I’ve made slower progress over the last week or two.
I’ve just finished Chapter 6 of Mastronarde; by the end of this chapter, you will have seen the forms for all of the Α-declension (1st declension) nouns, and been introduced to more prepositions.
Right now, the way I generally move through a chapter is as follows:
- Read / skim it once, and create flashcards for any pre-requisite knowledge, as well as vocabulary where I have already learned the forms
- Read it carefully, and make flashcards for vocabulary for new types of forms
- For non-translation exercises (e.g. identification), do only the odd-numbered exercises
- For translation exercises (“Translate the following into Greek”, “Translate the following sentences into English”), do all exercises
- Several days later, review the exercises
- Start a new chapter
Depending on how much time I have, any number of these steps could be a part of the same “session” (chunk of time in one day), but I’ve been trying to shoot for smaller amounts of time per day (<= 60 minutes) just to make sure I don’t find the commitment burdensome. In the long run, I will read and understand Greek, as long as I can make forward progress and maintain a commitment, as small as it may be; that is the truth of this venture. Making it easy to stay committed over a long period of time is more important than anything else.
In learning the verbs in Chapter 5, I also made the decision for now to only learn a single form, and not all the principal parts.
This block:
λύετε τὴν δημοκρατίαν
Can be rendered as “You (plural) overthrow / dissolve the democracy,” and “Are you (plural) overthrowing / dissolving the democracy?” The latter is harder for me to remember as a possible translation.
- It’s relatively easy to render basic Greek into an acceptable – not
necessarily eloquent – English, but rendering English into Greek is
much more uncertain for a noobie. I suspect that these
challenges apply for rendering of any uninflected language into a
highly inflected language, not just English to Greek. It must be
even more challenging for translating a highly inflected language to
another highly inflected language.
- Many possible “equivalent” translations with different word ordering and emphasis
- In general, whether to translate literally or “idiomatically”
- This is further made difficult by not knowing what is idiomatic without reading more Greek!
- For example, when translating English into Greek, should I
follow, as much as possible, the general Greek structure of
subject, DO, IO, verb? Or should I translate as literally as
possible? I can probably answer this myself by cross-referencing
Mastronarde’s answer key to see what general pattern he follows.
- Sometimes, to test myself, I will also write sentences multiple ways in the exercises just to see which ones “fit” the best.
- How to translate prepositional phrases (are these determined by rules or context)? For example, is it correct to render the following sentence as either of: “The general (among/with the soldiers) abandons the tent and the horses”, or “The general abandons the tent and the horses among/with the soldiers?” If one reading is more acceptable, how do we know? See below:
οἱ στρατηγοὶ μετὰ τῶν στρατιωτῶν τὰς σκηνὰς καὶ τὰς ἵππους λείπουσιν
- If you are going to memorize rules, memorize the most general rules, but don’t spend time memorizing exceptions.
- Memorizing accent rules is less useful than recognizing the patterns, and collecting some examples across the different patterns that you can review.
- There are lots of prepositions with slightly different contextual meanings
- In order to make sense of them more easily, I’m considering making
a spreadsheet of an adjacency matrix of prepositions with the
associated cases they can take on.
- For example, διά would have an adjacency with both the genitive and dative. This is helpful for giving a quick visual index, but isn’t too helpful for much more detail, so a more sophisticated diagram or visual might be more desirable.
- In order to make sense of them more easily, I’m considering making
a spreadsheet of an adjacency matrix of prepositions with the
associated cases they can take on.
- It’s always a work in progress, but I’m still trying to figure out the best way to learn Greek by myself. There’s no how to guide, but once I make it to the end of the text, I’d like to make a guide for others in my shoes.
I think I found one issue so far in the answer key for:
- Unit 5, Section 4, #5
ἐθελομεν is missing an acute accent on the antepenult.
- Try making some diagrams, visuals, spreadsheets, even software, to help me learn more deeply, or more efficiently (e.g. make Anki flashcards faster and automatically)
- Review all of the resources that Mastronarde makes available. There are a ton over at the official website for the text.