working on noun forms

Greek Learning Greek
1

I can often guess case & number of a noun in a AG sentence, but, because I want to try beginning AG composition, I need to memorize declension tables. In composition one needs active memory of the forms. I’ve made a list of 22 example nouns, and prepared tables of their forms.

So, I’ll work on memorizing those tables. While doing that, I’ll slow down the reading of Plato’s Symposium, in order to match each noun I encounter with my examples. It seems to me that after several weeks of memory drill and checking Plato’s nouns against against my examples, my active recall of the noun forms should be greatly improved, as well as passive recognition.

Rather than make flashcards, I plan to memorize tables of example nouns.

I’m using the example nouns printed in Louise Pratt’s The Essentials of Greek Grammar (2010). I chose that because I am also using her Eros at the Banquet: Reviewing Greek with Plato’s Symposium.

Rote memorizing is hard for me, but I hope in this way to get better positive control over those noun forms.

2

χαιρε hlawson38,

We all have to learn tables :slight_smile: There are different ways, some are better. I’m 50 years old and that’s why it’s also hard for me to remember all those tables.

The hardest way for me is to learn just the word endings.
Learning whole words is already a bit easier.
If I use a word I know well it’s even a little easier.
But the absolute best way for me is to learn it actively - I make sentences with all the forms of the word I’m learning. And I try to understand it and think directly in Greek. It’s best if I visualize the thing I’m talking about. You want to do composition, you might as well try it, it might help you.

I do it like this, for example for the word οφθαλμος:
τι εστιν ο οφθαλμος;
ο οφθαλμος εστιν μερος του σωματος.
εχομεν δυο οφθαλμους, ωδε επι της κεφαλης.
αλλα Κυκλωψ εχει μονον ενα οφθαλμον.
τοις οφθαλμοις ημων βλεπομεν,
αλλα Κυκλωψ μονον ενι οφθαλμω βλεπει.
ποιον χρωμα των οφθαλμων μου;
κυανους οφθαλμους εχω.
και ποιον χρωμα του οφθαλμου του Κυκλωπος;
ουκ οιδαμεν, οτι νυν οφθαλμον ηδη ουκ εχει.
κτλ.

3

Many thanks paveln for taking the trouble to show me in detail. A good deed! I understand the feeling that one’s rote-memory power is declining.

I have a couple of questions:

  1. Did you select example nouns to make sentence composition easier? Or did you work from a given list?

  2. I notice that you type your tables without accentuation. Do you always compose without accentuation? Or do you do it for typing speed while studying? Or some other reason?

I’ll add that my example words are grouped like this:

First declension: 5 nouns
Second declension: 3 nouns
Third declension : 15 nouns, with subgroups numbering 4, 4, 5, and 2.

My first goal is to memorize the list of example nouns, in the form of their dictionary entries. I want, after looking up a word, to be able to think, “Oh, that’s like σπονδη σπονδης η”, for example.

Skipping the accents makes the typing go faster!

4

Hmmm… οφθαλμος is the classic word for practicing the dual forms :wink:

5

I used to chant the declensions under my breath when I went running… it seemed to work, and it definitely took my mind off the steep hills!

6

Unfortunately, I can’t sing :slight_smile: But this one can sing and teaches Greek grammar by singing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gaeIUsPJ-Y&list=PLO-USksx-puxxltOhjEK-tSEjbEX1XepZ

7

  1. Yes, I mostly choose nouns and verbs that I know well, usually from a list of the most common words. And also to make it easy to create many sentences with them. I started doing this a few years ago when I couldn’t remember the endings of the present tense mediopassive. So I searched for a verb I knew well that had those endings and found ἔρχομαι. I knew this verb well and some of its endings and therefore I learned the rest of it easily, but most importantly I understood it perfectly in direct Greek.
    I’m looking up the words in my Excel, but you might want to look them up here:
    https://dcc.dickinson.edu/greek-core-list
    It’s a list of the 500 most common words, but you can filter out, for example, nouns of the second declension, etc.

  2. I wrote the texts here without accents because I’m self-taught and don’t need accents yet, so I haven’t learned them yet. However, I don’t write anything down while learning the tables, I make it up and talk to myself :slight_smile: It’s easiest when I’m out somewhere where there are a lot of people and I can talk about a lot of things that I see and that happen there.
    I talk to myself like this person:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHwFmb7le7w

That’s how you can remember a lot of forms very quickly and completely master them. I can understand them perfectly directly in Greek without translation. I don’t have to say what you want:

I want, after looking up a word, to be able to think, “Oh, that’s like σπονδη σπονδης η”, for example.

But I automatically understand most word forms directly in Greek, even though I may never have seen the form.

8

Many thanks paveln!

9

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.