Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

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Yunus39
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Yunus39 » Fri Sep 24, 2021 3:17 am

Steve wrote:If I had to start learning Koine from scratch now, here is the approach I'd take. I'd spent most of my initial time doing some combination of repetitive listening to Greek (modern recordings of ancient texts), speaking along with it, following along with an interlinear, and reading the interlinear. I'd adjust the relative amounts of listening, chorusing, following, reading, etc. based on how familiar a passage was becoming. I'd start off with perhaps 30 to 60 seconds of audio (maybe a few sentences worth), repeatedly cover it until it started to feel familiar. In other words, I could hear it or read it and I'd mostly know what it means. This might take a couple of days or more, and then I'd be reviewing it as well as moving on to the next 30 to 60 seconds or so.

The main resources I'd use at first would be the audio, an interlinear, the actual text, and a nice introductory grammar book. Using a software editing program like Audacity allows very good control over the audio so individual words, phrases, sentences, or short passages can be trivially looped and controlled. If I was spending 30 minutes in an evening on Koine, I'd probably spend 20 to 25 minutes doing some type of listening, reading, etc. and the other 5 to 10 minutes looking at the grammar book. I would NOT spend much effort memorizing things. My focus would be on the repetition of listening, reading, etc. so that what I was hearing and seeing was starting to become more and more familiar. Rather than a traditional approach of memorizing the alphabet and then slowly and painfully trying to pronounce words (likely using the phonemes of your native language), listening to decent audio helps you internalize a consistent pronunciation along with phrasing.


Based on everyone's feedback I think I will revise my plan to be:

1. Learn the alphabet and skim the two grammar's I own: COMPLETE NEW TESTAMENT GREEK (Teach Yourself) by Betts and LEARN NEW TESTAMENT GREEK by Dobson. I already own these and don't want to spend any more money until I have a significant time investment and know I will use the resources.

2. Focus on 1 John, Mark and/or John, 1 verse or chunk at a time, listening and reading repetitively while checking an interlinear but not relying on it too much. The goal will be to get away from the interlinear and into a reader's edition (got the app) ASAP.

3. After working through those texts re-evaluate. If I am bored or struggling with the ambiguity, I will go back to the grammars. If I am enjoying the process and can notice significant progress I will keep chunking up to 300 hours.

4. I will keep revisiting the grammars every once in a while until I'm at a point where I am comfortable working through the exercises in them. (Though I will avoid translation exercises for now).

5. I will count my hours until I reach 500.

I will wait to start until I am alone in the house with a few hours to spare.

RESOURCES:

Complete New Testament Greek by Betts
Learn New Testament Greek by Dobson
The Interlinear Greek New Testament by George Ricker Berry (I may peruse some other interlinears as well)
Greek New Testament Reader App
Daily Dose of Greek (I may edit these videos to just include the reading along with the text, since they are already in chunks, and the video keeps track of when each word is said.)
Audio and Video of Greek New Testament being read aloud with the text. (Youtube has various options)
Ankhi and Premade Decks (I only plan to use this on the back end of the experiment)

I will buy a hardcopy of the NA or UBS and/or a reader's edition once I have a big enough time commitment into the project.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby sirgregory » Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:29 am

I started going through the Bible in German as a beginner and I found working through it verse by verse intensively to be quite a chore and very slow. I'm sure Greek would be even more opaque.

As a compromise I started going through a chapter extensively with the text, translation, and audio (no dictionary or grammar lookups) and for intensive study I would mine only select phrases and sentences (or "chunks" if you prefer). I would pick whatever caught my eye. A particular word, a grammatical construction, the lyrical quality, whatever. The extensive part is good for getting a feel for the sounds of the language and for getting in some volume. The intensive part is good for figuring out the grammar, etc. With a blended approach I felt like I was actually moving but was still doing "enough" intensive work to actually learn something. You might try experimenting to find an intensive/extensive mix that you like.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Yunus39 » Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:33 pm

So I skimmed through Dobson's Grammar and was really struck by how much it fits the principles behind the approach I would like to take. So far I have "chunked" 1 John 1:1 for 100 reps and 1 John 1:2 for 50. I think I may visit Dobson earlier than I originally planned, but I would like to at least get through 1 John first. I am taking some breaks from "chunking" to dip into whole chapters with audio. Though free full text erasmian audio is hard to find. (I know, I know, but erasmian is what most people teach and how most people pronounce, and I am used to Bangla which has 50 different dialects and am not scared of learning multiple pronunciations in the long run).
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Steve » Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:51 pm

jammon39 wrote:So I skimmed through Dobson's Grammar and was really struck by how much it fits the principles behind the approach I would like to take. So far I have "chunked" 1 John 1:1 for 100 reps and 1 John 1:2 for 50. I think I may visit Dobson earlier than I originally planned, but I would like to at least get through 1 John first. I am taking some breaks from "chunking" to dip into whole chapters with audio. Though free full text erasmian audio is hard to find. (I know, I know, but erasmian is what most people teach and how most people pronounce, and I am used to Bangla which has 50 different dialects and am not scared of learning multiple pronunciations in the long run).


As a FWIW, what worked for me was focusing on building a feeling of "familiarity" rather than counting reps. This is subjective, but I suppose one way to describe it is like moving into a new house where everything starts off unfamiliar but day by day turns into something more and more familiar and comfortable. Depending on the new section being listened to (and how much it is similar to previous sections), the number of reps over a number of days would vary to get to a particular level of "familiarity".

I also found that on a daily basis, I needed to stay within my attention span while my brain felt fresh and I was enjoying it. As soon as my brain started seriously drifting and I felt like I had to force myself to continue, I wasn't gaining much. I have a handful of different activities that I switch between that seems to keep my brain more focused. This includes various combinations of listening, following along, chorusing/shadowing, reading text alone, and then reading sections of reference books. As soon as I find myself starting to seriously drift, I switch to another activity. This is something that tends to vary based on my progress.

With regard to pronunciation, some people have strong feelings on the matter. I tend to be more pragmatic. I suspect the range of historical pronunciations of Greek (and Koine in particular) was probably quite wide given how many people were using it as a second language as well as the simple range of accents among native Greek speakers. The two most important things to me in audio are consistency and the prosody where the rhythm of the language reflects a living language. That simply allows my brain to better latch onto it as a language.

There is a complete GNT recording in Erasmian pronunciation by Marilyn Phemister at various places online. My understanding is that she was losing her eyesight and wanted to have it recorded for her personal use. I respect the amount of effort this took. Her pronunciation is consistent but has no prosody to speak of and it sounds like old computer generated speech (at least to me). I tried using it for a time, but simply couldn't handle it due to how artificial it sounded. As a FWIW, there are two issues I've observed in Erasmian pronunciation that bother me to some degree. One is that the phonemes and prosody used by a particular speaker often tend to reflect their native language and dialect rather than a single standard. The other is that some readings tend to sound artificial as the speaker is following rules in their head about pronunciation rather than the natural "smoothness" of native speakers where various consonants and vowels take on different quantities depending on surrounding sounds and intonation of the phrase or sentence.

Anyway, best of luck. I think you're on a reasonable track. One nice benefit of this approach is something I discovered by accident. I've had times where life happens and I dropped off studying for awhile. I found that anything I'd listened to a lot and read a lot came back very quickly and I was rapidly back to where I was at when I left off. This was in stark contrast to the traditional memorization based approach where after any significant time off it felt like it took ages to re-memorize the forgotten parts of tables and word lists and get back to where I was.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby einzelne » Thu Sep 30, 2021 11:18 pm

Steve wrote:I found that anything I'd listened to a lot and read a lot came back very quickly


I had exactly the same experience. German was the first language I tried to learn completely by myself and when I started it, I could listen to Assimil and although there were already some audiobooks and podcasts, the choice was rather limited. I couldn't progress as quick as I expected. With French it was a breeze and I think it was because I had interesting books in abundance. When I returned to German, the situation dramatically improved and I could finally get it to the advanced level.

I had the same problem with reconstructed pronunciation of both Greek and Latin. If you want to progress you need to listen to the same material a lot (dozens if not hundreds of time) and it's very hard to do if you don't like the accent.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Yunus39 » Fri Oct 01, 2021 2:08 am

Steve wrote:Anyway, best of luck. I think you're on a reasonable track. One nice benefit of this approach is something I discovered by accident. I've had times where life happens and I dropped off studying for awhile. I found that anything I'd listened to a lot and read a lot came back very quickly and I was rapidly back to where I was at when I left off. This was in stark contrast to the traditional memorization based approach where after any significant time off it felt like it took ages to re-memorize the forgotten parts of tables and word lists and get back to where I was.


Thanks! This is the best free erasmian audio I have found so far:

It's the byzantine text, but I'm not too worried about that right now. As I said, I'm using the "Daily Dose of Greek" clips for chunking. They are quite slow. The pronunciation is very deliberate, but they sure do sound "American" to my ears. I will check out Marilyn Phemister.

As far as counting reps, I find it very motivating and that it helps me focus. Also as I'm counting hours it helps me know how much time I have spent if I get interrupted. Not for everyone though. I'm one of those personalities that loves counting, measuring, and monitoring things.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby einzelne » Fri Oct 01, 2021 2:16 am

jammon39 wrote:but they sure do sound "American" to my ears.


Indeed, ex ungue leonem pingere... Just for comparison, here's a native Greek speaker reads bits of Testament both in Modern and Ersamian pronunciation.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby RyanSmallwood » Wed Oct 06, 2021 10:35 pm

Didn't check in on this thread, but I think the best overall complete recording of the whole new testament I've heard is from John Simon, available free here which also includes a complete latin reading, and some hebrew. At least in terms of losing his native accent and having a more natural feel, but I'm not an expert on koine pronunciations so maybe there are other aspects people will find lacking. IIrc he has his own idiosyncratic pronunciation system starting from a modern basis and making some historical changes. (Not saying this is great, just as far as complete recordings go, I haven't come across anything better yet.)

I know Randall Buth has done some extensive Koine readings that are well regarded, but only the gospel of John from the NT, and more extensive audio from a rather pricey beginner course. I think Luke Ranieri took issue with some of his decisions for his reconstruction, I think he said it had some features from different eras or areas but was never spoken exactly this way, and to my ears it sounded a bit on the stilted/artificial side.

I think Luke Ranieri put out his own recordings of the Gospel of John in Latin and Greek recently, I think he's one of the better readers of natural sounding ancient languages overall, though I know he has his own idiosyncratic pronunciation system with Greek, not sure if he used that here or how much it varies from Koine.

Not sure if you were specifically looking for Erasmian or just any approximate reconstructed pronunciation, but these are some more options.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Yunus39 » Thu Oct 07, 2021 2:49 am

Thanks! Yes, modern and recontructed recordings are quite available. So much so, that I wouldn't be surprised if those pronunciation systems overtake Erasmian in the next generation. For various practical reasons I am learning Erasmian first and am not intimidated at switching or learning another later. Free Erasmian recordings are harder to find, but I have a couple.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby einzelne » Sat Oct 09, 2021 1:31 am

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