New Testament Greek - is there anybody out there šŸ˜Š

I have just startet my journey to learn greek. My goal is learning to Read the New testament in greek. I am Danish so english is not my very Best but I will do my best :blush:
Is there NOT a group/forum for greek/ancient Greek in here or is it just me. It would be nice to get some advices a long the way.

Excellent goal, @mortenkilsholm! I recommend this course for learning to read the New Testament: http://www.memrise.com/course/5623/biblical-ancient-greek-comprehensive/ Also, I am taking a Greek class, and designed this course for my fellow students: http://www.memrise.com/course/1084089/an-introduction-to-greek-crosby-schaeffer/ It is still in progress, as we work through the book (it is a good one for learning grammar). Blessings on your endeavors!

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Thak you for your reply. I am already taking your cource. Itā€™s a blessing.

Hello! I started learning on my own in December last year, though Iā€™ve taken a break in the past two months (doing only the minimal daily Memrise session). Iā€™m going to start actively studying again.

I know of this list of free textbooks if you need additional resources. I use the book A Handbook for New Testament Greek (3rd ed., BJU Press) which someone gave to me when I indicated interest in studying it on my own. :blush: I created a Memrise course for myself to work through the book.

Unfortunately, my goal is to really learn the language. I want to be able to compose sentences, and I have trouble with getting resources that would be more useful for me. Most courses out there donā€™t focus very much on that as itā€™s usually not critical for most classes in school. My understanding is that the focus in schools is on Greek > English Bible translation, and thus there is less of a focus on the other way around.

On a related note is audio materials, or rather, the lack of them. I think, again, most schools donā€™t focus on this. Memrise courses donā€™t seem to have audio either. I cannot easily find a text-to-speech converter that does the Erasmian pronunciation that is frequently taught. Iā€™ve tried and failed to find an IPA list for that pronunciation so Iā€™m going to try to compile one and somehow see if I can get some audio based on the IPA.

The lack of audio does make learning more difficult. :pensive: I came across this review of a particular book + CD (which, unfortunately, doesnā€™t use the Erasmian pronunciation) that captures very well the importance of having audio to help with learning. It doesnā€™t help that Iā€™ve learnt some Modern Greek before and the pronunciation ends up muddled half the time because Iā€™ve heard people speak Modern Greek and the pronunciation sticks. Iā€™m honestly considering forgetting it altogether and just make do with the Modern pronunciation, though itā€™s disadvantageous if I have to talk to scholars who use the Erasmian pronunciation. This was also noted by the author of that review above in his update at the end.

Finally, another difficulty I have is with remembering the spelling (accents, breathing marks) for the words. This is needed since, again, my goal is to be able to compose my own sentences. On Memrise most courses are no-typing, which doesnā€™t really help with that.

Interestingly enough, I started learning NT Greek because I thought it would be easier for me as it was a written language that isnā€™t spoken. I tend not to practise speaking, and Iā€™ve traditionally been better at written work in the languages that Iā€™ve learntā€¦ but then I discovered that because no one truly speaks NT Greek, there isnā€™t audio readily available, and that made learning harder. :weary: Eventually, I figured that I needed to really know the language well to be able to read it comfortably, and so I decided to truly learn the language as I would any other.

Anyway, itā€™s nice to meet other people who are learning NT Greek.

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Ancient Greek is beautiful as a spoken as well as a written language! Thank you, @sherrin, for sharing that textbook link, as well. Here is a link to many parts of the NT read in Greek ā€“ Iā€™m not sure if itā€™s the pronunciation youā€™re looking for, but it is a good reading: http://www.davidpfield.com/audio-gnt/AudioGNT.htm. On a composition note, I find that translating into my target language is very helpful ā€“ you might try translating a favorite poem or other short work into Greek, just for the practice. I have trouble with accents, too ā€“ itā€™s a challenge to remember all the rules! Keep working at it!

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Hard to find something aproximating the different stages of spoken Ancient Greek (at school they taught ā€œusā€ about 6 to 8 stages of; Iā€™ve learned Ancient Greek long time ago, for non-biblical purposes, I forgot almost everything, if not everything)

Recitation Iliad : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc2_LaM6naU; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI0mkt6Z3I0

here a German linguist, but also about/with the pre-Biblical pronunciation; a recitation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLHWX8LckWg
(for those speaking German, he has a whole range of videos ā€œexplainingā€ pronunciations, for ex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9YhoLmFRys)

(these two you know for sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=CH&v=Q5FHZx0oOqs
https://www.youtube.ch/watch?v=MOvVWiDsPWQ)

@godseesaharvestworke I took a listen at the link, and it does seem to be the Erasmian pronunciation. :slight_smile: At least, I am certain it isnā€™t Modern. Iā€™ve decided to add listening to a track a few times my daily study in the absence of an audio file for each word I learn on Memrise to get used to the sound and overall pronunciation. I should have thought of this before, as I knew of the existence of such audio readings.

@Hydroptere Thank you for the video links. Iā€™m surprised I could actually understand part of the German videos - especially the one you gave as the example for explaining pronunciations - as Iā€™ve only officially only done lessons for A1 German. It helps that the video is rather visual.

You might like the book Polis: Speaking Ancient Greek as a Living Language by Christophe Rico. He teaches koine Greek using Erasmian pronunciation. There are YouTube videos of him teaching the first few lessons. His website includes free audio of all the lessons.

The website LetsReadGreek has reviews of 22 different audio recordings of the New Testament in various pronunciation systems.

For practice typing words with correct accents you might like my Memrise course Greek Paradigms.

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FYI, seeing the new forum structure, I made a topic for Biblical Ancient Greek ā€“ Comprehensive. Holler with questionsā€¦

So, Iā€™m a koine Greek student who went up to intermediate Greek in college and then job, wife, 3 kids later and I canā€™t remember my vocab anymore which was really disappointing. so Iā€™ve been working to get it back and memrise has been helpful.

Iā€™ve been using two Mounce based vocab courses together. First Iā€™ve been going through this one: http://www.memrise.com/course/51095/basics-of-biblical-greek/

Itā€™s thorough enough for the definitions but itā€™s missing some important elements of the Greek (namely whether a noun is masc., fem, neut.).

So Iā€™ve been also using this one which is really good:

Itā€™s much tougher than the first. It has an audio component (which is very helpful for memorisation) and it has a ā€œselect all the right definitions/elementsā€ which is at times tricky because the software wants it in the exact order it appears on the card. Then it does the whole thing again in reverse. It will drive the words into your head.

Iā€™m doing both because I found the top one first and was 1/2 way through when I discovered the latter one (which was only a week into it). But Iā€™ve found the first is great for re-remembering and the second is really good for working on all the small details.

Iā€™Ve looked at the comprehensive Greek course. I think for people passed the introductory level it will be a great tool (Iā€™ll be using it when I finish the 2 Mounce courses). But the definitions for beginners Greek - in my opinion - are not good enough. For instance, on the first group ā€œkaiā€ is defined only as ā€œandā€ and ā€œautoā€ is defined only as ā€œheā€. The first has a larger range of meanings (even, namely, also), and the second could easily be expanded on by including fem, neut. and plural forms. I think (and this is just my opinion), any newcomer to Greek is going to find it confusing and perhaps feel itā€™s incomplete.

I found Mounce text books and flash card layout to be very helpful.

Woah, I havenā€™t been on the forums in a while!

Thank you so much for the links. Yes, the book is something Iā€™m definitely interested in. :slight_smile:

Edit: I just tried out your course, but for some reason (which probably has to do with the character encoding), itā€™s marking my letters with acute accents as incorrect. :confounded: Iā€™m using the native Mac keyboard.