Studying Biblical Languages

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Aaron Laws

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Feb 27, 2021, 9:36:51 AM2/27/21
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I'm looking for a flashcard website where I can learn biblical Hebrew and biblical Greek. I would prefer Free Software, or a free site, and something sophisticated. Brainscape would probably be good enough except that there are several things I can't do because I don't have a paid account. Cram appears to be free (it's not always asking me to upgrade), but its features are very poor: it doesn't remember how well I'm doing on each card but rather whether I "got it" or not, and it doesn't remember for very long.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you!

Aaron

Conley Owens

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Feb 27, 2021, 10:23:20 AM2/27/21
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I use Anki, but you would have to add the cards yourself.

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ref...@gmx.net

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Feb 27, 2021, 2:07:36 PM2/27/21
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CrossWire has a flashcard app

Sent from my mobile. Please forgive shortness, typos and weird autocorrects.
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Aaron Laws

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Feb 28, 2021, 4:16:56 PM2/28/21
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On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 10:23 AM Conley Owens <xcc...@gmail.com> wrote:
I use Anki, but you would have to add the cards yourself.

Anki. Exactly what I was seeking, although I didn't know its name! I was able to install and run Anki, and I didn't have to add the cards myself (at least not yet): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/538887824 I imported then edited these, and it's perfect. I also changed them to "reversed" so that I can quiz myself "forward and backward".

My next question is about biblical greek text input because I want to put in my own cards for declensions and conjugations of nouns, adjectives, articles, and verbs. I'm using Arch Linux, and my Greek keyboard options are:
image.png

(That's "Greek (extended)", "Greek (no dead keys)", "Greek (polytonic)", and "Greek (simple)".) Which of these is best for my purposes? Or should I be entertaining a different option? Thank you very much for your (plural) expertise!

Yours,
Aaron

Conley Owens

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Feb 28, 2021, 4:39:42 PM2/28/21
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I believe polytonic, although I forget what that means.  I ended up extending it to give myself a dvorak-like alternative.

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Troy A. Griffitts

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Feb 28, 2021, 4:49:16 PM2/28/21
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As Peter mentioned, we have a longstanding flashcard project at CrossWire.  We have a bunch of contributed flashcards from a number of biblical Greek and Hebrew language learning books.  If you aren't interested in using our software, you might find our data useful and we'd love to add more to our data pool.  We also have tools which let you pick a verse range (a chapter or book or an arbitrary range) and we'll generate flashcard lessons for just those words contained in that custom range, ordered by occurrence frequency.  I find that most helpful for when I am taking, say, a Greek exegesis class on 1 Timothy.  The engine and source is available here:

https://crosswire.org/svn/flashcards/trunk/

Lesson, under this folder:

https://crosswire.org/svn/flashcards/trunk/lessons/

The project page with desktop downloads is here:

https://crosswire.org/flashcards

We have a J2ME implementation for dumb phones for back when everyone had dumb phone, and I think we have a crude web interface which mostly works but isn't pretty:

https://crosswire.org/fc/web/

Hope it's useful.  Happy to have any collaboration on updates,

Troy

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Jesse Tomlinson

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Feb 28, 2021, 5:13:19 PM2/28/21
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Aaron and others,

I’ve recently started a project to help with learning original language words. While not a flash card system, it might help. It’s still only a pre-release concept, but I’d be interested in hearing how you think this type of application would help (or not help) in your learning - https://dunabible.com/

Good luck in your studies!

- Jesse

James Tauber

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Feb 28, 2021, 5:32:19 PM2/28/21
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I'm developing https://vocab.study which is currently in early alpha. It is an ANKI-like spaced repetition flashcard system but will have much richer, curated vocabulary data.

As much of my own research is in Biblical Greek vocabulary, that is a big focus and all that vocabulary data is being developed under open licenses.

I write about Greek vocabulary a lot on https://jktauber.com/ and much of the data work is happening under the Greek Learner Texts project https://greek-learner-texts.org

James


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James Tauber

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Feb 28, 2021, 5:33:42 PM2/28/21
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I'd say Greek Polytonic (which will give you the three accents and breathing you need for Biblical Greek).

I have a website https://greektyping.com for learning to type Greek in an incremental way.

James


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Aaron Laws

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Mar 1, 2021, 8:04:55 AM3/1/21
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On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 4:39 PM Conley Owens <xcc...@gmail.com> wrote:
I believe polytonic, although I forget what that means.  I ended up extending it to give myself a dvorak-like alternative.

Thank you for the information. I am very interested in your modifications as I am also a dvorak user. Half the time I use Kinesis Advantage (and my computer doesn't know that I'm using dvorak), but the other half the time, I'm using a laptop where the conversion is done in software.

I guess this means that with my dvorak keyboard, I will be using a dvorak-like greek layout automatically, so I would want to duplicate that on my laptop. If you have the time, any hints on how this modification is done might reduce my friction a great deal.

Thank you again!

Your servant,
Aaron 

Jesse Tomlinson

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Mar 1, 2021, 12:16:14 PM3/1/21
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Aaron and others,

I’ve recently started a project to help with learning original language words. While not a flash card system, it might help. It’s still only a pre-release concept, but I’d be interested in hearing how you think this type of application would help (or not help) in your learning - https://dunabible.com/

Good luck in your studies!

- Jesse

On February 28, 2021, "Troy A. Griffitts" <scr...@crosswire.org> wrote:
As Peter mentioned, we have a longstanding flashcard project at CrossWire.  We have a bunch of contributed flashcards from a number of biblical Greek and Hebrew language learning books.  If you aren't interested in using our software, you might find our data useful and we'd love to add more to our data pool.  We also have tools which let you pick a verse range (a chapter or book or an arbitrary range) and we'll generate flashcard lessons for just those words contained in that custom range, ordered by occurrence frequency.  I find that most helpful for when I am taking, say, a Greek exegesis class on 1 Timothy.  The engine and source is available here:

https://crosswire.org/svn/flashcards/trunk/

Lesson, under this folder:

https://crosswire.org/svn/flashcards/trunk/lessons/

The project page with desktop downloads is here:

https://crosswire.org/flashcards

We have a J2ME implementation for dumb phones for back when everyone had dumb phone, and I think we have a crude web interface which mostly works but isn't pretty:

https://crosswire.org/fc/web/

Hope it's useful.  Happy to have any collaboration on updates,

Troy


 

On 2/28/21 2:16 PM, Aaron Laws wrote:


On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 10:23 AM Conley Owens <xcc...@gmail.com> wrote:

I use Anki, but you would have to add the cards yourself.



Anki. Exactly what I was seeking, although I didn't know its name! I was able to install and run Anki, and I didn't have to add the cards myself (at least not yet): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/538887824 I imported then edited these, and it's perfect. I also changed them to "reversed" so that I can quiz myself "forward and backward".


My next question is about biblical greek text input because I want to put in my own cards for declensions and conjugations of nouns, adjectives, articles, and verbs. I'm using Arch Linux, and my Greek keyboard options are:
<image.png>




(That's "Greek (extended)", "Greek (no dead keys)", "Greek (polytonic)", and "Greek (simple)".) Which of these is best for my purposes? Or should I be entertaining a different option? Thank you very much for your (plural) expertise!


Yours,
Aaron
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Aaron Laws

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Mar 10, 2021, 9:06:19 AM3/10/21
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On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 4:39 PM Conley Owens <xcc...@gmail.com> wrote:
I believe polytonic, although I forget what that means.  I ended up extending it to give myself a dvorak-like alternative.

polytonic ("many-toned" where the accents are "tones"?) is working out fine. I generally use my dvorak keyboard to input. I've input the adjectives, first and second declensions (with articles), and active indicative present and future because they weren't in the decks I found. Anki is very pleasing.

Next up is to input Hebrew into Anki. I know biblical hebrew fairly well, but have always had a huge block traversing the binyanim. With all the special circumstances, I have always felt hopeless about being given a word and being able to parse it in its correct binyan (with object suffixes). I have an intuitive feeling that it's impossibly ambiguous once all the gyrations are involved. Hopefully with Anki, I will conquer decoding verbs of any binyan with all their special circumstances (or at least finally track down once and for all the ambiguities that I feel must be present)!

I see a "Hebrew > Biblical (Tiro)" keyboard layout in my XFCE. I recognize Tiro from my days on Microsoft Windows working with Ezra SIL...seems Tiro was packed with Ezra SIL or something, and I remember the layout being very well thought out, though of course based on QWERTY (hard to type "QWERTY' on dvorak :-D).

God be with you all as he has been with
Your Servant,
Aaron
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