I find that even after years, I am still learning Greek, particularly vocabulary. I recently came across an article in The Modern Language Journal, 95.1 (2011), by Schmitt, Jiang and Grabe , arguing that a 98% level of lexical comprehension is necessary for fluid reading of academic texts.
Thoughts about this level of control of vocabulary, especially for previously unseen, ancient Greek texts?
“Fluid reading” needs to be defined here, as does “lexical comprehension”. But the thing that this class of studies tends to miss, is that picking up meaning from context is a skill that must be trained like other skills. Some people have put in the years of effort necessary to do it well, and most people have not.
We tend to do it naturally in our primary language, partly because we already have a very large vocabulary base in that language and can fill in gaps more easily – even to the point of essentially ignoring the unfamiliar word. This is harder to do in a second language, and cannot be easily done until a fairly large vocabulary base is acquired.
If I can be a bit philosophical, I think there’s an important fundamental difference between learning a core vocabulary in a structural sense, and learning any extra words you add on to that vocabulary for precision, vividness, and style.
The defining characteristic for a core vocabulary, to me, is not necessarily that it contains the most commonly used words, but that it covers all words that have a common (or maybe even not so common) structural use in grammar. In this list I also include idiomatic use, set phrases, and similar. Basically everything that helps you parse any given sentence (within reason).
Anything you add on top of that will not really help you with the structure of the language.
But again, this depends on where you put the bar. The bar for me is to be able to pick up any of the common prose authors, take a long complicated sentence, and read it “fluently” in the sense that I recognize how the words relate to each other with as little ambiguity as possible. Even if there are many words in the sentence I don’t know the meaning of.
In order to do this I need to learn many of the words that have special grammatical purposes. For example: it’s more important for me to learn an uncommon verb that has a construction like “takes a double accusative” or “takes a genitive” than it is to just learn any random noun that has no specific grammatical purpose, because this information is extremely useful to understand long complex sentences (which to me is the only thing that’s really difficult with the language, due to the combinatoric explosion in the number of ways a sentence can be interpreted if you are even a little bit unsure about the grammatical function of a word in a sentence).
As Joel said, picking up on the contextual clues is an important skill to cultivate. But often the context is not enough to reveal the meaning of any given word. Using dictionaries (lexica) is invaluable, and making a vocabulary list as you read a text is very helpful, since you can review it to solidify your new knowledge, and can expand and modify it as you read more.
And/or you can mark up hard copy.
PS Beyond mere vocabulary items, bjrn makes good points.
I have seen “core vocabulary” lists (1200-1500 hundred words or so) which purport to give 85% of all words needed to read standard Greek authors. I don’t buy it. Of course, one needs to define “read”. For me, that means not only to grasp the syntactical relationship of words to one another, but to appreciate (for lack of a better term) the referential meaning of the passage fairly completely (to be able to explain it in other words) with no major gaps in understanding.
revans: Okay. What are you going to do with that definition?
Arguably the least helpful thing anyone can do at a language learning forum is come in and proclaim that a very ambitious goal is very difficult. Of course it’s very difficult. Don’t you think that people here know that already?
Are you personally aiming for reaching the fluency you’ve defined in your last post (“to appreciate … the referential meaning of the passage fairly completely … with no major gaps in understanding.”)? If so, then maybe the really knowledgeable people here can help you with tips and tricks.
It’s not very clear to me what you are asking for, especially after your last post.
bjrn:
I am not trying to proclaim anything, goad anyone or set any specific goal for myself or others. I was interested in what folks might think concretely about the number of words that would enable one to read rapidly and fluidly (and I was trying to say what I mean by that). For example, I have read an estimate for Homer of about 10,000 words to control the text.
This issue has come up for me in the context of the “Living Latin” movement with the idea that one should be able to read ancient languages with the same speed and accuracy as modern ones. Years ago, I passed PhD exams in ancient Greek and Latin in a traditional, Ivy League Classics program and knew no student who could deal with Greek as they could with French, German, Italian;(there were perhaps a few professors who could). My later studies have made me think that the greatest barrier in ancient languages is vocabulary–just my personal view.
If the great barrier is vocabulary (and I’m not 100% sure that it is, as single-author studies can still be difficult, and Koine is far easier for me than Attic), then low-efficiency methods of vocabulary acquisition would be, in consequence, enemy #1 for the first few years or longer.
For me, “number of words” though, is already a false start. For example, I’ve been reading Cratylus this week, and have it open at 412, Δικαιοσύνη. Obviously, if you’ve read much Christian literature, you know what that “means,” but think of all the parts of the word that aren’t called out just by looking it up, but that you should some automatic sense of:
However, I think most learners have already gone to the dictionary before #1, certainly before #3, and made it another member of their “word count.” Maybe they’ve even added the English gloss on the back of a flash card so they don’t forget it. And by doing so they carelessly desensitize themselves to an automatic sense of the above word formation facts which would have been more useful to them for building Greek fluency than the main English gloss (which is itself problematic).
Becoming a very efficient absorber of vocabulary means learning to absorb all these facts present from the formation, the characteristic usage, the feel and εὐστομίη of the word. And I am not sure that the university study of classical languages is primarily geared around making someone good at this. Nor is a lexical resource like the LSJ designed with it in mind.
Σω: “Δικαιοσύνη” δέ, ὅτι μὲν ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ δικαίου συνέσει τοῦτο κεῖται τὸ ὄνομα, ῥᾴδιον συμβαλεῖν· αὐτὸ δὲ τὸ “δίκαιον” χαλεπόν. 
Hi Joel,
Your insights are interesting. I agree with you that university study is not necessarily the most efficient route to mastery of Greek vocabulary. Part of the issue is perhaps the linguistic environment for American English speakers as English gives less reinforcement in general to Greek vocabulary than to Latin vocabulary. Also, learning any Romance language (very common in US schools) really boosts Latin vocabulary whereas Hellenic stands by itself and there is not much Modern Greek out there for students in US schools.
revans