[B-Greek] Understanding? Greek?
Hugh Donohoe Jr.
justusjcmylord at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 12 10:57:38 EDT 2008
"here was little Dissen of Göttingen who had spent no
less than eighteen years, at sixteen hours a day, on
Greek and nothing but Greek, and who said that even
now he could not read Aeschylus without a dictionary."
Thanks Carl for posting a link to that quote. Indeed
Dissen will keep anyone I know from getting the big
head. Sadly if you google his name, there is almost
nothing to commemorate his life and scholarship.
It did comfort me to know he still needed a lexicon
when reading Aeschyclus after a 105,120 hours of study
(I crunched the numbers).
This fact led me to meditate on my own experience. I
left undergrad knowing 500 words and the paradigms. In
Grad school I had two syntax classes...then hurricane
Katrina hit. The year after the storm (waiting for the
water to come down) I got serious. I studied Greek
about six hours a day. That year I read through Mark 6
times, Matthew 4, Luke 2 and John 12 or so. My vocab
for the last couple of years has hovered around
1500-2000. I currently read for an hour a day in the
NT and devote some time to Classical. But I feel like
ALL I gain now is familiarity.
So this brings me to my questions. Continuing like I
am, I don't see much improvement happening (in my
knowledge of vocab). By JUST reading, some vocab slips
out of my brain even though I am adding new each day.
So it seems like I would have to either read much more
each day or do an immersion type experience like that
of Dr. Buth to progress. It feels like I have reached
an equilibrium in vocabulary acquisition. After
reading about Disson, maybe I should never expect to
dispense with the lexicon, how depressing! So is it a
matter of ability primarily? By this I mean the
capaciousness of one's memory. Or is there a wall
everyone hits when it comes to reading an ancient
period of a language? How much pie should we think is
in the sky? As my old pastor would say; "any
questions, comments or war stories?"
ex animo
Hugh Donohoe
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