1.6 Reading Aloud Without Stopping — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read a Greek sentence you have not seen before, aloud, without stopping in the middle of it. Apply everything in this volume at once: five vowels at full value, two new consonants, the stress inside the window, the voicing at the joins, and the question tune. Keep going past a word you do not know, which is the single most useful reading habit there is. Read sixteen sentences at speed. Prerequisites : 1.5 — the question tune. Read 1.5 Sounds first if you have not. This is the last lesson of the second volume, and it has nothing new in it. Everything you need has been given: the alphabet in the first volume, the five vowels, the two unfamiliar consonants, the three-syllable window, the voicing at word joins, and the two tunes. What remains is to put them together at speed, which is a different skill from knowing them one at a time. How it sounds Fluent reading aloud is mostly a matter of not stopping. A beginner stops for three reasons, and each has a cure: An unknown word. Read it anyway. You know the sound of every letter and every pair, so you can produce the word correctly without knowing what it means — that is exactly what the alphabet bought you. Meaning can wait for the second pass. A long word. Find the mark, put the force there, and say the rest evenly. A six-syllable Greek word is not six decisions; it is one. A word boundary that does not sound like one. This is the voicing from 1.4. If a stretch of speech runs together, that is normal — it runs together for Greeks too — and the written text will show you where the words are. One more habit is worth building now: look one sentence ahead . Your eye should be at the end of the sentence while your voice is in the middle of it, so that the question tune does not arrive as a surprise. Readers who do this sound fluent long before their grammar is. Why read aloud at all, when the object is to understand? Two reasons, and both are practical rather than pious. The first is that Greek spelling is entirely regular in the direction you need — letters to sounds — so reading aloud costs you almost nothing in effort and puts the word into your ear as well as your eye. A word you have said is easier to recognise when someone says it to you. The second is that reading aloud makes you finish every word. Silent reading lets you skim, and skimming in a language you do not yet know produces the comfortable illusion of understanding. A note on speed. Do not try to read fast. Try to read evenly , at a speed you can hold to the end of the sentence without a stumble, and the speed will come up by itself over the following weeks. A learner who reads three sentences quickly and then stalls on the fourth has learned less than one who reads all four at a walking pace. The timing exercise below is there to show you the trend from one day to the next, not to set a target. How to use the sixteen Read the whole list through once, slowly, ignoring the English column. Then read it again, at the speed you would read English, and do not stop for anything — not for a word you do not know, not for a mistake. Then read the English column and see how much you had already understood. Most learners at this point understand between a third and a half of the sixteen, entirely from the words this volume has taught and from the roots English shares with Greek. Finally, read the list a fourth time the next day. The gap is what makes it stick, and a list of sixteen short sentences is small enough that the second day costs four minutes. Read it aloud Greek English What to notice Η γάτα πίνει γάλα. [1] The cat drinks milk. three words you know; the gamma is the back one Το νερό είναι ζωή. [2] Water is life. the vowels are all full value — no reduction Καφέ ή τσάι; [3] Coffee or tea? a question: the voice rises at the end Η μουσική είναι αγάπη. [4] Music is love. two abstract nouns, both with the article Τα παιδιά χρειάζονται αγάπη. [5] Children need love. the join in the middle: n followed by a voiceless consonant Το παιδί γράφει βιβλίο. [6] The child is writing a book. the child, the book, and a verb you can guess Όπου υπάρχει νερό, υπάρχει ζωή. [7] Where there's water, there's life. a proverb, and the same word twice Ήθελα καφέ, όχι τσάι. [8] I wanted coffee, not tea. the negative word in the middle changes the sense of the whole Πίνει τσάι με λίγο γάλα. [9] She drinks tea with a little milk. four words, one of them a quantity Πίνει τσάι ενώ ακούει μουσική. [10] He drinks tea while he listens to music. two clauses joined; read straight through the join Κάθε πρωί πίνω καφέ με γάλα. [11] Every morning I drink coffee with milk. the first two words say every morning Η γάτα ήπιε το γάλα της. [12] The cat drank her milk. the possessive comes after the noun, not before it Θέλεις τσάι ή καφέ; [13] Do you want tea or coffee? the same question as the third, with the verb at the front Αυτό το βιβλίο γράφτηκε για παιδιά. [14] This book was written for children. a longer one: five units, and the last word is one you know Θέλετε περισσότερο γάλα στον καφέ σας; [15] Do you want more milk in your coffee? a question with a comparative; do not stop at it Άνθρωπος στη θάλασσα! [16] Man overboard! a shout, not a sentence — and the stress is on the second syllable New words Word (with article) Meaning Notes το πρωί el to proí morning Part of speech / class noun, neuter How it differs from English used adverbially without a preposition: in the morning λίγο el lígo a little Part of speech / class adverb / quantity How it differs from English the olig- of oligarchy : few Πίνει τσάι με λίγο γάλα. She drinks tea with a little milk. όχι el óchi no, not Part of speech / class adverb How it differs from English the word for no , and the one that negates a noun Ήθελα καφέ, όχι τσάι. I wanted coffee, not tea. γράφω el gráfo I write Part of speech / class verb How it differs from English the -graph of every English word that ends in it Το παιδί γράφει βιβλίο. The child is writin