[B-Greek] Re: Defining Terms

Skip Tyler tylers12 at adelphia.net
Wed Feb 23 11:25:05 EST 2005


I am relatively new to Greek as I am just about to finish Mounce's
book.  I would like to echo what Steve said about "a chance for your
mind to work it out".  I didn't make much progress until I put my
interlinear away and started to struggle with the text.  The more I
struggled the easier it became.  I do use a diglot but discipline myself
not to look.  I try to parse every word in sentence and then do a
translation.  Then I check myself.  When I first starting studying Greek
I thought an interlinear was good thing, but the folks on this list and
now my own experience had convinced me otherwise.

Skip Tyler,
Spotsylvania, VA

Steve Puluka wrote:

> Matt Gumm wrote:
>
>> What is the difference (if any) between an
>> "interlinear" text and a "parallel" text?  I've seen
>> many statements (both on this list and elsewhere on
>> the web) discouraging the use of interlinear texts by
>> those trying to learn Greek.  Are these two terms the
>> same, or is there some difference?
>
>
> Matt,
>
> An interlinear has the original language text with an English gloss 
> under each word.  The parallel text has multiple columns with the 
> original language in one and translation(s) in the others for 
> reference.  There are also books that do both, have an interlinear 
> gloss with a parallel translation too.
>
> An interlinear is not recomended because this makes learning 
> vocabulary much harder.  You see the English word right there with the 
> Greek and don't have a chance for your mind to work it out.  With a 
> parallel text it is easier to cover or block out the English until you 
> really need the help.  The basic idea is for your reading to reinforce 
> your memorization of words by giving you a chance to recognize the 
> forms first then check your work.
>
> You can acheive the same result using a real Greek text and your own 
> Bible almost as easily.
>






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