Reading through the Greek New Testament

It's really an infinitive. I just pulled out the grammar book. The infinitive can be used with a preposition like this to show different things. In this case it's to show purpose. It's not really compared to the subjunctive.

Hmmm I was not aware of this debate. We used Hewitt btw when I went through the program, which references Robertson, but didn't make that particular point clear.

I guess it just comes down to whether you feel you will recognize this construction in other parts of the NT and translate it correctly, even if the construct itself doesn't make sense from the perspective of your other languages.

I'll put a Goldlist note here since it relates to Biblical Hebrew (and Greek). Our Greek students were asked to goldlist down to I think 3 occurances and have an overall idea of how the grammar works, but might get lost in the details ("have sent or have been sending?") Part of this is because English is not thier first language.

I just finished goldlisting Jonah in hebrew, and I have an overall idea of how Hebrew grammar works, although I couldn't write out any charts on a test. So I'm about where my Greek students are, or actually a little behind that.

I have a reader's Hebrew Bible that has the lower frequency words at the bottom. This was not enough because not all the high frequency words are solid enough yet, which again describes many of our students.

So I pulled out an interlinear to read through. Something like this was expected though, because after the Goldlisting process you still need some help at first (but not for long) Going through this, I started remembering the grammar points. It took about 3 sittings to get through the first chapter, and after that, I can read most of it on my own. the main obstacle seems to be that, since the alphabet looks so different, my brain will kind of gloss over the sounds knowing what word should go in that spot.

What's the difference between Goldlisting first and just reading? First, there's no way I could have gotten through a chapter in one day this early on in the language without my brain rebeling, and secondly I notice very little slippage later on.

Have you considered the very first course being a short grammar review of their own language? Better grammar knowledge of one's own language has been correlated to learning foreign language grammar more easily (don't ask me for a citation now but I have read this a couple places).

Do you follow the Goldlist method exactly, as in intervals between readings? And how many lists do you usually use a day? Also, how long to learn how many words? I am curious because on HTLAL, other than the inventor of the method, I don't remember anyone persevering with the method for long enough to give an accurate review of its efficacy.

Do you mean that you are not subvocalizing as you read, and that it prevents you from translating accurately? There have been a couple discussions on subvocalizing on HTLAL: one two.

I find the same with Anki when using it to pre-study vocab before studying part of a course. The best thing is that knowing the vocab fairly well in advance allows you to concentrate on grammar and usage better.

We are showing them these things in English also. It's working over time. No I don't list as I read, but I follow 20 mins listing, 10 min break, no more than 10 lists a day. Here's a link to my goldlisting experiments on HTLAL http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35337&PN=0&TPN=4 starting at the bottom of the page.

I'm not going at my original pace, do to my efforts to read some hebrew, but I just finished Acts 14. I got really confused around Verse 12 because I didn't recognize some names. They were capitalized, but at first I assumed that was to show a quotation.

The second time around I realized that the word eranan was not peace, because the word was Herman (Hermes). Then I backed up and realized the Dia was not "through "or "on account of" because this is the accusative form of Zeus. No z? really? weird. The Nominative is Zeus, but it looks like other forms of the name change the first letter.

I found a thread over in the B-Greek forum ranking books in the NT by difficulty. This one was the most useful, because the guy said WHY they were difficult.

I found the comments about 1&2nd Peter amusing. 1 is hard because it's good Greek, 2 is hard because it's bad Greek Then I remembered that at the end of 1st Peter he says he had someone help him write the letter. This list would also explain why I've gotten bogged down in the 2nd half of acts. There's just about as much words at the bottom of the page of my reader's Bible, but the words certainly seems less common.

The few quotes that have been used from Hebrews wasn't that big a deal, but it sure was hard to follow in Greek when someone's reading in English

after not reading the NT books straight through for a while, I recently read through James & Hebrews. James was quite good, only needing to look up about 4 words per chapter. Hebrews, not as good, but still only had to look up 3% of the words. The reading for Hebrews was slower because I was having to work out some complex sentences again. I'm currently going through the NT trying to mop up these forgotten words.

After leaving this alone completely for a while, I read through Hebrews again. I did it in about 3 days, compared to about 2 weeks before. also it looks like I'm down to 1.5% or roughly half of the words that I didn't know before.