New to the board

[Timotheus]

I am just starting to learn and there are many things that are new to me. I have had some learning from a freind and we used John Grescham Macheans(spelling?) Greek for new testament begginers. after that I had some help from one of the proffesors at PLU (Pacific Lutheran University) and we read half way through 'ATHENAZE I'. That was several years ago. and much of what I learned then has been forgotten.

So far my wife and three kids are also wanting to learn, two of my sons teenage friends, a niece, and a freind from church. I will probably be asking many questions as time goes on.

one of my first Questions is the exercise 3 in pharr's homeric greek page 4 where we are to translate greek to english. I cannot find the paradigm for the first problems. is it for 'boulai' the dative case and would the translation then be "for a beautiful and evil plan"?

and secondly is there any hints on beggining learning?

thanks

[Paul]

one of my first Questions is the exercise 3 in pharr's homeric greek page 4 where we are to translate greek to english. I cannot find the paradigm for the first problems. is it for 'boulai' the dative case and would the translation then be "for a beautiful and evil plan"?

Hi Timotheus,

Please see the declension of [face=SPIonic]boulh/[/face] in Pharr 659. You're dealing with nominative plurals in this sentence.

For correcting your work, please see my http://www.greekgeek.org (click "Pharr's Homeric Greek" in the table of contents pane) or see Will Annis' http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/pharr/key/.

As to hints for starting Homer: a) try to do some Greek every day; b) hang out here and ask questions; c) memorize the basic noun and verb forms; d) don't give up.

Cordially,

Paul

[swiftnicholas]

Welcome Timotheus!

I think the NT book you mentioned is J. Gresham Machen's book. I've never heard anyone else speak of it. I found a really beat-up used copy when I was starting NT Greek, and taped it up, and carried it around with me for a long time.

So far my wife and three kids are also wanting to learn, two of my sons teenage friends, a niece, and a freind from church.

Wow! That's fantasic: I love to see interest in Greek. In my experience, most people who saw me studying Greek, looked at me as if I was from another planet. It's nice you'll have people to talk with about your studies.

and secondly is there any hints on beggining learning?

Textkit! When you are in distress, post a message asking for help, and it's like you sent a "Greek signal" up into the sky---superheroes from Textkit will swoop down from nowhere and save the day.

If you don't know about www.perseus.org already, check it out. It offers Greek text with hyperlinked grammatical notes, commentary, morphology tools, dictionaries, and more.

Good luck

[RachelK]

Welcome! I'm taking an online course for Biblical Greek from biblicalgreek.org and we use Machen's test, which is very good, though I don't think I ever would have been able to mangage it without an instructor. If you can , but the study guide from amason.com, which is tremendously helpful, and includes the answer key. Have fun!