The Bible in its historic languages for everyone. App: https://xitter.cf/t.co/HfnC1CSiM9 // YouTube: https://xitter.cf/t.co/q3Tr3ozUmj // Community: https://xitter.cf/t.co/neZILbmzkO
Joined July 2019
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Biblingo retweeted
A very linguistic @biblingoapp Textbook Day to all who observe; congrats, Kevin, this looks great!
Open Access, btw: degruyterbrill.com/document/…
Biblingo retweeted
This is great! Go check out @biblingoapp's new Greek grammar!
🚨@biblingoapp Kevin Grasso’s new Ancient Greek grammar is here! I have been waiting a long time for this, and it’s free. degruyterbrill.com/document/…
Biblingo retweeted
🚨@biblingoapp Kevin Grasso’s new Ancient Greek grammar is here! I have been waiting a long time for this, and it’s free. degruyterbrill.com/document/…
Ready to get serious about learning Hebrew or Greek?
Our live courses are designed to make your learning as fast and efficient as possible.
Take the plunge: biblingo.com/live.
Michael is learning Hebrew, and he said this:
"I don't want to just decode the language. I want to read it and experience it.
The app helped with that a lot - with vocab and syntax and stuff. But in terms of connecting the dots, I think the live classes are what really helped. And you get a lot more input and can ask questions and get answers immediately."
If you want to "connect the dots" in your study of Greek and Hebrew, check out our next round of live Greek and Hebrew classes starting the week of November 1st.
biblingo.com/live
"That's what makes me excited.
To be able to see...the humanity of the authors. That these were real people writing these documents - not as some mechanical, superficial religious text - but as those who had seen miracles. Those who had seen the impossible.
[In Greek,] the historical nature of these passages becomes very clear in ways that I think get a little bit lost in translation."
Learning a language is like building a brick wall. Each time you learn a new thing, you are laying another brick. But you can only stack so many bricks before the ones below need time to set. Add too many at once, and the structure doesn't hold.
Language learning is similar. Your brain has a limited capacity for novelty. Cram it with too much new material, and you won't be able to understand or retain what you are learning.
Instead, you should introduce a little new language knowledge at a time while spending most of your time using what you already know. As that knowledge solidifies into mastery, your capacity for more learning grows, and you can lay more bricks.
Many people give up on Greek, Hebrew, and Latin because they never learn how to learn.
Here's how to learn:
biblingo.com/how-to-learn
"Oh! This is different. I like this. Because even though I can only form baby sentences, I can form sentences! I understand how to read. And that makes a huge difference in terms of motivation.
You absolutely have the ability to enjoy the fruits of your labor even fairly early on."
Anyone who gets serious about Bible study will quickly run into true-sounding misconceptions about the biblical languages. Here are 5 of the most common:
myth no. 1 - There are secret messages encoded in Hebrew letters
myth no. 2 - The past perfective tense signals a “once for all completed action”
myth no. 3 - You can derive a word’s meaning from its etymology
myth no. 4 - The “literal” meaning is always the right one
myth no. 5 - The biblical languages are “special” and should be treated differently than other languages
Full breakdown of each myth here: biblingo.com/biblical-langua…
Biblingo retweeted
This update is likely the GREATEST addition to the @biblingoapp ever made (from a usability perspective)!
Bravo, team 👏
Many people assume that learning a language is 25% perspiration (hard work) and 75% inspiration (being naturally good at languages).
In reality, it’s 25% perspiration and 75% *strategy.*
Everyone is capable of learning languages (just look at the one you’re reading now!), though it certainly comes more easily to some. But most don’t understand the mechanics of how to learn a language. They just start doing vocab flashcards and ploughing through a grammar textbook – hoping their hard work will pay off.
But it probably won’t.
Forgetting the eggs when baking a cake makes a dense, doughy mess. So goes it for language learning. If you don’t have the right mix of ingredients in your learning process, you likely won’t get fluent (or it will take a lot more time and struggle.)
Enter, the "four strands" of language learning.
This is a framework developed by Paul Nation, a leading scholar in the field of second language acquisition.
The four strands are:
1. Meaning-focused input
When reading or listening to your target language, you should not be thinking about the language. You should be thinking about the meaning that’s being communicated. This means you should know 95-98% of the words in the text or audio you’re consuming. It must be comprehensible - and you shouldn’t have to constantly look up words.
2. Meaning-focused output
Passive consumption of language material can only get you so far. Actively using the language through speaking and writing requires greater depth of processing, so engaging in this skill commits the language to long-term memory more efficiently.
3. Language-focused learning
This is where you focus on learning particular features of the language. Any activity where you are focused on the language itself rather than the meaning being communicated by the language falls into this bucket. Many language courses over-emphasize this strand at the expense of the others.
4. Fluency development
Developing fluency is all about going fast, so fluency drills should always involve texts where you know 100% of the vocabulary and are comfortable with the grammatical constructions. That way, you can push yourself to comprehend the material quicker and quicker on each run-through until your brain is able to use the language quickly and automatically.
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These are the four key ingredients – the four types of language-learning activities – that are essential to developing fluency.
Activities in each strand should take up about one-fourth of the total time spent in learning a language. The amount of time given to each strand may vary depending on the goal of the student, but the more time you put into each strand, the better you will be at that strand.
At some point, most Greek/Hebrew learners hit what @billmounce calls "the fog."
This is the muddy phase that comes when you are waste deep in vocab and grammar paradigms and can't seem to find a path forward.
When you hit this slough of despond (which comes for most Biblingo users around Level 10 in the app), you have 2 options:
1/ Muck around until you finally find a way forward
2/ Get guidance from those who have travelled this path before
Biblingo's Community is designed for those who want to take the second route. It's for those who want to be given every tool to quickly develop fluency in biblical Greek and Hebrew.
That means:
- a lively online community of in-house scholars and fellow Biblingo learners
- weekly intensive reading groups
- fluency workshops to help you internalize the language
- grammar reviews to commit paradigms to long term memory
Trying to learn biblical Greek or Hebrew without a local community or outside of a classroom setting is a lonely grind. If you are in that grind, Biblingo's Community could be your ticket out and into the green pastures of fluency.
Learn more at biblingo.com/community.
Biblingo is now on Substack.
Subscribe for nerdy deep dives on the biblical languages and second language acquisition.
Our most recent article explores the importance of reading aloud for language acquisition.
You can save it to read later here: biblingoapp.substack.com/p/o…
All translations are interpretations.
Necessarily, even if the translator is doing word for word, they have to decide that this particular Greek word matches this particular English word best, and that means interpreting the original Greek word. You can't get around this.
Some translations do this better and some don't do it as well. But you are reading through the translator's lens, and that lens is going to color the text. The key is to be aware of *how* it's coloring the text.
This is why, when you are studing a passage, it's important to look at multiple translations with different translation philosophies.
Take a more word-for-word translation, like the ESV. Take a freer translation, like the NLT. And take one in the middle, like the NIV. Read them together and see what the differences are.
From there, you can think about how the different translators are understanding the passage and reflecting that in their translation. Through this comparision, you can come to a better understanding of the text and pick a translation you think is best in that particular passage.
There is no single most accurate translation. It's all dependent upon how they take particular passages and how they interpret them, because every single one of them is doing interpretation.
If you've been thinking about fast-tracking your Greek or Hebrew learning with one of our live courses, the time of decision approaches!
Classes begin next week (Sept 18). You can see details and select the times that work best for you here: biblingo.com/live
Introducing Progress History on Biblingo
You can now see weekly XP, words learned, time spent, words per minute, and % of the Bible's vocab known - measured across various time frames from 4 weeks to 1 year.
Download Biblingo version 2.7.5 or check it out at app.biblingo.com.