Greek Paradigms

[Prolixus Valens]

Hi all,

Now that I am starting to make some progress in Latin, although I still have a long ways to go, I would like to start memorizing some Ancient Greek paradigms so that I have them firmly embedded before embarking on the journey that is Greek. I'm going to be studying using the 2nd edition of JACT's Reading Greek. I can't figure out what paradigms I should memorize on google. Can anybody suggest a good set of paradigms, fairly complete, that can be found cheaply (preferably free)? Not knowing anything about Ancient Greek, I don't even know what a mostly complete set of Ancient Greek paradigms looks like.

Thanks!

[Qimmik]

Greek paradigms aren't as simple as Latin paradigms. There are far more peculiarities in Greek declensions and conjugations. You would be better served by learning the paradigms at the same time as you learn Greek morphology, not before. However, this very reasonably priced (though not free) little book has all the paradigms you need in a very compact format:

http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Grammar-Classical-Greek-Morwood/dp/0195218515/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393333471&sr=8-1&keywords=morwood+greek

[cb]

hi, you can also check out the paradigms online at berkeley, which is the one i usually go to (there's one page for verbs, click to another for nouns, another for adjectives and one for pronouns):

http://ucbclassics.dreamhosters.com/anc ... gms_U.html

cheers, chad

[Prolixus Valens]

Greek paradigms aren't as simple as Latin paradigms.

Yeah! I have seen some of the tables of conjugations and declensions. Also, there seems to be many more irregular terms, speaking of morphology.

You would be better served by learning the paradigms at the same time as you learn Greek morphology, not before.

I'm sorry. I don't understand what you mean. Are the paradigms not tables of morphology? See, I'm thinking something along the lines of the Dowling method with Latin.

However, this very reasonably priced (though not free) little book has all the paradigms you need in a very compact format...

It looks good; unfortunately, I cannot afford any more language materials at this moment.

hi, you can also check out the paradigms online at berkeley...

Yeah! I ran into this page when I was googling Greek paradigms. Is this a fairly complete list? If so, I think that I have found my paradigms.

[cb]

hi, the berkeley one covers the regular paradigms but doesn't of course deal with all the irregular forms. i see you want to use the dowling method which relies on brute memorisation of the surface form of the verbs... if however you want an approach which explains how the paradigms are built (which is what qimmik was referring to above i believe, and i personally agree with qimmik and think this approach is really helpful even for brute memorisation, because it gives you a story or a hook on which to hang your memories of the forms across the paradigms), then check out the (also free) short doc by tiarks linked in my post in this earlier thread on learning methods, which covers the verb forms regular and irregular and also gives you the analysis of the paradigms, and it's only 64 pages:

http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... hp?t=11778

cheers, chad

[Prolixus Valens]

check out the (also free) short doc by tiarks linked in my post in this earlier thread on learning methods, which covers the verb forms regular and irregular and also gives you the analysis of the paradigms, and it's only 64 pages:

viewtopic.php?t=11778

cheers, chad

This looks really good. Understanding that I'm looking to internalize the material, how would you suggest that this be studied? Should I just read and reread the material, write and rewrite the material, do some chant (or other memorization techniques such as mnemonics), or some other thing that I may be overlooking?

Also, I'm going to have to read through that thread that you linked. It looks really informative.

Thanks for helping me guys.

P.S.

I was skimming through your post, because I don't have time to read the whole thing right now, and I noticed that you studied philosophy. This is an area of interest of mine and my primary motivation for learning Latin, Greek, German, and French. Perhaps, cb, you might have suggestions for important philosophical materials in Greek and Latin? I can't seem to find any pre-socratic fragments in the original Greek. And I don't know if any of the Roman authors are worth reading.

[cb]

hi, in my experience different people have different ways of memorising effectively, so i only set out in that post what i thought was useful content to memorise, and the way of memorising is individual to each person. if you haven't tried it already have a go at the different modern memory systems out there, like the major system (to remember numbers through pictures in order, and then you can associate the pictures with your content), and see if any work well for you, or if re-reading or copying or vocalising or something else works for you, stick with that, as long as it goes in.

i'm like you and got into classics through philosophy, one of my degrees at uni was a philosophy degree and i took it to honours and after started my career but wanted to keep going with the philosophy and so started learning classics to read the ancients in the original. i kind of got obsessed with the classics on the side, but i still spend more time on philosophy than classics and most of my classics reading today, other than homer, is still philo.

you can get all the presocratics online, e.g. on wikisource i've tried a few and they're there, just google e.g. "wikisource heraclitus", then click the greek language option on the left, and that's the original ancient text. you can also get them elsewhere, e.g. for heraclitus check out william harris' doc here: http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris ... clitus.pdf, looks like you can also get scans of diels' edition of the presocratics online, etc.

there's definitely good philosophy in latin worth reading, eg for the stoic school (check out e.g. seneca's de brevitate vitae, one of my favourites, and there's others e.g. cicero in his philosophical works), you can also get into the epicurean school through lucretius, etc.

cheers, chad

[Markos]

Understanding that I'm looking to internalize the material, how would you suggest that this be studied? Should I just read and reread the material, write and rewrite the material, do some chant (or other memorization techniques such as mnemonics), or some other thing that I may be overlooking?

Hi,

I wouldn't study the material. I would use the material. Print out a copy of one of the paradigms from the Berkeley site, say the one for γιγνώσκω.

Using this as a reference, pick an Ancient Greek sentence and try to paraphrase it into as many ways as possible so as to USE as many of the forms as possible. Pick a sentence that is MEANINGFUL to you.

...philosophy...is an area of interest of mine...

So, for you, I would choose something philosophical, like the γνῶθι σεαυτόν. See how many forms your paraphrases can cover. You would wind up writing something like this:

1. θέλω σε γιγνώσκειν σεαυτόν.
2. γιγνώσκε σεαυτόν.
3. γνῶτε ἑαυτόυς.
4. ἆρα γιγνώσκεις σεαυτόν? καλῶς.
5. γνῶμεν ἡμεῖς ἑαυτούς.
6. δεῖ σε γνῶναι σεαυτόν.
7. εἴθε σὺ ἐγίγνωσκες σεαύτον!
8. ὡς γνοίης σεαύτον!
9. εἰ γὰρ ὤφελες γιγνώσκειν σύγε!
10. ὁ σοφὸς γιγνώσκει ἑαυτόν.
11. γνώτω ἑαυτόν ὁ σοφός.
12. ἐὰν σύ γνῶς σαυτόν, καλῶς ἕξεις.
13. μακαρίζω σε γνόντα σεαυτόν.

καὶ τὰ λοιπά...

After you write them out, try speaking them off the top of your head. Not memorizing, per se, but internalizing to the point that you can produce the forms in meaningful communication. Maybe record yourself saying the paraphrases and listen to them over and over again. Better yet, record a little speech off the top our your head where you use the paraphrases, or just write a story where you use as many forms as you can.

I'm not saying that this method will work better than the traditional method of reciting and writing out the paradigms devoid of any meaningful context. The latter is pretty much the way I learned the forms. Since then, though, by using REPETITIVE, ACTIVE, MEANINGFUL output I have, I think, better internalized the paradigms with a resultant better reading fluency. What we need, though, is for beginners like you to try different methods and see how well they work. It remains an open question, and Chad is correct that different people will learn this stuff differently.

Let us know what works.

[Prolixus Valens]

Print out a copy of one of the paradigms from the Berkeley site, say the one for γιγνώσκω.

Using this as a reference, pick an Ancient Greek sentence and try to paraphrase it into as many ways as possible so as to USE as many of the forms as possible. Pick a sentence that is MEANINGFUL to you.

Yeah, that sounds good. However, in order to form sentences, would I not need to know the constituent parts of the sentences? I have absolutely zero knowledge of Greek (besides, mostly, knowing the alphabet). Other than that, this does sound like a really good idea.

I studied the noun declensions before starting to learn Latin. It was not until I started using them in context, however, that they really started to sink in. So I think that you are probably right.

[Σαῦλος]

Yeah, that sounds good. However, in order to form sentences, would I not need to know the constituent parts of the sentences? I have absolutely zero knowledge of Greek

I wonder if it is necessary. A person would need to understand how the word was used. Having a teacher at this point to help with things would be really useful. But maybe an beginner and autodidact could just look in a dictionary get a clear idea in his/her head what a certain word means, not just one English gloss.

Then could he play with it in English?

γινώσκω mathematics pretty well.
But my sister does not γινώσκει mathematics.
But if she studies hard, maybe γνώσεται mathematics. I know if I study mathematics more, I γνώσομαι mathematics better.
Many other people οὐ γινώσκουσι mathematics.
In times past, many people ἔγρνων (or εἶδον) mathematics better than me.
My great uncle ἔγρνω mathematics.
I should ask my father, "ἕγρνως about whether my grandfather ἔγνω mathematics."

When it comes to nouns, I've often thought they would be better learned "across" rather than up and down. In other words, learn several Nominative forms and use them. Then add another case and use them. How about this?

ἐγώ rode a horse today.
ὁ ἵππος threw me out of his saddle today when I was riding with my sister.
ἡ ἀδελφή of me was not thrown out of the saddle, but there was a child with us.
τὸ τέκνον almost got thrown off, but was saved by a certain man.
ὁ ἄνηρ came alongside the child and saved it. His mother was happy.
ἡ μήτηρ thanked the man profusely and gave him some food.
τὸ βρώματα was a very nice fruitcake she happened to have in her purse.

The saddle τοῦ ἵππου was hard so that the body τῆς ἀδελφής of me was sore. I bet the mother τοῦ τέκνου was really worried. Good thing the man came along. The smile τοῦ ἀνδρός was broad when he began eating the fruitcake τῆς μητρός. The sharing τοῦ βρώματος can create friendships.

This is just an idea. I scribbled this out on the fly and didn't double check forms. Maybe it will give Prolixus some ideas. But I'm also interested to hear what others think about the idea of using this sort of method to start out learning / reading Greek. Could this be the first level of a book of Greek stories written for learning? --- maybe sort of a pre-Orberg set of stories?

[Markos]

Then could he play with it in English?

γινώσκω mathematics pretty well.
But my sister does not γινώσκει mathematics.
But if she studies hard, maybe γνώσεται mathematics. I know if I study mathematics more, I γνώσομαι mathematics better.
Many other people οὐ γινώσκουσι mathematics.
In times past, many people ἔγρνων (or εἶδον) mathematics better than me.
My great uncle ἔγρνω mathematics.
I should ask my father, "ἕγρνως about whether my grandfather ἔγνω mathematics."

Well, as I think everyone knows, I have a bias towards using as little L1 as possible, but I am willing to have anything tried. For absolute beginners, used in conjunction with a more L2 heavy approach, I would not be opposed to having this tried out. Prolixus admits to being an absolute beginner, and I wonder if there is any point in him learning, or even learning about, the full paradigms before he at least works through a textbook. But your method, Paul, would provide an absolute beginner with a type of introductory framework into the full paradigms that he will at some point have to master.

Again, when I see this much English it is a real distraction. (I had always felt the same way about interlinears.) Can the brain really learn Greek with this much English interference? I just raise the question. I'd like to see people try this, and any, method.