Announcement for June 30 Class

I. "GRACE WEEK"

With the amount of new material being introduced each week, the next couple weeks are going to be critical for people getting up to speed with the material so as to be able to keep pace for the rest of the course. We've also had a couple people recently join us who have to catch up with us, several people were gone 6/23, and some had not yet done the Lesson 3 Exercises for the last class. ;^( As I don't want to lose anyone at this date who may be temporarily overwhelmed or falling behind, this week will be a "grace week" to allow people to catch up. On June 30 we will again review Lesson 3 and preview Lesson 4, and spend time drilling on vocabulary and paradigms.

If you're behind, use this next week to:

a. (RE)LEARN the vocabulary (including the extra words) for Lessons 2 and 3. Also see this.

b. (RE)LEARN the verb conjugation and noun declension patterns for Lessons 2 and 3.

c. MEMORIZE the [definite] article pattern. See Lesson 5 Section 28 or the charts I've given you or that are on the blog here.

d. DO all the Exercises for Lessons 2 and 3 that you did not do.

e. PRACTICE your reading/pronunciation and writing.

f. LISTEN to the CD to help with your pronunciation.

II. "TWEAKING" THE CLASS FORMAT

While I have mentioned lengthening the class, there is only so much a person's mind can absorb at a time, so I'd prefer not to do that. In order to streamline things and focus on what's most important - and hence spend the most time on those things - I am proposing the following class format, or something very similar:

1. Quiz over vocabulary words and new paradigms (i.e., verb conjugation patterns/endings and noun/adjective declension patterns/endings) that were to have been learned the previous week. NO (or very few) TRANSLATION SENTENCES for now in the quizzes, as students will have done translations the week before as part of the Exercises homework, and this adds too much extra time to the quiz. (But see step 6 below.)

2. Go over the quiz just taken.

3. Review/answer a select number of the Exercises that were to have been done that week, e.g.:

a. Three sentences each from the made-up sentences, the LXX translations, and the NT translations; and

b. Two sentences from the English-to-Greek sentences.

STUDENTS ARE TO HAVE DONE ALL THE EXERCISES SENTENCES BEFORE CLASS, THOUGH, AND NOT JUST A FEW OF EACH. Answers to the Exercises will be posted ahead of time on the blog so students can check their translations after they do them and before coming to class. This, too, will help streamline the class time. (The answers to Lessons 2, 3, 4 and 5 have now been posted - see the links on the sidebar.) Feel free to email me or even post as blog comments questions you may have about any of your translations or about grammar subjects in the Lesson(s).

4. Discuss any problems or questions students say they had with any of the translation Exercises/sentences that we don't go over in step 3. above, or about the grammar part of the Lesson.

5. Read/preview the new Lesson and additional vocabulary words. Students practice saying (and writing?) the words and the paradigms.

6. Do some of the Exercises for the new Lesson based on what we have just discussed in Step 5. This gives students the translation practice that is being reduced in the quizzes, and also gives everyone a chance to put into practice the new information.

7. Do picture-word listening/looking exercise, and do NT readings.

I will try to avoid discussing extraneous or "nice to know but not need to know" subjects/examples, as the most important thing for you to be absorbing and learning and doing is the VOCABULARY and the verb/noun/adjective/etc. PARADIGMS. I'll try to focus on things that help you learn the subject at hand, while avoiding esoteric and interesting but non-essential things, unless time allows it or it seems germane to someone's question or understanding.

Learning Greek necessarily involves a lot of rote repetition, because the words and patterns are the building blocks of the language, and you must be able to recognize and understand them. Soon, though, we will be putting your newly-learned reading skills and knowledge to work and begin reading passages from the Greek New Testament in addition to the translations you are doing each week.

Pep Talk

For most of you, and for me as the teacher of this course, the goal is that you in a reasonably short period of time learn enough to be able to read and navigate with understanding a decent portion of the Greek New Testament. This requires mastering the basic grammar and a fairly large vocabulary, and spending some time in the Greek New Testament - all of which we will do in the course.

My "1 hour a day, 5 days a week" guideline for what it takes to learn the material (esp. vocabulary memorization and review) is probably going to be kicking in for you soon, if it hasn't already. Make this course a priority for the next 8 months and you will achieve the above goal.

Get on top of the material now, be sure to do all the Exercises, and (most important of all) do the work daily and regularly - i.e., don't "cram" on Friday night! (As William Mounce writes in the Introduction to his Greek grammar: "Those who cram, perish.")

And remember: Don't let the fog and the slog overwhelm you!

If you're starting to think that learning Greek is hard work ... well, you're right! (But it needn't take 25 years; you can learn a lot in one year!)

Class Notes: June 16, 2007

ΣΟΦΙΑ. ΠΡΟΣΧΩΜΕΝ.

• Review Information
• Class Notes and Comments

• Review Information

Again, memorize the [definite] article (see Class Notes: June 9, 2007). The sooner you do this, the better off you will be for learning nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc.

Make sure you know Lesson 2 grammar and vocabulary (as well as the alphabet!) pretty well before doing Lesson 3. Each Lesson builds on the previous weeks' knowledge, but there is repetition of grammar and words such that if you didn't quite master everything, succeeding Lessons will help reinforce what you've earlier been exposed to. However, there is sufficient new information in each Lesson that you will sooner or later (and it's usually sooner, not later!) begin falling behind if you don't do your best to master as much as you can each week.

Be sure to read out loud as much as possible. Use the CD to work on and improve your pronunciation.

• Class Notes and Comments

Important Sections and points (read every Section in Lesson 3, though):

15. Memorize the vocabulary and the extra vocabulary. Read the blog entry "Learning Vocabulary" (the audio files are recorded by saying the article before the noun).

See Sidebar for Lesson 3 vocabulary (MS Excel - as noted, you will need to install the TekniaGreek font to read the Greek characters), including the extra word from the LXX-NT vocabulary (δουλευω - shown as δουλευσατε (Aorist Active Imperative 2nd-Person Plural) in the LXX-NT vocabulary list), plus the other extra words you are to learn (words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament). An audio file of the words is in the Sidebar.

17. Read this to understand the various functions of the cases. As stated in class, verbs are parsed by Tense, Voice, Mood, Person and Number, and nouns, pronouns and adjectives are parsed by Gender (feminine, masculine, neuter), Number (singular, plural) and Case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative). Since most 1st-declension nouns are feminine, that is the Gender you will indicate for the nouns in this Lesson (the article that is listed with the noun indicates the Gender - η for feminine; ο for masculine; το for neuter).

18. Learn these forms, and how to tell if a 1st-declension noun follows the α pattern, the η pattern, or the mixed pattern. (As you can see, this only applies to the singular; the plural forms all use α's in the endings.) Note that ι is a clue that you're dealing with a dative case (whether it's a regular ι or a subscripted ι - the subscript ι is just as much a letter and part of a word's spelling as any other letter).

19. For the third time - MEMORIZE THE [DEFINITE] ARTICLE PARADIGM! ;^)

20. Read and try to remember the accent(uation) rules in the textbook.

21. Do all the Exercises. Again, make sure you know the vocabulary (Section 15, as well as the Lesson 2 vocabulary) and the Lesson grammar before doing the Exercises so you are really able to do the Exercises with understanding, and not have to keep looking back in the Lesson to know what to write.

You'll notice, e.g., in a few of the LXX sentences for Lesson 3 that Croy introduces some forms that he has not yet discussed in the book. E.g., he uses the genitive singular form of the article in sentence 1., even though he doesn't discuss the article until Lesson 5 (but we have already discussed all the article forms in class). Also, e.g., in the NT section he uses a singular masculine accusative ending in one sentence, even though you won't learn the masculine 2nd-declension noun endings until Lesson 4 (i.e., at our forthcoming class).

In other words, you will at times be introduced to things you have not yet learned, but should be able to deduce based on what you have learned. As I've looked ahead, I see he does this in future Lessons, too. So, don't feel badly if on occasion you get something wrong, or can't quite figure out how to translate something. It's purposeful.

(There are Greek to English and English to Greek vocabulary lists in the back of the book if you get really stumped, but you should rely mostly on the words and things you've learned before turning there.)

Learning Vocabulary

We've discussed various tools for learning vocabulary - e.g., flashcards and Greek vocabulary books, software programs (we haven't really discussed this one yet), etc. Choose and use whatever helps you best or most efficiently learn the words.

Most vocabulary flashcards and books, as well as lexicons, list nouns as:

nominative singular, genitive singular ending, article (to indicate the noun's gender)

E.g.:

λογος, -ου, ο and αδελφη, -ης, η

While this is the way words are listed, it might be better to memorize the words with the article first, e.g.:

ο λογος, -ου and η αδελφη, -ης

This way you will always associate the gender (ο masculine, η feminine, το neuter) with the noun, which comes in handy when dealing with 1st-declension masculine nouns like ο μαθητης or 2nd-declension feminine nouns like η οδος, since most 1st-declension nouns are feminine, and most 2nd-declension nouns are masculine or neuter.

At a minimum one should learn (memorize) the word with the article, e.g.:

ο λογος = "(the) word" and η αδελφη = "(the) sister"

and not simply as:

λογος = "word" and αδελφη = "sister"

When it comes to 3rd-declension nouns, though (Lesson 17, Section 116ff.; Lesson 25, Section 175ff.), you need to know the genitive form, too, because that contains the noun's lexical stem. (This is actually true for all declensions, but in 1st- and 2nd-declension nouns the nominative and genitive use the same stem.)

Ideally one should learn a noun (with the article, of course) in both its nominative form and its genitive form, not just the genitive ending, because even though the genitive form is regular for 1st- and 2nd-declension nouns, sometimes the accent changes.

Vocabulary Lists for the Course

I've finally completed the vocabulary lists by Lesson for the course - click on the link on the sidebar under "Class Links" that says:

Vocabulary list (MS Excel) for A Primer of Biblical Greek, expanded from the textbook to include all words that occur in the New Testament 25x or more (plus 20x-24x); Extra Words only

The list is sorted in Lesson order. Words added from the Exercises LXX/NT vocabulary lists are indicated by LN; extra words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament are indicated by +; extra words that occur 20x-24x are indicated by ++.

Because Excel sorts alphabetically according to English, the Greek ordering may not be alphabetical (e.g., it treats ζ, the sixth letter in the Greek alphabet, as a "z," the last letter in the English alphabet, and the accents and breathing marks are treated as the characters on the the keys that are used to type them). At some point I'll get around to sorting each Lesson's words in proper Greek alphabetical order.

I've input brief definitions for the + and ++ words; you have definitions for the other words, since they're in the textbook. The LXX/NT words are not in the vocabulary lists in the back of the book; they're only in the lists for the Exercises. Some of these words appear in more than one Lesson, and I've indicated the Lesson(s) in my list. Also, the forms given for the LXX/NT vocabulary are the way they appear in the Exercises, and not necessarily the lexical/dictionary form, which is what I list in the Vocabulary lists and how you should learn/memorize them. I'll double-check the definitions by the time we get to the Lesson.

If you learn all the words in the lists, you will have a very sizable vocabulary by the end of the course, quite a bit larger than what many 1st-year courses teach.

Class Notes: June 9, 2007

• Class Notes and Comments
• Memorize the [Definite] Article
• Installing the Greek Pronunciation CD
• Heads Up! for Lesson 3

• Class Notes and Comments

Important Sections and points in each Lesson (read every Section, though):

Lesson 1

1. Learn the alphabet and pronunciation of all letters and diphthongs by heart by next week.

2. Use either the Historical (Modern) Pronunciation of Greek (HPG) or Buth's Phonemic Koine Greek (PKG). I will probably at times shift between the two, as they are nearly identical.

HPG - 5 vowel system - how Greek is spoken today; pronunciation used on Caragounis CD:
1. ι = ει = η = οι = υ = "ee"
2. ε = αι = "eh"
3. α = "ah, uh"
4. ο = ω = "oh"
5. ου = "oo"

PKG - 7 vowel system - possibly historically more accurate; makes learning the spelling of words a little easier; can easily adapt to HPG/Modern Greek with only very minor changes; pronunciation used on word-picture CDs:
1. ι = ει = "ee"
2. η = "ey"
3. υ = οι = "u" (French u)
4. ε = αι = "eh"
5. α = "ah, uh"
6. ο = ω = "oh"
7. ου = "oo"

3. The "rough breathing" ("h" sound before some initial vowels or diphthongs, and initial ρ) was no longer sounded by New Testament times, though it appears in printed New Testament texts and continued to affect spelling (e.g., ουχ, rather than ουκ, was still used before vowels with a rough breathing mark).

4. Consonant clusters that can begin a word - e.g., στ (σταυρος) - are not split when dividing a word into syllables: e.g., it's α-πο-στο-λος, not α-ποσ-το-λος. The more modern initial consonant clusters like μπ ("b" sound) and ντ ("d" sound) do not appear to have been used as initial consonants in NT times, and would be split when they occur in the middle of a word when dividing words into syllables: e.g., it's παν-τες, not πα-ντες.

5. Accent rules are useful when translating from English to Greek, but are of secondary importance in this course, as you will primarily be reading and translating already-accented Greek. One should learn the rules that Croy teaches, though, as they help in spelling, and knowledge of accenting can differentiate between some words or some types of words - e.g., "liquid" verbs (Lesson 22 Section 155) differentiate between the present active indicative and the future active indicative only by the placement and type of the accent. See the earlier post, More on Accents.

Lesson 2

9. Learn the vocabulary by heart before doing the Exercises. Write out the words, make or buy and use flashcards, and/or buy vocabulary books. There is vocabulary software (some for purchase, and some for free) that some people find useful. Do whatever works best to help you learn the words. It is only by mastering a reasonable size vocabulary (which I would consider to be knowing at least all the words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament - or better yet, 20x or more) that one can begin to enjoy reading the New Testament, because one is then not constantly having to look up words. Of course, one also needs to be able to recognize the forms of the words to know what one is reading, so grammar can't be separated from vocabulary in terms of being important for being able to read the Greek New Testament.

See Sidebar for Lesson 2 vocabulary (MS Excel - as noted, you will need to install the TekniaGreek font to read the Greek characters), including the extra word from the LXX-NT vocabulary (φιλεω = "I love" - shown as φιλω (Present Active Indicative 1st-Person Singular) in the LXX-NT vocabulary list), plus the two additional extra words, αναβλεπω = "I regain my sight" or "I look up" and ναι = "yes." These come from words that occur 25x or more and are not in the book, or not in the LXX and NT Exercise vocabulary list for the Lesson. Audio files of the words are in the Sidebar.

10. Verbs have Tense, Voice, Mood, Person, Number. E.g.: Present (Tense), Active (Voice), Indicative (Mood), Person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), Number (singular, plural). When you parse a verb, you give these 5 things, plus the lexical (dictionary) form and the translation. E.g.:

λυομεν - Present Active Indicative 1st-Person Plural (PAI1P) of λυω = "We are loosening"

Nice to know (but not need to know now) information:
Tenses: Present, Imperfect, Future, Aorist, Perfect, Pluperfect
Voices: Active, Middle, Passive
Moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative, Optative, Infinitive, Participle (some say that Infinitive and Participle are Modes, not Moods)
Persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd
Numbers: Singular, Plural

11. & 12. Learn the Present Active Indicative and Present Active Infinitive endings by heart before doing the Exercises:

Present Active Indicative

Singular
1 -ω
2 -εις
3 -ει

Plural
1 -ομεν
2 -ετε
3 -ουσι(ν)

Present Active Infinitive -ειν (no person or number)

14. Do all the Exercises. Add the word φιλεω (shown as φιλω in the list) = "I love" to your vocabulary to memorize. φιλεω is a "contract verb" (Lesson 21 Section 145), and the ε contracts with the ω so that only the ω (with a circumflex accent) is left. Though it conjugates just like λυω (Section 11), because of the way the ε contracts with the "connecting vowels" (ε or ο) between the verb stem and the ending, its verb endings look slightly different. You should still be able to recognize and translate it, though. If you are interested in seeing how the ε contract verbs like φιλεω contract in the Present Active Indicative, view the chart at Section 351, p. 242, for ποιεω.

• Memorize the [Definite] Article
  

Learn the [definite] article by heart (see below). Learn this now, even though it's in Lesson 5 Section 28 of the textbook. The usual way of learning it is doing the Singular, first across and then down, and then doing the Plural, first across and then down. I.e.:

Singular

1. nominative: masculine - feminine - neuter
2. genitive: masculine -feminine - neuter
3. dative: masculine - feminine - neuter
4. accusative: masculine -feminine - neuter
   

Plural

1. nominative: masculine - feminine - neuter
2. genitive: masculine -feminine - neuter
3. dative: masculine - feminine - neuter
4. accusative: masculine -feminine - neuter

To aid in recognizing and memorizing the article, note (per the colors in the paradigm chart):

1. the masculine and neuter forms are identical in the genitive and dative
2. for the singular and the plural, the neuter nominative and accusative forms are identical
3. the genitive plural is the same for all three genders
4. ι, whether as a full letter or as a subscript ι, is an indicator for the dative case
5. feminine forms are characterized by η or α, and masculine and neuter forms by ο or ω

Greek Article Pronunciation (HPG / Phonemic Koine Greek; u = French u)

Singular	masculine	feminine	neuter
nominative	oh	ee / ey	toh
genitive	too	teece / tace	too
dative	toh	tee / tay	toh
accusative	tohn	teen / tane	toh
Plural	masculine	feminine	neuter
nominative	ee / u	eh	tah
genitive	tohn	tohn	tohn
dative	teece / tuce	tess	teece / tuce
accusative	tooce	tahs	tah

• Installing the Greek Pronunciation CD
  

Installing the Greek Pronunciation CD:

Windows Systems

• Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP or NT 4.0
• Pentium II (or higher) PC
• At least 32 MB RAM
• 50 MB free disk space for Java JRE and program files
• CD-ROM drive
  

Program Installation

• Copy all files to a new directory on your hard disk
• Run the "Install Greek Font" batch file (If this doesn't install the fonts so you see the Greek characters in the Lessons, use the usual method of installing fonts - i.e., go to Start - Control Panel - Fonts - File - Install New Font - browse to the directory/folder with the fonts - Select all)
• Restart your computer (this may or may not be necessary)
  

To Run the Program

• Go to the directory where you copied the files and run the "RUN_NTG" batch file (RUN_NTG.BAT) by double-clicking the left mouse button on the filename.

NOTE: Though my work PC (XP Service Pack 2) runs the program fine by running the "RUN_NTG.BAT" file as instructed, it freezes up on my home PC (also XP Service Pack 2). However, running (i.e., double-clicking) the "NTG.jar" file in the "NTG" subfolder runs the program with no problems.

• Heads Up! For Lesson 3
  

Be sure to learn all the vocabulary for Lesson 2, because there will be 25 new words to learn for Lesson 3!

Voiced and Unvoiced Consonants

In my pronunciation chart, I say that for the diphthongs αυ, ευ, and ηυ, the υ takes a "v" sound before vowels and voiced consonants, and an "f" sound elsewhere.

To clarify, "voiced" consonants are those which make a sound when you pronounce them, versus "unvoiced" consonants that are like a whispered sound. E.g., our English "b" is a voiced consonant, as in the word "bee"; its "unvoiced" form is our letter "p," as in the word "pea." Say "buh"and "puh" and you'll see that your mouth and lips form the same shape, but you "hear" the "b" in "buh," but don't "hear" the "p" in "puh" – hence, "p" is "unvoiced."

Thus, the voiced consonants are: β γ δ ζ λ μ ν ρ (and the rare times σ/ς is pronounced like a "z").

The unvoiced consonants are: θ κ ξ π σ/ς τ φ χ ψ

I also say that γ is a "y" (as in "yes") sound before vowels or diphthongs that are pronounced as either "ee" or "eh," and a "gh" sound elsewhere.

The "ee" vowels and diphthongs are: η ι υ ει οι

The "eh" vowels and diphthongs are: ε αι

The above is for the Historical Pronunciation of Greek (i.e., the Modern Greek Pronunciation), which has an overabundance of "ee" sounds due to what's called "itacism," the mixing up of Greek historical spellings because the underlying vowel phonemes (sounds) had merged with the sound of ι.

Though Buth's Phonemic Koine Greek (again, see my pronunciation chart) pronounces η as "ey" in "obey," and υ and οι as a French u, instead of all three as "ee" as above, a γ that precedes them - or, more specifically, that precedes the "front" vowels ι ει η ε αι (formed with the tongue in a front position) - is also to be pronounced closer to a "y" sound. On the CDs, though, Buth seems to use "gh" for all instances of γ, as I've also heard some Greeks do, and Lydia said that her Greek-speaking priest wants her to pronounce γ as a "gh" and not as a "y," so pronouncing γ as "gh" in almost all instances may be fine.

More on Accents

Greek accenting is complex - D. A. Carson wrote a 167-page book called Greek Accents: A Student's Manual (which I own but haven't fully read or studied), and his summary of the various accent rules takes nearly 5 full pages. We never spent much time on accent rules in my Greek classes; whether that was good or bad, I don't know.

There are English-to-Greek exercises in this course, but for the most part, students want to learn to read Greek and translate it into English, not vice-versa, and the Greek they're reading will already have the accents. Thus, learning all the minutiae of accent rules (which involves knowing whether a vowel - and hence a syllable - is long or short) is probably something that most will not need to do.

The General Rules of Accent
(from Greek Accents: A Student's Manual, by D. A. Carson)

GR.1 Apart from specific exceptions later to be enumerated (largely concerning enclitics and proclitics, but also related to crasis and elision), every Greek word must have an accent, and only one accent.

GR.2 An acute accent may stand only on an ultima, a penult, or an antepenult; a circumflex accent may stand only on an ultima or a penult; and a grave accent may stand only on an ultima.

GR.3 The circumflex accent cannot stand on a short syllable.

GR.4 If the ultima is long, then:

• GR.4.1 the antepenult cannot have any accent, and


• GR.4.2 the penult, if it is accented at all, must have the acute.

GR.5 If the ultima is short, then a long penult, if it is accented at all, must have the circumflex accent.

GR.6 An acute accent on the ultima of a word is changed to a grave when followed, without intervening mark of punctuation, by another word or words.

You should recognize the above as having been listed by Croy in Lesson 1, and Croy gives additional accent rules in succeeding chapters. Carson's General Rules 4. and 5. are probably the most important, per a personal response from David H. Warren (Prof. of NT and Greek, Freed-Hardeman University, Henderson, Tenn.) to my B-Greek query regarding the importance of accents. (Though his online response to me that you can read below might seem a bit sarcastic - probably because he misunderstood what I was asking - his personal response was nice and helpful.) If you want to read that discussion, my initial post was here in the May 2002 archives:

value of accents? Eric Weiss

and the responses can be read in the June 2002 archives as follows:

value of accents? dhwarren at attglobal.net
value of accents? James Forsyth
value of accents? Eric S. Weiss
value of accents dhwarren at attglobal.net
value of accents? Vincent M. Setterholm
value of accents? Eric S. Weiss
value of accents Eric S. Weiss
value of accents? David Thiele

Some terms that you may encounter in other books:

Acute accents:
oxytone: an acute accent on the ultima (from οξεια "sharp")
paroxytone: an acute accent on the penult
proparoxytone: an acute accent on the antepenult

Circumflex accents:
perispomenon: a circumflex accent on the ultima (from περισπωμενη "drawn off from around, stripped off")
properispomenon: a circumflex accent on the penult

Also:
barytone: a word with no accent (from βαρεια "heavy")

Per Carson, in modern usage, the word, not the accented syllable, is called oxytone, perispomenon, barytone, etc., whereas with Greek literature, the accent itself is called οξεια, περισπωμενη, or βαρεια, and the noun προσωδια ("accent") is supplied: e.g., οξεια προσωδια.

A century ago Herbert Weir Smyth wrote what is still a standard and exhaustive grammar for Classical Greek. Per Carson, the accent rules for Hellenistic (i.e., New Testament) Greek differ somewhat from those for Classical Greek, but you might find Weir's ACCENT: GENERAL PRINCIPLES (sections 149-187) from the first edition helpful. (The second edition is still in print, and even though it's for Classical Greek, it is probably a book you'll want to acquire at some point if you're serious about learning Greek.)

The Website for Smyth's book uses a polytonic unicode font so you can see the correct accenting of the words I use in this post. I don't think Blogger displays polytonic Greek fonts, so I've been using unaccented unicode Greek characters. If you know how I can type and display unicode fonts with the full Greek character set, including all accents, breathing marks, iota subscript, etc., in this blog so students will see them instead of square boxes in their place, please let me know!

Note on "7. Exercises" (Lesson 1 in textbook)

The exercise asks you to "Identify each syllable as either short or long."

New Testament Greek books that I have don't really go into whether these vowels are long or short. Some of my Ancient (Classical) Greek grammars use a line over the vowel (a macron) to indicate if it's long.

One will not be able to tell for some of the syllables which are short or long, as Croy does not give enough information in the Lesson for a person to know the answer for every vowel in that exercise. I didn't catch that on Saturday. (Thanks to Lydia for bringing this to my attention.) You know that:

• all diphthongs (including improper diphthongs) are long, except for final αι and οι, which are short;
• a circumflex must be over a long syllable;
• η and ω are long;
• ε and ο are short;
• α, ι, and υ can be either short or long;
• if the ultima is long:
• the antepenult cannot be accented, and
• an accented penult must be acute;
• if the ultima is short:
  • the antepenult may receive an [acute] accent, and
  • an accented penult must be circumflex

Do the best you can with the above in figuring out which syllables are short and which are long, but don't worry if you cannot answer for some of them.

Knowledge of which vowels are short or long helps with knowing which kind of accent might go where on a word, but I am not really going to emphasize the accent rules too much in terms of you having to be correct with all your accents when writing Greek words. The accent rules that Croy presents in the book are probably the more important ones, so students should learn these. He seems to discuss accenting more than most first-year books I've read or used.

Class Notes: June 2, 2007

Well, we didn't achieve my ambitious goal of doing both Lessons 1 and 2 in Croy's textbook, partly because we started late and partly because I digressed to a couple other topics.

So next week we will do a review of Lesson 1 (I am expecting a couple new people in the class) and then cover Lesson 2 and maybe Lesson 3. Students can read and print out Lessons 1-4 from the class Webpage, but should order or buy the textbook as soon as possible, as I hope not to have to post any more Lessons online or have to make copies of, e.g., Lesson 5, while people are awaiting their books.

To repeat and/or sum up some things from the first class:

Thanks for being enthusiastic about learning, and patient about the process! Not only are you new students whose learning style I don't yet know (nor do you yet know your own style for best learning Greek), but I am working from this textbook for the first time. I selected it primarily because:

• A noted and highly-respected Greek teacher (now retired) said that he would likely pick it for teaching first-year New Testament Greek, were he to again teach such a class.


• It seemed from my reading of it that Croy covers the basics simply and straightforwardly and in reasonably-sized chapters, without overly complicating things.


• There are readings/translations from the Septuagint (LXX) in every Lesson, so students are equally exposed to the Greek Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. (Since our other class readings will be from the Greek New Testament and not from the LXX, you will get a lot more "New Testament" in this course than Old Testament.)

As I said, there are four deficiencies, IMO, in Croy's grammar, which I/we will rectify during the course:

1. Students are not taught enough vocabulary to be able to read much of the New Testament comfortably by the end of the course. There are about 311 words that occur 50x or more in the Greek New Testament, and 544 words (per my count of Trenchard's word lists) that occur 25x or more. Croy's vocabulary is about 380 words, but we will be learning every word that occurs 25x or more, either by adding to your vocabulary the appropriate words from the LXX and NT translation exercise lists at the end of each Lesson, or by adding some extra words every class or so to the list that is at the beginning of each Lesson. I've already compiled the list, with frequency numbers and the Lesson number in which the word will be introduced, and there is a link for this list on the class Webpage. Note: If you learn an additional 94 words (actually only 91, since you'll learn 3 of these words as part of the course), you'll learn every word that occurs 20x or more, and we will likely learn some of these, too.


2. There are no parsing exercises. Parsing means to list the grammatical description of a word - e.g., if it's a verb, you list its tense, voice, mood, person and number, and if it's a noun or adjective, its gender, number and case, as well as the lexical (dictionary) form. I will be making parsing part of the translation exercises and/or quizzes.


3. The translation exercises are of single sentences, and not lengthy blocks of text. We will correct for this by doing extensive readings of continuous texts (e.g., the paragraphs in the UBS4 Greek New Testament, or even whole chapters), and not just single sentences.


4. Croy doesn't give much explanation of English grammar to compare it with Greek grammar. Since many people today are deficient in their knowledge of English grammar, it's usually helpful to have a review of this as part of the study of Greek grammar.

I will likely try to go "by the book" for the first part of each class (other than quiz times) so that we are sure to cover the necessary material each week before doing other things like New Testament readings and other exercises.

As I mentioned today, there are two things to be aware of: "the fog" (Bill Mounce's term) and "the slog."

After a few Lessons your mind will likely "fog up" and you'll wonder if you are absorbing all this information. You'll feel like you're lost in a morass of Greek words and strange grammatical concepts. Just keep on keeping on, and you'll find that the fog of earlier Lessons clears after you've done a couple more Lessons. E.g., though you may feel lost by Lesson 6, by the time you do Lesson 8 or 9, Lesson 6 will seem easy, and you will have integrated the contents into your learning; by the time you do Lesson 10, you will have integrated Lesson 7; etc.

The other thing is what I call "the slog." A lot of this is just plain old hard work, plodding through word memorization and translation exercises. If you work every day on memorizing your vocabulary and grammar - expect to spend 45 minutes to 1 hour each day, 5 days a week, once we get into the course - you will master the course. When the going seems dreary, look to your goal - i.e., in 8 or 9 months, you will have completed a first-year course in NT Greek and be able to interact with many parts of the Greek New Testament with a basic understanding of what's going on, and you'll even be able to say/read your prayers in Greek and follow along in some of the Greek text of the Liturgy.

Which brings me to a point I forgot to mention in class: Make sure you have memorized all your vocabulary and all the grammar information before you attempt the translation exercises. If while doing the translations (with the possible exception of the English-to-Greek exercises) you have to keep referring to the vocabulary lists at the beginning of each Lesson or in the back of the book, or to the Lesson's grammar content, you are not yet ready to do the translation exercises. Note: You don't have to memorize the words in the LXX and NT Sentences lists at the end of each chapter (except for the specific words from that list that I tell you to memorize, since they're among the words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament).

I am teaching a New Testament Greek class

For the fourth or fifth or sixth or ... whatever ... time, I'll be teaching a first-year New Testament Greek class, starting Saturday, June 2, 2007. :^)

Pray for me!