I Have Begun!

I have finally actually started to work on my greek! I left behind my textbook and workbooks that I bought, but I bought another one amazon.com, and my parents will ship it over to me. also, there are plently of information websites online, and I do have my awesome William D. Mounce first year Greek dvd lectures. also, Brent is just an email away and whenever I have any questions, I just ask him. I do know that most of my friends, especially those who are bible majors and have taken greek, think that it is crazy tht I am doing this on my own. but like I've written onhere before, its so much nice to go at my own pace you know? I have not yet started the DVD lectures, but I will tomorrow. I want to start the pronounciation, so maybe in the vocabulary disc the dvd lectures come with, they will go over that. I started practicing writing the letters of the alphabet. I am going to practice writing them by writing them on two sides(one sheet)in a notebook, one sheet for each letter. for now, I will do lowercase, and then move on to capital letters. that's the nice thing about doing this yourself. you can go at your own pace, do things your way, the way that works best for you, you can take your time. bible majors have to learn the alphabet in less than a week. I can take my time and spend 4 months learning it, or until I know it well. I feel like a first grader, writing Alpha lowercase over and over on that piece of paper in my notebook(I bought a notebook to do Greek in), on both sides. problaly too much, but I truly want to learn this language and I am going to make sure I learn it well. but I do like it as well. it feels like I am building a foundation, and i have to make it solid and storng and take my time on it, before I start adding on the other layers of the house. and the greek alphabet, writing, speaking, learning the  names of the letters, is the foundation of my Ancient Greek knowledge, and it has to be sturdy and unshakeable and deeply built before it can suppose the house. I do regret having left behind my Greek workbook and flashcards, but its fine, I bought a new textbook from amazon and my parents are sending it over, and with my other materials here, I should be able to do fine, and its not like I want to be reading the New Testmanent in Greek before I go back home, althought that would be cool lol. but I am going to take my time and go at my own pace. someday, I will be able to read and write in Ancient Greek, and also read outloud, and I will be able to say that I taught myself, with some help from friends of course. it will be years and years before I get to that point, but I will get there, and it will be so so worth it.

   writing greek is interesting. granted, I can only write Alpha so far, but it feels like this interesting mix of english and...egyptain hyrogliphics. some of the letters look very similar to english and others look closer to hyrogliphics.at least that is my opinion. i find it beautiful. i think ancient Greek in its writing form is so beautiful. the letters look so graceful and feminine, while english letters are so masculine. i know, that makes no sense, but hey, its my greek blog and my mind and my opinion. lol. im sure all my bible major friends are shaking their heads and laughing at that, but it is how it seems to me. Italian is sexy and beautiful in its speaking form and I love it with all my heart, and Greek is graceful and feminine in its written form and I think I am going to grow to love it as well. granted, having my BA in International studies, I love culture and I love languges, so its not too big of a surprise. but I am so excited to have finally begun the difficult work on this Greek Journey. :)

Modern Greek

I would have started a separate blog for this, but it seemed silly to start a new blog when it is still Greek. I love learning languages, as you can probably tell,  and I love culture, and experiencing culture,etc. hence my International Studies degree. anyways, as much as I am looking forward to being able to read the NT in its original Greek(probably on my death bead-its so hard!) it is a dead form of Greek that Greeks don't speak anymore and the pronunciations are guesses. very educated, highly intelligent, researched guesses, but guesses nevertheless. so I cannot say with a clean conscience that I now Greek. so I decided to learn modern Greek on top of biblical Greek. this way, I can say, unlike bible majors, that I speak Greek and I will be able to have conversations in the language I spent years learning. I currently have 3 Greek language apps on my Itouch(along with 3 French, 3 Italian, and 3 Sign Language apps-all in separate folders-such a brilliant feature of the Itouch!) and Pimsleurs Conversational Modern Greek. such a good program- its all audio and its scientific in nature, and they go with what research says works best for language. research says the brain gets language as speech, as sounds, so its all audio, and they do a lot of repetition, based on what timing repetition works best with. so at first they ask you something, and you learn it, and they they move on to a new thing and they just when your forgetting that first thing, they ask it of you again, and so on and so on. its so good! its conversations, and its native speakers that speak. its so good! I also have the pimsleur Italian. plus the lessons are only 30 minutes, so that works really well for learning, and they actually suggest that if you learn 80% of the lesson, you can move on to the next one because its not realistic to expect to learn it 100%, and they review in the other lesson. I love it!

Small Baby Steps

It's been awhile, but I started my first Biblical Greek lesson today. I have scheduled 3-5pm, monday thru friday for language learning classes, self taught, and tuesday is bilical greek day. once I get further along, I will start to add more time. for now, two hours once a week is a good pace. mandarin of course, gets more time than the others since I'm going to China. it is 4:39pm, and I'm writing this post as part of my lesson. I am not very frustrated but I can tell that biblical greek will be the toughest language for me out of all the ones I'm learning. In none of the other languages do I have to learn the alphabet and also how individual letters are pronounced. in mandarin, you can learn the individual pyngin letters but its almost easier to learn the tones and then just start learning the whole words, and once you do that you start to get comfortable with the sounds. and italian and french are...easy for me. but with biblical greek, there is no other to learn it. I have to learn the alphabet, I have to learn the indivudual letter sounds and it is a bit...challenging. I am very thankful to have the resources I have, yet I can already tell that just learning the alphabet and its sounds is gonna take awhile. in italian, i can already say several words, and count to 20, and know several colors, and french...it's just re-learnign what I learned in high school so its coming back fast, and mandarin is a challange but in terms of learning as much vocabulary and conversational skills as possible. Greek is...tough. i do not like having to learn individual sounds of the letters, and i just want to be able to jump right into words and phrases like with the other languages I am learning. yet it is obvious that that is not an option. I have lectures from Bill Mounce from his DVD series that I bought and from "greek for the rest of us" book and CD-ROM(also by Bill Mounce) and he is a good lecturer and seems to really know Greek and is very passionate about it and about teaching it. his website has a lot of free resources and that DVD lecture is a whole first year of greek lectures. so I am still excited and commited to this, but i am grateful that I am self taught and so can take my time and not have to cram a ton of stuff in. If it takes a year to learn the alphabet and its sounds, so be it. still, i dont want it to take a year. I guess it's frustrating having to go baby step at a time, small steps. but it's gonna be worth it when I can read the NT in its original language and can say that I taught myself.

Tools of the Quest

I am very excited about the resources I have so far. I'm at the stage where I am gathering resources to use. These won't be the only resources I have on this quest, they are just the ones I have right now, at the beginning. I think this will be so interesting to come back a few months from now, or maybe even years from now, to the first posts that I wrote about this quest and how this got started. I don't have a ministry reason for wanting to learn biblical Greek; I just have realized that sometimes the meaning of a verse changes in translating it from Greek to English and I want to know what ti originally said.

Below are the resources that I currently have to learn Greek! I think I picked some good ones, if I do say so myself. I like that since I'm teaching myself Greek, I can pick resources that I know will help me, it all comes down to my judgment, what I think I need to help me learn this language,etc. I don't have to learn it with the resources that a teacher that doesn't know me or how I learn picked for me.I really think that is a plus. 

• Basics of Biblical Greek(textbook, 3rd edition)

•  This is the textbook that I believe the bible department uses to teach Greek. it seemed like a good one, and I didn't know a lot about Greek textbooks, so I decided to go with what the bible department uses. also, I figured it would be in the campus store. turned out it wasn't, because it's the spring and so the beginning class is in the fall, so I ordered it online.
•  Basics of Biblical Green(workbook, 3rd edition)
• this is the workbook that goes along with the 3rd edition text. it seems pretty good from flipping through it, good exercises to really help me learn the language. 

• Basics of Biblical Greek (textbook, 2nd edition)
• this is the first textbook that I ordered because it has the CD-ROM, while the 3rd edition doesn't because they put everything online.I wanted to have the CD-ROM. 

• Basics of Biblical Green(workbook, 2nd edition)

• this is the workbook that goes with the 3rd edition. pretty similar to the 3rd edition, but I like having two workbooks to really help me hammer in the language.
•  Basics of Biblical Greek Vocabulary Flashcards
• these flashcards go with the textbook, and they seem really good! they have the greek word with the English on the back, and how to say it, and also how many times it appears in the New Testament, a feature I really like! 

• Greek lectures (dvd video): $149
•  I am SOOOO excited! These DVDs are by William D,Mounce, who is the author of the textbooks and the flashcards and the workbooks, and he's so good!these textbooks are among the most used for biblical Greek learning. anyways, these are his class lectures for 2 FULL semesters of Greek! on DVD! there are 35 of them, for 30-35 minutes each. I love this feature because I am getting the same lectures that his students get, but for WAY less and like he said on the video online, I have the stop button, and I also love that I can watch these as often as I like and I don't have to go back to notes or something. I am very excited about this. it's my favorite resource, and I think a really good one since I am self-teaching. 

• Answers To Workbook, 3rd edition
• I download the answers from the Teknia website! this was SO cool because I was wondering how I would check the answers to the workbook, and now I don't have to email them to Brent ask him to check it! it's the entire 3rd edition workbook, which is another reason I bought the 3rd edition workbook(the 3rd edition text because that's what the DVDs go off of. 2nd edition is the same, but I thought it would be worth it and easier to have the edition he refers to on the DVD).it was for free! didn't have to pay anything which is so SWEET!!

• FlashWorks
• this is a flashcard program, and it was for free! just had to download, no costs at all. it doesn't have sound unfortunately, but the website said they are working on it and the newest edition with sound should be up in November. But I am sure the CD-ROM has pronunciation stuff on it, and for free software it's a pretty good deal. it has different difficulty levels, and you can limit it to Verbs, to Nouns,etc. it's a good resource. 

• Teknia Greek
• This was another free resource. it's Greek font! I am SO excited about this because once I start learning how to write, it will come in so handy, especially when I am writing on this blog, and I want to discuss a particular word or write something in Greek you know? it's so cool! I downloaded a "map" of  my keyboard for the Greek font, which is very helpful!

• Basics of Biblical Greek Vocabulary CD

• I just bought this resource right now! it goes with the 3rd edition textbook, and it covers the vocabulary, the alphabet, some of the readings,etc. it seemed a good resource to have. since I am on my own, it's important to have resources that help with pronounce things like vocabulary since I won't  have a professor or an awesome Greek tutor like Brent to go to.

• Interlinear Greek Bible
• I found this in the campus store, and It'll be VERY helpful when I actually am able to read a bit, translate a bit. It's a Greek/English bible, but it does line by line, word by word translation. the English is on the left side of the page, and then on the right there's the Greek with word by word/phrase by phrase English translation underneath. it'll be so helpful to have a word by word translation easily seen like that since I'm on my own, and so am very excited to have found this bible. maybe someday, I'll be able to read it :)

I am VERY excited about  these resources, or as I call them, my tools of the Quest. along the way, am sure I'll pick up more tools, or find that some of these I no longer need but for me, I think I made some good choices.

The Beginning

This might be one of my craziest ideas to date, but I am very excited about it! I have lots of friends who are bible majors and they have to take two years of biblical Greek. I have watched them stress and struggle and worry and study like crazy. sometimes it seemed like Greek was the only class they were taking because that's all they would ever seem to be studying. I have always been relieved I never had to go through that since I stopped being a bible major(simply because I was double majoring in education and bible at the time and it would have taken me an extra 2 years to graduate)after one semester, but I did always wonder what it would be like to learn biblical Greek. However, a part of me also never really saw the need, but lately I have really begun to see that sometimes the original Greek words and how they were translated makes a huge difference on what the text says and what it was meant to say. so a few days ago I made the very impromptu decision to teach myself Greek. I don't want to have to pay $10,000 for two years of Greek, and there is also no time for that since I'm graduating in May(yay!). Also, I am currently taking Mandarin so I doubt that any language can be more difficult to learn than Mandarin(except maybe Russian) so Greek doesn't intimidate me(not yet anyways). I also have noticed while studying Mandarin that when I have plenty of time to study, to study at a slower pace, I do learn it really well. So I think that if I learn biblical Greek on my own time, by myself, I will be able to learn it better because I can take my time, work at a slower pace, my pace,and not be rushed to learn a ton of it at once. I think that's what bible majors freak out over the most, what makes the class so hard, that they are learning so much of it in so short a time, it's all packed in together. the background for this blog, though you can't see all of it, is of a hand dropping in one coin into a piggy bank.this picture really captures how I am approaching this: one coin at a time. bible majors can do their $100 bills at a time into their Greek piggy bank and that's fine, but I'm going to do it one coin at a time. will be MUCH slower but no hurry and I'll learn best this way.

     Brent Bailey does have something to do with this. I always believe that there is nothing I can do that he can't do just as well,most likely better than me and more easily than me. I don't resent him or anything for it, but that is what I believe. I want to change that. I want and need to prove to myself and to him, that I can do something he can do just as well as he can. it's not that he agrees with, he actually doesn't, not even close. but  I need him to see me doing something that he's good at, and doing it just as good as he. and he's really good at Greek. I'm not about to start jogging/running to prove this to him. Greek is a much more preferred choice by me.   

I am excited about this quest. it'll probably take my a year just to learn the alphabet,but it's on my time so that's okay. there are so many resources  for biblical Greek, and a lot of those are made with the idea that not everyone that is learning biblical Greek is going to be in a classroom but that some are also going to self-learners. I'll write a separate post on the resources I have already, because I think that'll be good to write about separately. am VERY excited about this, and maybe someday, I'll be able to read the New Testament a bit in Greek :)