Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

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BrianB
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Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

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Any recommendations? Any criticisms? I’ve been looking through the primers that can be downloaded from the “Library” section here, and this is the one I’m thinking of using.

My main doubt is that textbooks that give good results in a classroom environment may not always be suitable for home study without a teacher. Can anyone give me any feedback here, either for or against? Thanks.

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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

Post by jeidsath »

Give it a try, it won't hurt. As a self-learner, you are free to experiment. You may also want to look into Athenazde and the JACT books.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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BrianB
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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

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Thank you, Joel. I have downloaded Book 1 of Athenaze. The user-friendly format is attractive and I think I’ll start here rather than with Green.

Am I correct in thinking that the JACT books aren’t available anywhere as free downloads?

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ἑκηβόλος
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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

BrianB wrote: Tue Apr 30, 2019 11:19 am
ἑκηβόλος wrote: Tue Apr 30, 2019 4:16 am Go to the Learning Greek sub-forum and ask for advice.
Thank you, I will. I’ve been looking through the downloadable primers in the “Library” section here. I’m inclined to pick Green’s Brief Introduction to NT Greek. Is that a book you’re familiar with? Can you give me any advice?

[Edit] Following Joel's advice, I have now also downloaded Book 1 of Athenaze, The more modern approach to language learning looks as though it will probably work better.
They are all about the same. Pick one that has sugar coating which suits you pallet. You need about 250 different items from decisions and conjugations and about 300 words of vocabulary to give a smooth enough reading of the language that is satisfying enough to continue with study. Those 250 elements are from about 35 patterns and those 300 words are the ones that occur 50 times or more in the New Testament. Together they will account for about 80% of the words you will see on any given page. The other 20% you will need help with as you read. Different textbooks arrange the Learning into different orders and give different explanations, but no matter how it is arranged, you do need to learn a certain amount.

The 300 words can be learnt using this Memrise list:
https://www.memrise.com/course/66563/koine-greek-3/

You need to complete 12 lists out of the 221 to achieve the goal I stated above. Once you get used to the method, it is good arduous. Of course, that is just the beginning. You can never get too much vocabulary and you will lose some of what you learn along the way.

For general advice, I suggest you pick a chapter or three which you can use to check your progress. For example, Mark 8, Acts 9 and Colossians 2. Print them out, and for each chapter you cover in the textbook, look through and highlight what you have learned in the lesson. Of course the lesson on the alphabet you don't need to highlight. By the end of a beginner's textbook you page should look about 80% full, and about 10% will be things you were initially mistaken about.
Last edited by ἑκηβόλος on Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
τί δὲ ἀγαθὸν τῇ πομφόλυγι συνεστώσῃ ἢ κακὸν διαλυθείσῃ;

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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

Post by wilberfloss »

Am I correct in thinking that the JACT books aren’t available anywhere as free downloads?
[/quote]

To the best of my knowledge, I'm afraid you are correct.

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BrianB
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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

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Thank you again, ἑκηβόλος. I like the look of your statistical approach. I find it encouraging.

From what little I’ve had a chance to look at so far, it’s the verbs I find daunting. Active, middle, and passive; indicative, subjunctive, optative; strong and weak aorist … there’s clearly a great deal of conjugating to do. Let’s see how it goes!

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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

BrianB wrote: Tue Apr 30, 2019 7:09 pmI like the look of [the] statistical approach.
There is a graph and two useful lists here .
τί δὲ ἀγαθὸν τῇ πομφόλυγι συνεστώσῃ ἢ κακὸν διαλυθείσῃ;

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BrianB
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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

Post by BrianB »

That’s amazing. Thank you! A vocabulary of no more than 311 words accounts for close to 80 percent of the wordcount of the NT. I’ll accept Hoffman’s challenge and see if I can memorize the whole list in ten weeks.

[Edit]
In addition to a vocabulary of 300 words, you mentioned earlier a figure of around 250 inflected forms of the declensions and conjugations. Or did I misunderstand you? That seems a very low number, from what I’ve seen of the teeming masses of moods, tenses, and voices that the Greeks found they needed for their verbs. The nouns, not so bad.

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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

BrianB wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 1:00 am That’s amazing. Thank you! A vocabulary of no more than 311 words accounts for close to 80 percent of the wordcount of the NT. I’ll accept Hoffman’s challenge and see if I can memorize the whole list in ten weeks.
If Alexander had paved every ποῦς (foot) he walked we wouldn't be reading Greek now. He moved quickly and accomplished much. It goes without saying that if you cover all 311 words in same way or other within the 10 weeks, you will probably retain about 70% of them. If, you make sure that each word is learnt "properly" before moving to the next, you might get through 50 or 70 in 10 weeks. 70% of of 311 is abou 220, while 100% of 60 is 60.

If you incorporate the Memrise method into your learning - along with writing the words out, drawing pictures for them, dancing rhythmically, singing them to yourself in (your favourite or nursery rhyme tunes), speaking and listen to them repeated - you will get two types of statistics. The Memrise Dashboard will contain a panel for the course, like this (sorry, I only have mine to show you):

Image

The two statistics there are the number of words learnt and the number of "difficult" words.

At present, I am just reviewing the words occuring once in the New Testament and it says that I have done 1,990, which is all of them. The other statistic is the number of "difficult" words - the words that the system considers I don't know well. It is next to the lightning bolt. At present that is just below 40. (Unfortunately, the system does not differentiate whether I made mistakes in Greek to English, or English to Greek).

Those two raw statistics can be combined to calculate the accuracy of the learning one has achieved. In my case, the program has determined that I have 98% accuracy in recall.

As you start out, the numbers will be the other way around - low numbers of words covered with many difficult words - giving a low derived accuracy, but that is what one would ordinarily expect.
τί δὲ ἀγαθὸν τῇ πομφόλυγι συνεστώσῃ ἢ κακὸν διαλυθείσῃ;

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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

BrianB wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 1:00 amIn addition to a vocabulary of 300 words, you mentioned earlier a figure of around 250 inflected forms of the declensions and conjugations. Or did I misunderstand you? That seems a very low number, from what I’ve seen of the teeming masses of moods, tenses, and voices that the Greeks found they needed for their verbs. The nouns, not so bad.
Follow the guidelines for memorisation in your textbooks. Depending on chapter length the authour will introduce 1 - 3 tabulated lists. The inflections are best memorised "inflectionally". By that I mean that the endings are a functional part of the word. You can do that by substituting a different word each time you recite the table. The λύω "I untie" that you are expecting to learn first also serves for πιστεύω "I believe", etc. Your textbook will list others in the chapter vocabulary lists.
τί δὲ ἀγαθὸν τῇ πομφόλυγι συνεστώσῃ ἢ κακὸν διαλυθείσῃ;

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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

With regard to memorization of vocabulary, I'm not going to argue against word lists and flash cards. But the best way to internalize the vocabulary is to use the language as much as possible, and that means as much reading as possible, along with more active forms of use such as composition and speaking. Even short "interactions" of the latter help. Be creative... my dogs recognize both veni huc in Latin and ἔλθε ὧδε in Greek... :)
N.E. Barry Hofstetter

Cuncta mortalia incerta...

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Re: Anyone familiar with Green’s *Brief Introduction to NT Greek*?

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