[B-Greek] Understanding? Greek?

Eric Inman eric.inman at wescorpflex.com
Wed Mar 12 14:26:25 EDT 2008


Similarly James Michener in his memoir said that even though tests showed he
had an enormous vocabulary, he still had to consult a dictionary six or
seven times each working day. This is after decades of studying English and
publishing many long and exhaustively crafted books in that language.

John von Neumann's inability to forget almost cost him his sanity:

"[John] Von Neumann possessed a genuine photographic memory. If you gave him
the page number from any book he had ever read, he could recite the contents
exactly, word-for-word. His memory was so relentless that he struggled with
insanity, because the clarity of events in the distant past equaled those of
the present. He could see a lecture, for instance, and not know whether he
was witnessing it at that moment, or if, in fact, he had attended it ten
years earlier. Eventually, Von Neumann managed to preserve his sanity, by
learning - with heroic mental discipline - the skill of forgetting."

	Olivia D. Amos, A Manhattan Project Diary

>From previous discussions on this list and some off-list follow-ups it
appears that a native speaker tends to operate with a vocabulary of at least
10,000 to 20,000 words. Also, even native speakers lose vocabulary or ready
access to it when they lose exposure to their language for a few months or
more.

I would guess that for the sake of optimization our brains have been
designed to gradually forget most of the things we don't regularly use from
day to day. The size of vocabulary that can be maintained would probably be
a certain percentage of what a native speaker maintains, with the percentage
determined by roughly by the amount of time we spend with that language.
Thus instead of setting unrealistic goals for how much we can maintain, we
might be better off just learning effective strategies for keeping it at
realistic levels and bumping it up occasionally for special needs. I would
guess that those strategies mainly involve just doing a lot of reading and
listening as time allows.

Eric Inman

-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Donald R. Vance,
Ph.D.
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 10:53 AM
To: blist greek
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Understanding? Greek?

I think a little perspective is need here. I have a fairly large  
English vocabulary and yet I still own and make frequent use of  
Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (3rd Ed.) and the OED. Being  
a native speaker doesn't free one from the necessity for a good  
dictionary, so why should we expect less when we study Greek?


Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
Oral Roberts University
dvance at oru.edu
donaldrvance at mac.com


On Mar 12, 2008, at 9:57 AM, Hugh Donohoe Jr. wrote:

> "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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