Greek noun declension Anki study

Greek Learning Greek
1

I wanted to study all of the example noun declensions given by Smyth as Anki flashcards. Most of these are up on wiktionary, so I wrote some code to scrape that and put everything together into a text file that can be imported into your Anki deck. I’ve corrected non-wiktionary examples by hand.

https://github.com/jeidsath/ankigreeknouns

You can just download nouns.txt and import it directly. I may generate the reverse deck at some point. The next project is likely something similar with verb conjugation.

Please let me know if you find any errors.

2

Thanks! I’ll surely find this useful.

3

I’ve added new files that include all the forms (including participles) of λύω. Also I’ve added reverse files for both nouns and verbs.

This is, of course, an attempt to solve my (ir?)rational hatred of grammar tables. Memorizing all of the tenses of a verb at once seems suboptimal. I think that the one-at-a-time method is much more useful.

You probably want to change your font to “menlo” for the verb flash cards, in the style section under the “Cards” button in the browse deck page.

I have my noun deck set to 100 cards a day, random order. I’m going to try the same with verbs, but will probably adjust the initial number of cards per day.

If you’re just learning, don’t use the whole deck. Start with just the part that you’re working on (like aorist verbs, for example).

Also, it’s important not to quiz yourself on too many things at once. A single card should always take under 10 seconds. For instance you could create your first verb deck and call it “verb voices.” Then just quiz yourself on “Is this verb active / middle / passive?” Once you’ve mastered that, create a new deck. With nouns, try to just come up with the gender, or the article, or the nominative, rather than making yourself responsible for everything the first time through. It will be faster to learn everything separately than to do them all at once. And eventually you will will develop enough mastery that you will be able to do everything at once, rapidly.

Learn the nouns.txt and verbs.txt decks before tying the reverse.

Key to verb terms (there are cool unicode characters in here if you look at the code but Textkit does not like them). If you have any suggestions (especially around verb tenses), please let me know.

REPRESENTATIONS = {'imperfect': '(παρατατικός)    ----    |',
                   'present': '(ἐνεστὼς χρόνος)    --|--',
                   'future': '(μέλλων)    |    -<br>|    -----',
                   'perfect': '(παρακείμενος χρόνος)    ----|',
                   'pluperfect': '(υπερσυντελικὸς χρόνος)    ----X    |',
                   'aorist': '(ἀορίστος χρόνος)    -   |',
                   'future perfect': '(τετελέσμενος μέλλων)    |    ----    X',
                   'indicative': '(ὁριστηκὴ ἔνκλισις)',
                   'imperative': '(προστακτικὴ ἔνκλισις)',
                   'subjunctive': '(ὑποτακτικὴ ἔνκλισις)    ἄν',
                   'optative': '(εὐτικὴ ἔνκλισις)    εἰ',
                   '1st': '(πρῶτον πρόσωπον)    ἐγώ',
                   '2nd': '(δεύτερον πρόσωπον)    σύ',
                   '3rd': '(τρίτον πρόσωπον)    ἐκείνω',
                   '2nd dual': '(δεύτερον δυϊκον πρόσωπον)    σφώ',
                   '3rd dual': '(τρίτον δυϊκον πρόσωπον)',
                   '1st plural': 'ἡμεῖς',
                   '2nd plural': 'ὑμεῖς',
                   '3rd plural': 'σφεῖς',
                   'infinitive': '(ἀπαρεμφάτος ἔγκλισις)    ∞',
                   'active': '(ἐνεργετικός)',
                   'middle': '(μέσος)',
                   'passive': '(παθητικός)'
                   }
4

Hey,

Anki is a great resource. Glad you’re doing this.

Just a couple of quick notes:

ubi ἀορίστος ibi ἀόριστος
ubi ἀπαρεμφάτος ibi ἀπαρέμφατος

Also de cluster “νκ” is usually written “γκ”, so ἔγκλισις rather than ἔνκλισις is the way the form has been normalized.

See you around—

5

Thanks Miguel. The γ → ν is a common mistake in my spelling, unfortunately. For the others, I was going from http://www.ancientstudiesinstitute.org/Minerva/ORIGINAL_LIST_files/GREEK-TERMS.pdf

It looks like you are correct about both, at least according to a TLG search. I will fix the files shortly. Please let me know about anything else that you find!

EDIT: Although γ → ν is a common mistake for me, it looks like that was a problem with the original link as well! I’ve uploaded the fixed files.

6

Yeah, I was averaging 40-45 seconds per card making myself responsible for everything on the card, and it was painfully slow. For now, I’ll try just reading the word out loud with a two- to four-letter code for number and case, like “γέρον s.v.” for singular vocative, or “βοῦς s.n.p.a.” for singular nominative or plural accusative. (Other people might prefer the letters in a different order.) However, I don’t think the memory burden of learning a whole noun card at once is excessive. A masculine or feminine noun can have 5 singular, 2 dual, and 4 plural forms, for a total of 11; a neuter noun has 3 + 2 + 3 = 8. So there are 30 possible combinations of gender, number, and case to choose from, which is 5 bits of information (2^5 = 32 ≈ 30) you need to remember in order to assign the article. To derive the nominative singular, in most cases it’s obvious or there’s a very short list of conceivable forms. Say 3 bits on average to select the correct form. That makes 8 bits/card to learn. Compare this with learning how to read out loud a two-character Chinese word. Each character could represent any one of the 1200-1600 syllables possible in the Mandarin language, so 11 bits each, for a total of 22 bits to learn per item, and this is, so to speak, an irreducible activity. For the reverse, I have a hard time estimating how much I have to learn in order to recall and write a pair of Chinese characters. Certainly upward of 32 bits.

Is there a way I can clone my Greek Nouns Anki deck so that I continue using the current one for cursory run-throughs, and then use the new deck for when I’m ready to recall everything? If I’m to start using the new deck before I’m finished with the old one, I’ll need them to introduce the words in the same random order.

7

Is there a way I can clone my Greek Nouns Anki deck so that I continue using the current one for cursory run-throughs, and then use the new deck for when I’m ready to recall everything? If I’m to start using the new deck before I’m finished with the old one, I’ll need them to introduce the words in the same random order

Yes. Export your cards, create a new deck, and then re-import into the new deck. It may complain about duplicates.

That makes 8 bits/card to learn. Compare this with learning how to read out loud a two-character Chinese word. Each character could represent any one of the 1200-1600 syllables possible in the Mandarin language, so 11 bits each, for a total of 22 bits to learn per item, and this is, so to speak, an irreducible activity.

I’m not sure that level entropic analysis applies to human learning. Hook those same two-character words to a story, and they are with you forever. Or at least that was my experience with learning the Japanese characters. The trick to recall (as opposed to recognition) is radical analysis. There are only a couple of hundred radicals and each only have a few standard forms (at least in the Japanese Kanji, derived from the hanzi). If that’s solid, you can beat native speakers on recall from time to time, because they learned everything the hard way: rote memorization as children.

I actually find Greek declensions and conjugations much hard to remember than the Japanese characters. They have no symbolic meaning, and in the end you have to just get them through vast amounts of input. I feel like my brain has really only started putting it together in the last few weeks. And that was after a year of reading and listening every day.

8

The verb cards look interesting. I’d find them hard to use, since I haven’t learned the Greek grammatical terms. I’d strongly prefer something with abbreviated English names for the classification. Geoffrey Steadman’s commentaries use one system. I use the following:
“${tense}${mood} ${voice} ${gender}${number}${case}${person}”
where
tense = p/f/a/i/per/plup
mood = i/s/o/imp/inf/ % blank for participles
voice = mid/pas/m-p/ % blank for active
gender = m/n/f/ % only for participles
number = s/d/p/ % blank for infinitives
case = n/g/d/a/v/ % only for participles
person = 1/2/3/ % only for finite verbs

Thus
λυθήσεσθε; fi pas p2
λελυκότες; per mpn
λύ̄εσθε; pi m-p p2
λύ̄σειν; finf
λῦσαι; ainf
aimp mid s2

My system is obviously much more concise than giving Greek names for the conjugations, and should also be easier for people studying from English-language textbooks to get used to. If I get around to it, I’ll modify your code so that it outputs cards in my preferred format as well as yours and then make a pull request.

The noun file has the following card with an obvious accent problem:
μήτρός; τῆς μήτρός

ἡ μήτηρ
It should be μητρός.

I would prefer for the noun cards to give both the nominative and genitive singular for each noun, as most textbook vocabulary lists do. When I start studying the deck on the second level, I’ll be wanting to recall a dictionary form for each word. For a card that gives a nominative singular form, there’s no form to recall as things stand now.

9

Thank you, I’ve updated that card. Please delete the broken card and reimport the deck with “update existing notes” selected.

Please feel free to update the cards however you would like. My card design is meant to meet my personal reading goals.

10

I’m working on a version that formats the cards according to my preference. A unified version that outputs multiple versions of each card type or formats the output according to a user-specified template would require a significant rewrite, so a merge is not likely ever to happen.

Information on Python/package version dependencies would be helpful. Presumably if everything is set up properly I should be able to regenerate the noun file by running
$ ./nouns.py --anki
in the source directory.

The noun cards give βᾰσῐλέᾰ and βᾰσῐλέᾰς as the accusative forms of βασιλεύς, but according to Hansen and Quinn they should be βᾰσῐλέᾱ and βᾰσῐλέᾱς.

11

That’s what wiktionary gives. The Attic usage is long α in Smyth, but the note states that βασιλεύς was declined with the short α in Herodotus and sometimes in Homer. Apparently due to the original βασιλῆϝος. Maybe someone more knowledgable than me can chime in on whether wiktionary needs an edit?

I see that Smyth 277 lists -έᾰ and -έᾰς as “rare” forms for words in -εύς. 278 describes more clearly what is happening with βασιλεύς and the digamma.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/βασιλεύς

I used Python 2.7.8 and the requests library for writing up the code.

12

I’ve got my version up, with the noun cards in my preferred format.

https://github.com/tallguy76/ankigreeknouns

13

Very cool. I grabbed your fixes for βασιλεύς and περίπλους although I’d still be interested in hearing a second opinion before I start monkeying with the έυς form on wiktionary. I also added to earlier (4th century) nominative plural form for βασιλεύς. Wiktionary seems to be a mix of early and late forms for this declension.

You have a minor issue in your how your code parses the entry for Ἑρμῆς. The same happened to me in an earlier revision.

14

I don’t think we have access to any form much earlier than *βασιλῆϝος, as it’s not possible to tell the exact form the word in the Mycenaean period, if indeed gwa-si-re-wo is the predecessor of βασιλεύς.

15

I’ve now got the verbs in my preferred form as well, and I’ve fixed the Ἑρμῆς problem. The repository has three files for subsets of the verb forms: one for finite forms in non-reduplicated tenses (present, future, aorist, imperfect), one for finite forms in reduplicated tenses (perfect, pluperfect, future perfect), and one for participles and infinitives. These were made by grep from verbs.txt; the code for generating them is not in the repo.