What's your favourite Bible version?

[Spock]

3 hours ago, GandalfTheWise said:

    Self-taught.  In terms of how long it took, I could say it either took over 30 years, or about 5 years.   I spent about 30 some years doing the typical approach to learning Greek and making no real progress.  I worked on memorizing tables, grammar, etc. and just couldn't seem to achieve any amount of reading skills.  To make a long story short, I was ready to give up when I ran across some independent language learners online and realized I was going at stuff all wrong.  In an hour of study, I was probably spending 55 minutes thinking in English about Greek and perhaps 5 minutes actually looking at Greek.   When I reversed that I started seeing real progress in comprehension.   I started using a combination of recordings (Spiros Zhodiate's modern greek pronunciation of the Greek NT) and following with an interlinear.  I found that over the course of weeks and months that my brain started internalizing greek.  I started with the gospel of John and just repeated the audio and followed it several times for each paragraph or so until it started to seem familiar and then moved to the next one.   Basically, I turned learning Greek into something similar to learning songs.  It's sort of like learning the happy birthday song or Christmas carols.  Via repetition, they just become more and more familiar.  I then used grammar and tables as reference tools to improve my understanding of things I was uncertain about.

Here's a link to learning this way I put on another site.  https://www.christianforums.com/threads/online-cf-experiment-can-you-learn-some-greek-i-think-you-can.8018322/#post-71531033

I would say I can now read greek in the same way I say I can ride a bicycle.  It is a skill that improves over time on a continuum.  You start off riding bike by trying not to fall off, depending on how much you practice and ride, you can get comfortable riding around the block, riding a few miles, or becoming a competitive on road or motocross rider.  When I started practicing reading, I was doing good to understand a fraction of what I saw.  Day by day, more and more things started to become internalized and familiar.  Now, I can look at most narrative genres (gospels, acts, and books such as Genesis, Samuel, Kings, etc. in the Septuagint) and understand most things I see.  In contrast, genres such as wisdom and prophetic books in the OT have a more challenging vocabulary because of so much symbolism and comparisons to random things in nature or other places.  I read the Septuagint in a parallel Greek/English version.  I spend most of my time reading the Greek with glances to the English as a quick look up for things I don't catch.

There is a nice recording of the gospel of John on the Librivox site by a woman (native Greek speaker I believe) with a pleasant voice and intonation (at least to my ear).  There is also a PDF version of the old out of copyright Interlinear Greek NT by George Ricker Berry available various places online.  The two of those sources are a nice starting point to just listen and follow for perhaps 10 minutes in the morning and evening.  I use Audacity (an audio editing software package) to play the audio so it's easy to pick sections to play and re-play.

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing this Gandalf.  I’m going to see if this works for learning Spanish too. 

[Not me]

6 hours ago, In Him said:

Just so you know, your name is just first in the 'all' that I pray and thank God for...Episkopos, Pinacled, turtletwo et al … but the tears overflow its banks at times in gratitude and love for the Mighty Work He did in my heart through you in that season and chapter! Thank you for your prayers. As always.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail. James 5:16 Berean Study Bible
 

Thanks so much for your prayers. Prayers I can always use more of.

Though it is true God will use different people and things at different times and seasons in our lives.  Those friendships that are centered in Christ will last forever.

If that is true, than that would make us forever friends.

 Many blessings,

Much love in Christ, Not me 

Edited June 24, 2019 by Not me

[GandalfTheWise]

3 hours ago, Spock said:

Thanks for sharing this Gandalf.  I’m going to see if this works for learning Spanish too. 

It does.  I started learning Spanish about 3 years ago using something like that.  I used the Assimil Spanish with Ease course as my main one and spent most of my time listening and reading.   I now read the Bible in Spanish (about 30 minutes) at bedtime.  I'm on my 3rd time through.  I also do most of my TV watching by binge watching shows dubbed in Spanish on Netflix.  I've not worked on my speaking or writing skills much, but I think they'll come along quickly when I will start doing that.  I just found that there's a church a few blocks away from our new house that has a Spanish service and am checking into when they meet.  Hopefully I can meet a few people with whom I can have some regular interaction.

The Assimil courses are bilingual usually with about 100 daily lessons which are short dialogs.  On one side of the page is the target language and the other side is the base language.  There are a number of notes about the new language at the bottom of the page relating to grammar and vocabulary.  The audio is exclusively in the target language which makes it good for listening to without being interrupted by English.    I did one lesson per day and reviewed previous ones quite a bit while commuting.  I'd spend 30 minutes in the morning on a new lesson.  I'd spend about 10 minutes or so listening and following the dialog.  I'd then spend about 10 minutes reading the notes.  I'd then spend another 10 minutes or so listening and following with various combinations of listening alone, reading alone, and doing the two together.  At nights, I'd spend some amount of time speaking along with the audio and reviewing.  I used Audacity to select words or short phrases and just repeated them over and over along with the audio.  This did two things.  It got the muscles in my mouth slowly used to Spanish movement and positions and it got my ear much more attuned to both pronunciation and the rhythm and tone of phrases and sentences.  I found that many of the sounds that bother English speakers were little problem because the position and movement of my tongue and mouth were getting closer to how native speakers position their tongue and mouth.  After a year or so, we got together with an old family friend from Panama who teaches Spanish.  She was pleasantly surprised by my pronunciation.  

Over time, I'd change my methods as different things worked better or I got bored or something seemed like fun.  At times, I could spend an hour or so just speaking along with the audio.  At other times, I was bored with that after a few minutes.  The most important thing is to keep your enthusiasm high.  If something gets frustrating and boring, change the method.  Also as your skills advance, you need to adapt what you are doing.  As soon as you start forcing yourself to do things, stress rises, and your brain started to rebel and lose efficiency.  Basically, you need to learn how to learn most enjoyably and effectively for you as your skills advance.  What's enjoyable and effective during the first few weeks probably won't be after a month or two.

One note about the Spanish with Ease course is that the audio is with an accent from Spain.  I didn't find that an issue.  Indeed, my ear for Spanish has developed enough that I can recognize some dialects.  A year or so ago, I picked up a parallel NIV/NVI bible along with the audio of the NVI.   In hindsight, I wish I'd have done that from day one and just started listening and following along in Genesis or John at the same time I started the Assimil course.  I'd have probably just listened to the first paragraph or two repeatedly until it started to become familiar and then moved onto the next one.  I'd have also started to do more reading of the NVI right away as well since I already was familiar with what I was reading.

I have the feeling that someone could lay a decent basis for learning Spanish by just starting with the NVI/NIV parallel bible and NVI audio for a few months.  Spending perhaps 15 minutes or so morning and evening listening and following to some favorite chapters or book would let someone's brain start internalizing the sights, sounds, rhythms, and meanings of things.  For someone who has not had much language learning experience in the past (or has had bad experiences), this might be a good way to start and build some confidence.  At first it feels like cheating because we often feel that unless we are forcing ourselves to slave away at memorizing tables that we are not learning.  But picking up Spanish in the same way we've learned Christmas carols, hymns, or songs on the radio is much more natural and enjoyable.  The key is measuring progress by how much more familiar something seems today than yesterday.  It's not about memorizing something perfectly the first time.  It's about our brain slowly internalizing the new patterns as something that becomes more and more familiar with repeated exposure.   At first it can seem gibberish, but certain words just start to jump out as familiar, and then some phrases will become familiar.  Slowly, more and more just becomes familiar.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask (or perhaps we could start a new thread).  I wasted hundreds of hours and decades of my life using awful language learning methods.  I'm happy to help anyone avoid that.  There is no one best language learning method.  It is more that we develop a toolbox full of resources and methods that help us learn to do different things.  It's the experience of how to use those tools and methods that makes us into successful language learners.