I understand “συν τῇ τοῦ Φαρνελος* βίβλῳ” but I dont understand why you then write τῇ, or what exactly you mean by either “τῇ μελετήματος” or “τῇ μελετημάτων”.
More generally if you are going to continue with this great aim of writing Greek you need to spend a bit more time thinking about how something might be expressed in Greek rather than than thinking of an English sentence and then turning it into Greek very literally. In English we do say I worked with x’s book of exercises, but I am not sure thats how you would say it Greek. If you look up ποιέω you can find lots of examples but I couldn’t see anything that parallels the way you want to use it. I am not however saying you cant use it in that way just it doesnt sound very idiomatic to me and there are lots of other verbs which might be better. Others with more experience of prose composition may have different ideas.
You could try using “study and read” which would give you an opportunity to use two verbs, one of which would be a participle in idiomatic Greek. Or “opened and read”, “fell asleep while reading”, This is much more like the kind of Greek I come across when I am reading.
I really wasn’t sure about ποιέω but I couldn’t think of anything else. Now I know that’s wrong I shall try other ways of saying it.
I got a bit of a mess with the genitives which is quite separate from that.
The following is a valid way of adding a genitive isn’t it?
συν τῇ βίβλῳ τῇ τοῦ Φαρνελος
In this case it bothered me that I was slapping two genitives next to each other - would it be clear that both qualified the book and not one the other?
Now I come to think of it I cant remember seeing have never seen both attributive positions being used together in the way I did. Russel and Keller have a section that seems relevant to this so I shall read it up. Thanks for pointing out I have a problem here.
Look at the model ἡ τῶν ᾿Αθηναίων πόλις and see whats missing.
Did you mean to use γιγνώσκοντα, from γιγνώσκω? Wouldnt ἀναγιγνώσκω be a better verb?
πότερον?
I was going to suggest rewriting all this with a relative clause but maybe its best to stick to a paratactic construction.
Bd reads aloud stories from herodotus in Philpotts (in the book written (made) by P.) here (urL). I listened to some of them following keenly(or whatever adverb you want).
If you try to turn that into Greek you might run into fewer difficulties. I will think about it a bit more tomorrow.
This in English sounds fine but it isnt quite right in Greek. Maybe this:
ὁ πάνσοφος Βεδουηρ ἀνεγίγνωσκε
Did you mean φρονῇ or did you have φωνῇ in mind? In this case you can omit μεγάλῃ φωνῇ if you were trying to over the idea of speaking aloud. But in any case Bd deserves an article.
What do you think τῆς γραφομένην means? Its not idiomatic even if were to agree
ἤκουον προθυμῶς καὶ πλησίον παρηκολούθουν. It would be better to express this in the aorist and to express one of the verbs as a participle. Whilst its reasonable for Bd to be reading in the imperfect as he may still be reading, we dont know, but you have finished listening and following so you should use the aorist.
I have seen that you use the imperfect a lot. Perhaps you should ask yourself each time whether the aorist might be better.
Rather than trying to get what you have written in correct grammatical form I think you need to recast it in a much simpler form. So maybe instead of explicitly mentioning the anabasis you could try “stories from Xenophon, the ones Philpotts selected.” That would remove all those nested articles along with the possibility of getting them wrong.
More generally you should read Sidgwick 96-114 and especially note what he says about abstract and concrete. As sidgwick and everyone else says about prose composition you are not trying to put English words into Greek but you are trying to take the thought behind the English and express that in Greek.
You understood me quite correctly there because that encapsulates my understanding of the imperfect - aorist split. Or to quote John Taylor Greek to GCSE part 1 page 41:
The imperfect (literally > unfinished> ) strictly refers to an action that is not completed.
I am not surprised that my understanding of the aorist is wrong but what is the correct understanding of the aorist?
What I wanted to say was: I lack a model. What should I imitate?
You seem to think that my problem is that I know what I should write but my English keeps interfering and drags me off course.
At the moment I have just got to the start of chapter eight of Xenophon’s Anabasis. I have merely read odd snippets of other writers. Which wouldn’t be so bad if I was really on top of that somewhat limited material but when I re-read (which I do constantly) I find myself decoding as if it was text that I had never before encountered. There are good reasons for sticking to one writer until that writers ways are mastered before expanding outwards but I can’t find anywhere in Xenophon where he describes someone reading aloud.
The problem is you are telling me what I should not be doing but what I need is to know is what I should be doing.
I feel you vastly overestimate my ability (but you are not alone in this).
EDIT
I should stress that I do appreciate the time you have taken to try and nudge me in the right direction.
Imperfect an action in the past which is continuous or repeated or incomplete … I was doing. Also it can mean I tried to do something. Aorist is where all we know is that single action happened in the past .. I did this.
Because you have not listened to the whole book (πάντων) does not mean your “act of listening” is incomplete. It is “the act of listening” that you were engaged in that counts, and as this has ended you can use the aorist. I suggested the aorist as a means of introducing variety and a contrast between Bd’s activity which was continuous in the past and your’s which can be viewed as a one off that has now ended. So in English you could write Bd was doing x (imperfect), I did y (aorist). The imperfect/aorist split is about how you regard an action. If you want everything to appear as continuous actions in the past then use the imperfect but thats not how most Greek is written. It is not incorrect to put all this into the imperfect as you have but there is another way of looking at the action. A different aspect.
What I wanted to say was:
I lack a model. What should I imitate?
Try using:
τό παράδειγμα (like paradigm) I think mainly used in plural as exempla.
μιμέομαι to imitate (mimesis)
The problem is you are telling me what I should not be doing but what I need is to know is what I should be doing.
Fair enough. If you are reading Xenophon use him as your model. So try to paraphrase what you read or put it in the future or put it in indirect speech. Use his vocabulary. I appreciate you dont go marching with armies or hunting( its possible I suppose) but in your invented world of what I did today you can write anything you want. Today I went marching with Cyrus we went over the plain…etc
Otherwise you are setting yourself a huge task in free form prose composition. After a lot of work you could maybe make yourself understood but whether it would be Greek is another matter. Much better at your stage to stick to something very simple using vocabulary and structures from your reading that you can handle.
Another positive thing you could do is to work through North and Hillard.
Both present participles. You have warned me to avoid over using the imperfect and of course the present is imperfective just as much as the imperfect itself. However, it still looks to me that the aorist can’t be justified here. When I went out the house I was carrying the section of Xenophon I wanted to memorize but I kept on carrying it after I had exited the house. It is true that when walking I did reach my destination but as far as my study of Greek was concerned that’s irrelevant. All that matters from the Greek-study point of view is that there was a fairly long open ended period when I was walking during which I made use of my time memorizing Xenophon bit by bit.
Or did you mean something else?
ἔξειμι is the future of ἐξέρχομαι in Attic. So you have a future main verb with two present participles and μνήσω which is future. ἔσομαι is also future. So dont you think that the participles ought to future too?
Edit :I may have been too hasty as Goodwin says (1288) “the tenses of the participle generally express the same time as those of the indicative; but they are present, past or future relatively to the time of the verb with which they are connected.”
So perhaps present is correct. I will think about it tomorrow.
Oh I see. I don’t really know much about future particles - clearly this is a gap that needs filling. I shall do so.
Thanks not just for the correction of that post but opening my eyes to that gap.
Note seneca’s edit. Present participles here are quite correct. “I’ll go out carrying,” and “I’ll memorize them while walking” (not “while being about to walk”).
