I’m still toiling away on the noun forms. I’m trying now to finish memorizing the nominative singular and genitive singular of 23 pattern nouns, classified by first, second, and third declensions. The pattern nouns, and their inflection tables, I take from Louise Pratt’s The Essentials of Greek Grammar.
I want to learn these so well that, given dictionary information for a new noun, I can quickly identify which of the 23 nouns provides the pattern for the endings. I envision something like this. In reading see new AG noun, consult dictionary, identify pattern noun for that word, call forth from memory whatever inflection is needed.
A secondary goal is to reduce my psychic resistance to memorizing, the relict of anti-memorizing propaganda in educational writings. I want memorizing to seem more useful and productive, so that doing it is merely a practical activity for getting a practical result.
Right now, I’m memorizing the 23 nouns which will comprise a sort mental index to memorized declension tables of each one of them. Memorizing the full declension table for each of the 23, will be finished later. I’m doing this as I continue to read Plato’s Symposium.
Some may ask, “Why do this memorizing, when quick definitions and parsings for words in classical books are available online?” I was struck by these words of Eleanor Dickey:
The author, as a student, wasted years over the non-memorization method and later wished bitterly that someone had told her how much more efficient it would be just to sit down and learn things by heart; it would have been the single most useful tip anyone could have given her, so she hereby passes it on. (p. ix, An Introduction to the Composition and Analysis of Greek Prose, Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Moreover, I have become convinced that at least some composition helps understand the complex language in literary works. Reading and writing are not natural skills in the same way that speaking and understanding speech are. To learn to read and write, practically everybody requires formal instruction, and a lot of it. And to compose sentences correctly, one needs to remember the forms.