May 2019 Language Learning Report

This was a good language study month for me. I logged 3,039 minutes of study, which works out to 98 minutes of study a day, beating my hour and a half daily goal I set for myself. In terms of language, this broke down into almost exactly one third Latin and two thirds Greek.

For Latin, I finished up Steadman’s College Caesar (which, frankly, was above my level), selections from Familia Romana and Ritchie’s Fabulae Faciles, with small chunks from elsewhere. Less than six hours of my total Latin intake was audio.

The Greek reading time involved all of 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, most of Revelation, other scattered bits of the New Testament, a few selections from the Septuagint, a little Origen, Athanasius, and Xenophon. Unlike what I had planned to do, I only spent a couple hours on ὁ ἑταῖρος composition. Different from previous months, about nine hours of that was in Greek listening. More on that in a bit.

Generally speaking, I was happy with this month.

Audio

I am trying to improve my commute learning time. I dedicate almost every morning commute (generally around thirty minutes long) to language learning, and I want to make the most of it. I have tried a number of things, but this month I tried something new and recorded some things for myself, including Revelation 8 and 9, the Nicene Creed, Psalm 89 (LXX), and a chapter from LGPSI. All these I did at a fairly slow and deliberate speed to help in understanding, though I am able to handle faster Latin and Greek as time goes on. Librivox also has a nice recording of parts of Fabulae Faciles, which is great to listen to because it is pretty easy Latin. I also listened to a good bit from Seumas’ ὁ διὰ νυκτὸς διάλογος. I am going to do more recording for myself this month. Soon I will blog on some thoughts I am developing on what makes for a good audio resource for a commute, so I will leave it at this for now.

Next Month?

To encourage my church, I challenged all those that didn’t have a regular Bible reading plan to follow a plan to read the New Testament this summer. When I was young and stupid, I used to dislike these kinds of things. "Why can’t we just study without having this kind of arbitrary crutch? Shouldn’t we just be reading it all the time?", says the fool. The fact is (and I do take it as such), people work better when they develop disciplines and habits, set goals, etc. So I challenged the church, and I am obviously doing it myself. This is relevant here because I will be reading it all in Greek, which is going to end up dominating my study time for the next three months. But this will be good for me. I have read most of the Greek New Testament but not all.

But that being said, I do have plans to continue study outside of the New Testament. I don't want to pull myself away from Xenophon and Athanasius’ very enjoyable and generally straightforward prose (I am not joking), and will obviously continue my Latin. I don’t think my ninety minutes a day is going to cut it, though. It is probably time to kick things up a notch.

On the tutoring front, I will continue with my Latin tutor but will also have some (paid) sessions with Seumas this month to work on my conversational Greek. I start the latter tomorrow.

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