the language like what we have for the Iliad by Doukas?

I would be interested in such a team project. Having multiple L2 paraphrases of a text is particularly helpful.

Oedipus Rex and Hebrews would be two texts I'd like to see this done with.

[mwh]

The trouble with paraphrases, whether in Greek or English, is that they destroy the particularities of the text and create quite a different effect. Time would be better spent trying to understand why the original takes the form that it does.

[daivid]

The trouble with paraphrases, whether in Greek or English, is that they destroy the particularities of the text and create quite a different effect. Time would be better spent trying to understand why the original takes the form that it does.

That is very much why I have trouble reading paraphrases. On top of that I find paraphrases often just as hard as the original. The effort I expend on reading the original feels worth it. The effort I expend reading paraphrases is just toil as I know it is not the real thing. On top of that they serve as spoilers for the time when I finally do read the original.

Perseus does much the same as a interlinear but better and so makes them obsolete. What would be useful to me is a literal translation that attempts keep the particularities of the text at least to an extent even at the cost of producing unnatural English.

[jeidsath]

One thing that I've never seen in living language learning is the statement "don't learn this way, you'll ruin your <language x>." On the other hand, this purism about learning methods is very much on display in ancient languages. I read a wonderful essay once about why Xenophon wasn't suitable for second-year readers; examples were given of all of Xenophon's non-Attic words, and it was heavily intimated that Xenophon was even now in the process of ruining students forever. I have a friend who tells me that he is terrified about the fact that he has learned Greek from Victorian-era dictionaries, and worries that the difference between modern and Victorian English is leading him astray. Pronouncements of learning doom are very much on display on both sides of the debate in our Grammar Translation thread. In our refreshing languages thread on the open board, there were statements about the possible dangers of reading a translation in a foreign language rather than something written by a native.

I would gently urge my friends on this board to consider where this emphasis on language purity comes from and whether it is helpful. My own thought is that any language activity that is fun and interesting should be pursued, as enthusiasm is the most important and most limited language learning resource. Some activities are really useless for language learning: it's probably best to avoid anything mechanical or rote that allows concentration or attention to lag with only the appearance of work. But most of our grim pronouncements are misplaced.

[seneca2008]

Its probably in the nature of forum boards for comments to become polarised whether in a real or imagined ways. I dont see much evidence for anyone here saying "don't learn this way, you'll ruin your <language x>." and I am very sorry if thats how my posts come across. As I said in my first post if people have strategies which they think are useful and they enjoy then they should of course employ them. But if advice is asked for you cant blame those who take a different view from expressing it.

Writing paraphrases might be a fun thing to do. I dont have the time or inclination. I would rather read and discuss texts. Others have different aims. Being able to write a paraphrase seems like quite a daunting prospect. What style would one adopt and why? It seems to be the sort of think that I imagine was popular in the 19 th century when people had endless time and a sound grasp of Greek. I am not sure that I have ever heard that it was a good way to learn a modern language. Nor do I think interlinears are used.I am quite prepared to be proved wrong. When i had to improve my French from the basic schoolboy level a very interesting french lady came to my office twice a week and we talked, for over a year. I learned a huge amount.

[daivid]

Paraphrases take the content of an actual text and change the grammar to something hopefully simpler. The feeling of reading a poor imitation of the real thing is a bit disheartening even though simple Greek is in general something I really feel the need for.

Alexander Waugh Young's Battle of Hastings https://archive.org/details/tutorialgreekrea00younuoft takes almost completely opposite approach. He takes completely new content and puts it into the grammar form of actual Greek writers. He selected simpler forms from Thucydides and Xenophon who he used as his model though it is still too hard for me. However, I am very enthusiastic about the idea.

It would have been better if he had chosen constructions and idioms from say one book or even, though that would be much harder, one chapter of say Xenophon as even a quite hard construction is simpler if you meet it a second time. I am trying this approach with Xenophon's book 1 but for me it is going very very slowly.