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Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: April 30th, 2020, 11:41 pm
by Daniel Semler
Hi ya,

I am trying to find an ancient greek typing tutor that will work with a polytonic Greek keyboard. There used to be one apparently at http://cq170.us1.eldarioncloud.com but that link seems to be broken.

Thx
D

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 1st, 2020, 8:39 am
by nathaniel j. erickson
If I might make a humble suggestion. You really don't need a typing tutor for teaching how to type with a polytonic keyboard. That fact that you know how to use a keyboard makes you eminently qualified. Just print off the keyboard layout for whatever one of the myriad of polytonic Greek keyboard layouts you have or decide to use, read the basic way it works, and start typing! The polytonic part of the polytonic keyboard is usually a pain, but that is life. My Greek typing went from sketchy to solid in the course of copying a Greek book, retyping the entire thing. Laborious? Yes. But then, so was learning how to type in English.

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 1st, 2020, 9:07 am
by Devenios Doulenios
Besides these excellent suggestions by Nathaniel, many computer systems (and phones too, probably) offer apps with on-screen keyboards. These can be toggled on and off as desired. They also show which keys and combinations are needed for polytonic Greek if such a keyboard is available for your OS. As Nathaniel said, these can usually be printed off, as well (the Tyndale House one, for example). If you need more specific advice on using one, I can help with Macintosh and WIndows ones, also with iOS. Just let me know.

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 1st, 2020, 9:11 am
by Jason Hare
Yeah, I just started typing out Greek texts. Take out your Greek NT or LXX and start copying it onto the computer. Force yourself to find the keys. If you cannot find one, ask here.

ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν. ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, καὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου, καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος. καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός, Γενηθήτω φῶς. καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς. καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ὅτι καλόν. καὶ διεχώρισεν ὁ θεὸς ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ φωτὸς καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ σκότους. καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ἡμέραν καὶ τὸ σκότος ἐκάλεσεν νύκτα. καὶ ἐγένετο ἑσπέρα καὶ ἐγένετο πρωί, ἡμέρα μία.

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 1st, 2020, 9:36 am
by Daniel Semler
Thanx all. These suggestions are basically what I am doing now. I type in all the exercises from Dickey for example right now. It works ok, it's about the same as the way I learned to type in English and eventually it will improve. Nathaniel's idea about just typing a text up start to finish is the thing I haven't yet done. I could probably just turn something like that into a practice routine and that would get the job done. After all it's basically about time spent developing the muscle memory. It won't measure accuracy and speed but that only matters until it doesn't anymore.

All that said, it makes me wonder whether that's why these tools aren't common. I suspect that for the most part they are just not that popular a way to learn to type fluently. Maybe people prefer to just bash away at it until it's good enough. And maybe I'll just do that too.

Anyhow, thanx for the thoughts and suggestions all.

Thx
D

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 1st, 2020, 10:10 am
by nathaniel j. erickson
All that said, it makes me wonder whether that's why these tools aren't common. I suspect that for the most part they are just not that popular a way to learn to type fluently. Maybe people prefer to just bash away at it until it's good enough. And maybe I'll just do that too.
I suspect tools like this don't really exist because once the Greeks switched from polytonic writing to monotonic in 1984 the potential market for anything relating to polytonic Greek production dropped from millions of people to a few oddballs here and there who have interest in typing with a polytonic keyboard. For those who fall into that category, we just have to hoof it on our own. But praise the lord that we at least have unicode fonts these days!

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 1st, 2020, 1:37 pm
by Jonathan Robie
Jason Hare wrote: May 1st, 2020, 9:11 am Yeah, I just started typing out Greek texts. Take out your Greek NT or LXX and start copying it onto the computer. Force yourself to find the keys. If you cannot find one, ask here.
ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν. ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, καὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου, καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος. καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός, Γενηθήτω φῶς. καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς. καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ὅτι καλόν. καὶ διεχώρισεν ὁ θεὸς ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ φωτὸς καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ σκότους. καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ἡμέραν καὶ τὸ σκότος ἐκάλεσεν νύκτα. καὶ ἐγένετο ἑσπέρα καὶ ἐγένετο πρωί, ἡμέρα μία.
Exactly. Divide the text into smaller chunks, type your own copy below each chunk, keep going until you get fast at it.

And unlike Hebrew with Nikkud, pretty much any text editor or word processor handles polytonic Greek just fine.

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 2nd, 2020, 3:41 am
by RandallButh
I would recommend that you activate the Polytonic keyboard that is already in the Mac or PC system. It is the Greek national keyboard. Then you will have a standard anywhere you travel in the world, on any machine. (PS: there are minor accent differences between PC and Mac).
You don't want to learn different keyboard layouts for every font/machine that you use.
Accordance will also allow you to select the Greek national keyboard or the Israeli Hebrew keyboard.

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 2nd, 2020, 9:30 am
by Jonathan Robie
RandallButh wrote: May 2nd, 2020, 3:41 am I would recommend that you activate the Polytonic keyboard that is already in the Mac or PC system. It is the Greek national keyboard. Then you will have a standard anywhere you travel in the world, on any machine. (PS: there are minor accent differences between PC and Mac).
You don't want to learn different keyboard layouts for every font/machine that you use.
Accordance will also allow you to select the Greek national keyboard or the Israeli Hebrew keyboard.
That's exactly what I have been doing for Greek on Mac and Linux.

I haven't been able to find an equivalent keyboard for Hebrew with Nikkud on native Mac. Is there one?

Re: Typing Tutor for Ancient Greek

Posted: May 2nd, 2020, 11:58 am
by Daniel Semler
RandallButh wrote: May 2nd, 2020, 3:41 am I would recommend that you activate the Polytonic keyboard that is already in the Mac or PC system. It is the Greek national keyboard. Then you will have a standard anywhere you travel in the world, on any machine. (PS: there are minor accent differences between PC and Mac).
You don't want to learn different keyboard layouts for every font/machine that you use.
Accordance will also allow you to select the Greek national keyboard or the Israeli Hebrew keyboard.
I know people use the Greek and Israeli keyboards. I've tended to use non-national mappings. I hadn't really considered the travel aspect to it but it's a good point. I have found trouble with more obscure accenting and diacritic combinations with a number of keyboard mappings. The one I use now is from the Society of Classical Studies https://classicalstudies.org/publicatio ... 015-typing. I find it really good but I haven't used it enough to have it really down with all the key combinations I normally need yet. But it has a nice consistency of approach to laying out the major diacritics that I like. Will I need to learn other layouts if I travel ? yeah probably unless I take my own devices, but at least for now, that's not a great issue for me - alas :(
Jonathan Robie wrote: May 2nd, 2020, 9:30 am
RandallButh wrote: May 2nd, 2020, 3:41 am I would recommend that you activate the Polytonic keyboard that is already in the Mac or PC system. It is the Greek national keyboard. Then you will have a standard anywhere you travel in the world, on any machine. (PS: there are minor accent differences between PC and Mac).
You don't want to learn different keyboard layouts for every font/machine that you use.
Accordance will also allow you to select the Greek national keyboard or the Israeli Hebrew keyboard.
That's exactly what I have been doing for Greek on Mac and Linux.

I haven't been able to find an equivalent keyboard for Hebrew with Nikkud on native Mac. Is there one?
I use Mac, Windows, Linux (though) not for language work, and Android. So I actually want keyboard mappings that are the same, as nearly so as possible across these platforms, so that, to Randall's point, I don't have keep learning mappings. So I usually look for mappings that have consistent implementations on both Mac and Windows. Android, I have yet to very much work on in typing in the language so it hasn't been such a problem but may well become so.

I use the Hebrew SIL mapping. There are differences between this and the Israeli keyboard particularly ayin and aleph but I haven't catalogued the differences. I would expect there is one for Hebrew based around the Israeli keyboard layout but I haven't looked to be honest. You could take a look at Keyman but I haven't checked them out on Mac but have used them on Windows. I can check with a guy I know on the Accordance lists who uses the Israeli layout.

Thx
D