[B-Greek] Review of vocab
Eric Weiss
papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Thu Sep 30 10:23:10 EDT 2004
> I have the Story flashcards (as Eric Weiss has
> suggested). I also use the Biblical Greek Vocabulary
> Cards from Visual Education which are cheaper
> and easier to use than Story's. Also, flash cards
> come with the Greek Tutor (by Parsons) program. And
> finally a free download (GreekMem) for your
> computer is available. Remember that flashcards only
> give the lexical form of the word and the word looks
> quite different in its inflected forms; especially
> aorist.
Even though they cost more, the Story flashcards use
"silly pictures" to help you learn the words, and
that's much better, IMO, than the VisEd word-only
method - though you get more words with VisEd.
Part of your frustration with Greek may have to do
with vocabulary. If you used Mounce, you don't have a
vocabulary large enough to read the NT with any ease.
Doubling your vocab via Story to every word that
occurs 25x or more will immeasurably improve your
ability to navigate the NT text, and if you learn more
words, so much the better. Enjoyment is inversely
proporitional to the amount of time one has to refer
to the lexicon!
That said, reading large sections at a time is the way
to both improve your Greek and begin to enjoy it.
You'll find the "rules" you learned in first-year
Greek have many exceptions, and that writers' styles
differ widely. Stick with John and I John and Mark and
even Revelation at first - they seemed fairly easy to
me, as well as Romans and Galatians, or parts at
least.
The drop-out rate for Greek is pretty high, I hear,
and some who complete it never really use it much
after they graduate, except for "word studies" to
pepper their sermons with - the lowest form of Greek
knowledge and practice, IMO.
Hopefully you can find some people in your community
that will form a Koine Klub to meet weekly and discuss
and read the Greek NT. We tried that at our church,
but conflicting schedules brought about its early
demise. Too bad, as I suspect it was the main way many
there kept their Greek from atrophying.
=====
Eric S. Weiss
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