about the way you find verbs in the dictionary

[Junya]

Lex,

you wrote,
Seriously, though, I spent a year in Japan in my youth. The main thing I learned about the Japanese is that there is some truth to the Western stereotype of Asians as "inscrutable".

Really? Tokyo?
You think Japanese are mysterious?
What do you think of "Japanese smile"?
I do a lot of Japanese smile.
I smile whenever I talk with people.
But in modern day, most of Japanese keep themselves from Japanese smile, because Americans consider it servile or anything.
And as a result, most of Japanese are expressionless in the face.
People of bad, mean character in Japan tend to dump the Japanese smile.

you wrote:
If that is your current goal, maybe you should .......... start translating [Peri Psyche^s] right away....................So maybe the most efficient use of your time would be to master the common words and grammatical constructs in [Peri Psyche^s] using Perseus, Diogenes, etc., in addition to your dictionary.

Very nice advice. Yes, I am now beginning to think so.

[mingshey]

And Okus.

See viewtopic.php?f=16&t=9031

[Junya]

I know a study site.

http://www.earlychurchtexts.com/

Early Christian texts of both Latin and Greek from 1st to 5th century.
You can see the original text on the left, the translation on the right.
There is a link to a Perseus page in each word of the texts.

[Lex]

Really? Tokyo?

Saitama-ken, about an hour from Ikebukuro on the To^bu To^jo^ line.

You think Japanese are mysterious?

Hmmm... not mysterious so much, but I think it is difficult for Westerners to truly understand how the average Japanese thinks. For instance, it's not true that the Japanese never say "no", it's just that us gaijin are too stupid to understand it when you say no without saying no. Different levels of politeness, and how they can be misused for ironic or sarcastic purposes, is also difficult for us. We do the same thing, but in a different way. Of course, it doesn't help if you understand very little Japanese.

I've seen the same thing in reverse when Japanese come here to the USA. Americans tend to be very direct compared to the Japanese, and some Japanese mistake our directness for rudeness. In reality, it's just that we have ways of being direct but still polite, which is different from the Japanese way. (Of course, some Americans are just rude.) So when some Japanese come here, they think it is OK to be rude.

What do you think of "Japanese smile"?
I do a lot of Japanese smile.
I smile whenever I talk with people.
But in modern day, most of Japanese keep themselves from Japanese smile, because Americans consider it servile or anything.

I never really thought about it much. I certainly never thought that the Japanese were servile. I just think they have different cultural standards for politeness.

Anyway, I will stop "giving you advice" (translation "telling you how you should study"). For now, anyhow. I hope you don't think I am a typical pushy "Ugly American".

[Junya]

Lex,

you wrote:
Saitama-ken, about an hour from Ikebukuro on the To^bu To^jo^ line.

I lived in Saitama where the university had the school building for the first and second year students.
I used To^bu To^jo line quite a lot.

you wrote:
Anyway, I will stop "giving you advice" (translation "telling you how you should study"). For now, anyhow. I hope you don't think I am a typical pushy "Ugly American".

No, I don't think you are pushy.
I thought you are kind.
Actually, I started reading the original "Peri Psuche^s" as you recommended to do.
I wouldn't have noticed that I should start it if you didn't tell me, and I would still be on the long (if not useless at all) detour.

[Junya]

Hi, mingshey.

Are you a pastor?
I have a pastor as an acquaintant on the internet (I'm a Buddhist though),
and he knows Greek very well.

[grdSavant]

I had a temper tantrum on my blog about this a while ago, when some classics bloggers tried to find the silver lining behind the Perseus web site being brought down by security problems, by saying we should sometimes study without these tools. This is madness.

...we should use every single tool we can get our hands on... Use the tool, then spend the time you saved trying to find an irregular form of a verb you may never have seen before instead learning what you can about the word...Some people like flash cards, but I have a bunch of little notebooks...All of these student helps are great so long as you use them as a starting point for deeper study rather than an end in themselves.

I studied Greek thirty-five years ago without any tools. It was even a major effort to learn how to use [a borrowed] Liddell and Scott (LSJ), which I was not successful at.

This time studying, now, it is so easy with all the tools and URL links I have setup on my computer. I can wander to any breadth my curiosity roams. The barriers to my learning, such as the meaning and significance of the myriad linguisticisms, are gone or at least ameliorated. Now I can look up and read many things about what cases and moods and inflections, etc., etc., etc. means, from many sources so I can burn all that securely into my brain. Tools have finally broken down the walls of my historic problems with the study language.

And it's nearly all $$freely available. Yes I have paper books with their lovely feel in the hand and their comfortable assurances and smells (especially Shelmerdine's "Introduction to Greek, 2e.," and Mahoney's "Morice's Stories in Attic Greek," et al.), but with my computer I can hear long passages read to me in both tonal and syllabically stressed forms. Interlinear translation formats? Yes. Raw Greek? Yes. Raw translations? Yes. I wander as I wonder thanks to the incredible efficiency and efficacy of our contemporary tools.

[Lex]

I studied Greek thirty-five years ago without any tools. It was even a major effort to learn how to use [a borrowed] Liddell and Scott (LSJ), which I was not successful at.

I'm still not 100% sure how to use it. For instance, Kalos says that ἀείδω has perfect and pluperfect active forms. But LSJ (at least Little Liddell) doesn't list a perfect active principal part. What's up with this? Is this a mistake on Kalos' part, or am I supposed to know to form the perfect and pluperfect active from some other principal part? If so, which one?

[grdSavant]

I'm still not 100% sure how to use it. For instance, Kalos says that ἀείδω has perfect and pluperfect active forms. But LSJ (at least Little Liddell) doesn't list a perfect active principal part. What's up with this? Is this a mistake on Kalos' part, or am I supposed to know to form the perfect and pluperfect active from some other principal part? If so, which one?

I'm still not good with LSJ (next year this time I'll be a pro!), but having it on my own system certainly saves time--hours and hours that could add up to years and years. Some of the entries in it that have several pages are definitely daunting and make me groan. I mean, let's look at the problem. I'm learning Greek and besides all the inflections, now LSJ is forcing me to learn another million little abbreviations. Well, they'll have to get in line, right behind the pluperfect.

Lex, thank you for your reference to Kalos. I did not have it--then I do--voila! Initially it looks like a nice way to simplify and filter the complexity of all of this compared to big LSJ.

But I have no way to compare Lexicons and Dictionaries, yet. All I know is that no one has a completely exhaustive nor accurate reference. Pick one, use it; compare it to others in your spare time (LOL). I would not bet my life on anything I get out of any reference, although if someone like Annis here on textkit.com told me something, it would be an authoritative and fairly reliable reference opinion. Liddell and Scott and Jones were respected scholars. L&S based their 1846 lexicon on the earlier work of Franz Passow. The L&S has been reviewed and respected and updated over a long, long period of time, for what it's worth. Kalos; I gave up trying to find out how Gonzalo Diaz and Mariana Esplugas did their work or what their fundamental references were. As Annis suggests, Kalos may be machine generating words based on rules, which does not always work and therefore creates some non-existent words.

So anyway, it seems, when you have only one watch you have only one sample, which may have an error. At least with two watches you can average the errors and maybe get closer to the truth, or not. Precison and accuracy are delicate things.

But I don't really see how it is a problem since ἄειδε in the Iliad ("Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά....") translates okay in both LSJ, and Kalos, and others I suppose.