12.2 Gate: Twenty Unseen Sentences — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read twenty Greek sentences that have not appeared anywhere in the previous fifty-four lessons. Do it with nothing to look up and no preparation of any kind. Score yourself against a stated threshold and know whether to go on. Name, for any sentence you missed, which lesson would have carried it. Read, at the end of it, a sentence like Νομίζω πως ξέρω γιατί είστε εδώ. and know that you have read it. Prerequisites : 12.1 — the review of the first three volumes. Read 12.1 Review first, and take its advice if you scored below its threshold. This is the last lesson of the phase. Everything you have read in this course so far was chosen for you. The sentences in the grammar volume illustrated a point; the sentences in the vocabulary volume used the words of that lesson; even the reading texts were assembled out of material you had met. This one is not. The twenty sentences below were taken from the same corpus by a single mechanical rule — they are the commonest sentences in it that this course has not used — and nobody looked at them to see whether they were teachable. That is the whole point of a gate. A learner who can only read the sentences that were selected for him has not learned a language; he has learned a course. Read these twenty cold. Twenty sentences Cover the English column. Read each Greek sentence aloud, then say what it means, and only then look right. Do not look anything up, and do not go back; if a sentence defeats you, mark it and move on. Greek English Τι ήταν αυτό; [1] What was that? Από πού είστε; [2] Where are you from? Ποιος ήταν εδώ; [3] Who was here? Τι είναι σήμερα; [4] What is today? Είναι σπίτι τώρα. [5] He's at home right now. Τι σ' αρέσει; [6] What do you like? Δεν την ξέρω. [7] I don't know her. Ξέρω τι θέλω. [8] I know what I want. Είμαι μαζί σας. [9] I'm with you. Θα είμαστε μαζί. [10] We'll be together. Το σπίτι μου είναι και σπίτι σου. [11] My house is your house. Έχω κάτι να κάνω. [12] I've got something to do. Θα το κάνω. [13] I'll do it. Πες μου τι να κάνω. [14] Tell me what to do. Σας παρακαλώ, πείτε κάτι. [15] Please say something. Πες το στα Γαλλικά. [16] Say it in French. Αυτός είναι ακόμα εδώ. [17] He is still here. Δεν ξέρω ακόμα. [18] I don't know yet. Και τι μ' αυτό; [19] So what? Νομίζω πως ξέρω γιατί είστε εδώ. [20] I think I know why you're here. Three of those sentences contain a construction the course has described but not drilled. Ξέρω τι θέλω. and Πες μου τι να κάνω. both put a question word inside a statement, which is the indirect question of lesson 3.23 in the second phase; you can read them anyway, because the words are all yours. Νομίζω πως ξέρω γιατί είστε εδώ. does it twice in one sentence and adds the conjunction of lesson 5.1. Two more are worth marking. Το σπίτι μου είναι και σπίτι σου. has the same noun twice with two different possessives and the conjunction between them, and it is a proverb rather than a sentence. Και τι μ' αυτό; is four words of which none carries a meaning by itself; it is an idiom, and if you did not get it, nothing in this course would have helped, which is the honest state of any language at the end of a first phase. Score yourself Score What it means What to do 18 to 20 the first phase has done what it claimed go on to the second phase, which begins with aspect 14 to 17 the grammar is in place and the vocabulary is thin reread the eight lessons of the vocabulary volume, aloud 10 to 13 you are reading word by word rather than sentence by sentence reread the three reading texts, timing yourself, before going on below 10 something structural is missing go back to the grammar volume and find which of the fourteen lessons you cannot summarise The threshold is eighteen and it is set deliberately high, for a reason worth stating. These are not difficult sentences. They are the commonest unused sentences in a corpus of twenty-eight thousand, which means that they are made almost entirely of the words this course spent eight lessons counting and teaching. If you cannot read eighteen of them, the problem is not that Greek is hard; it is that some specific thing is missing, and the table above is an attempt to say which. For every sentence you missed, do one thing before you go on: name the lesson that would have carried it. If it was a case ending, that is the third volume; if it was a small word in front of the verb, that is 3.10 or 5.8; if it was the verb itself, that is 3.8 or 3.9. A missed sentence that you can trace to a lesson is a gap you can close in twenty minutes. A missed sentence you cannot trace is the one to worry about. One last observation about what this phase has and has not given you. You can read a statement, a question, a negative, a command and a wish; you can handle four cases, three genders, two verb patterns and the present tense. You cannot yet say what happened yesterday, and that is not an oversight. The Greek past is built on aspect rather than on time, it is the largest single thing in the language that English does not have, and the whole of the second phase is arranged around it. Practice Do the twenty. Cold, with the right column covered, without looking anything up. Score it. Use the table above and be honest about the ones you half-got. Trace the misses. For each sentence you missed, name the lesson that would have carried it. The three hard ones. Find the three sentences with a question word inside a statement and say what construction that is. The proverb. Το σπίτι μου είναι και σπίτι σου. is not an ordinary sentence. Say what makes it a proverb and what the repetition is doing. What you cannot do yet. Name the one large thing this phase has not given you, and say which phase gives it. Read them aloud. Read all twenty aloud twice, without stopping, at a steady speed. On the second pass, cover the English and translate as you go. Summary Twenty sentences chosen by a mechanical rule, not by a teacher: the commonest ones the course has not used. The