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July 18, 2008
Learning Greek Just Got a Little Easier
As many Bible college and seminary students (and teachers!) can attest, learning Greek can be a challenging task. Its Greek to me! hasnt become a well-known expression without good reason.
One of our goals here at Logos is to facilitate learning and using the original languages. We offer a huge number of Hebrew and Greek resources. But as helpful and essential as grammars are for learning Greek, reading books isnt enough for many students. They need to hear it and speak it to get it to stick.
We introduced our Greek Pronunciation Addin a couple of years ago (a Hebrew Pronunciation Addin is on Pre-Pub). Its included in Scholars, Silver, and Gold and is also available for individual sale. The addin allows students to reinforce standard pronunciations, but only for lemmas (the dictionary form) and only one word at a time.
Learning the proper pronunciation for inflected forms involves a little more guesswork, especially for students learning Greek on their own without the help of an instructor.
With the new Greek Audio Bible, you can now hear Professor John Schwandt read any passage in the Greek New Testament. Simply enter a passage, and click play. The blue arrow will move with the audio to help you follow along in your Greek New Testament. If the normal reading speed is too fast, you can adjust it to slow or slower.
This is sure to be a helpful tool for beginner and intermediate Greek students.
Find out more at the product page, or see it in action in this video demonstration.
Posted by Phil Gons at July 18, 2008 6:00 AM
Comments
I have been waiting for this for a long time.
I notice it says that it will be "included in Scholars, Silver, and Gold." Will those of us who already own Silver and Gold get this addin at a discount or will we have to pay full price?
Posted by: R Chambers at July 18, 2008 8:23 AM
I've pre-ordered this one. But the one I really want is the audio Hebrew Bible. Is that in the works?
Posted by: Randy McRoberts at July 18, 2008 8:37 AM
The statement, "Its included in Scholars, Silver, and Gold and is also available for individual sale." refers NOT to the new Greek Audio Bible, but to the Greek Pronunciation Addin. It's important not to confuse these two.
The *Greek Pronunciation Addin* comes in Scholar's, Silver, and Gold and can be purchased individually.
The *Greek Audio Bible* is on Pre-Pub and does not come in any of our base packages. It is currently being offered at the discounted Pre-Pub price, but there are no further discounts being offered since it is a completely distinct product.
Hope this helps.
Posted by: Phil Gons at July 18, 2008 8:39 AM
Randy, I haven't heard anything about a Hebrew Audio Bible yet, but it's possible that there might be something in the works. I'll pass this suggestion along.
Posted by: Phil Gons at July 18, 2008 8:44 AM
I live in Korea. There is a handful of foreigners here who speak reasonably fluent Korean, but they are, eternally, non-native speakers. They will never be mistaken for native speakers, and I certainly would not use their tapes to study Korean pronunciation. Then why would you want a non-native Greek speaker, namely John D. Schwandt, to record the audio? Sure, he teaches Greek, and sure he travels regularly to Greece, but it's obvious his pronunciation is inferior to a native-speaker. Why not use Spiros Zodhiates' tapes, or any native-Greek speaker right off the street?
Posted by: TFJ at July 18, 2008 3:35 PM
TFJ, that's a fair question. Allow me to offer a few comments in response:
- The purpose of the Greek Audio Bible is to help students learn how biblical Greek works, not how it sounded 2,000 years ago. Its to help students become more comfortable with recognizing and pronouncing Greek words in the classroom, not on the street of Greece.
- Since Koine Greek is a dead language, its not important that students (or teachers) pronunciation be identical to first-century Greek speakers, even if we could agree on what that might have sounded like. Pronunciation is important only as an agreed upon convention to aide in learning the language.
- Most students who will buy the Greek Audio Bible are using a pronunciation scheme very similar to the one that Dr. Schwandt uses. This will make it much easier for the Greek Audio Bible to help students learn Greek than if we had released an audio recording in Modern Greek or a reconstructed Koine pronunciation that most people don't use.
- The Greek Audio Bible addin was designed to allow for multiple data sets, so its possible that we could provide a more Greek-sounding reading as well. It will depend if there is sufficient interest for this, and if we are able to license something.
Hope this helps.
Posted by: Phil Gons at July 18, 2008 4:34 PM
I need this, will it go to production soon? I can't wait. Hope to see it quickly.
Posted by: josh s blake at August 17, 2008 6:58 PM