Introducing Greek Vocabulary

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Oh good evening everyone.

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Oh don't seem so excited.

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You guys sound like you're half asleep.

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That's okay.

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I understand this is getting towards the end of your work week and coming into coming into a class where you're looking at a whole different language and everything looks like hieroglyphics and looks a little strange.

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It's a lot to take in but I'm glad you're here.

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I'm glad that you're continuing on.

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I'm glad that you want to be a part of this class.

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Tonight we are going to be in the first part of the class we're going to be taking our time and going slowly to try to make sure you've all learned the alphabet.

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Now if you came in tonight uh if has anyone not signed in? There you go.

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Thank you.

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If you came in tonight and you learned the alphabet and you're perfect and you've got it your pronunciation is correct you've you've you've mastered it all then praise and amen.

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The first half of this class is just going to reinforce everything that you have spent all week practicing.

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If you're having trouble with the alphabet then this first part of the class is just going to hopefully overcome some of the difficulties you may be having.

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Now I'm not I said in and I was set free this morning and uh I was talking and and the guys asked me if we get there night and they don't and it's not completely memorized is that okay and I said no you have to quit if you didn't memorize.

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Now I said I said no it's fine um that's what this class is all about that's why we're going slow because honestly the alphabets that's a big hurdle and even though you know I said take a week and learn it I understand that sometimes it it takes a little longer for for certain things to get into our mind.

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So what we're going to do tonight we're going to begin with the alphabet and we're going to I'm going to teach you something that helped me years ago learn the alphabet.

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Sorry I'm very parched I've just got to keep keep my whistle wet uh the Greek alphabet is it can be learned by song.

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Brother Mark sent out a song on Facebook that was kind of like a rap uh uh it was a very rhythmic uh alphabetic gamma delta you know it was very very uh very cool so if you learned it from that that's great.

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Last week I gave you I guess the more nerdy version of mama's little baby goes shortening and shortening you know alphabetic gamma delta that's sort of like the way you learned the ABCs when you were a kid how many of you learned the ABCs by song A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P you remember that now I know this when I got older they said you shouldn't do it that way because you don't know the alphabet you know a song.

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I was like no I know the alphabet and they said well what's the alphabet now A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P because it was in the song that's how I remembered it but it is what I know it's sort of like the books of the old testament my kids and I sing you know Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth first and second Samuel first and second Kings first and second Chronicles that's all first and second and we go through the song and my six-year-old knows all the books of the old testament because of that song so you know there's nothing wrong with mnemonic devices there's nothing wrong with using these things to help you learn but eventually what you want to be able to do is not just say the alphabet but identify the letters with the alphabet and know how they are supposed to sound and again pronunciation is a bit of a wild card because we're using the Erasmus pronunciation so there is some debate to that and we're not going to we're not going to go too far with that but ultimately the point is I'm going to tell you how I want it to sound if you're going to say it for the sake of the class and the book will follow the pronunciations I'm giving you so tonight we're going to go through the alphabet again and we're also going to go through the sounds and I want you to think of this the way that you make sounds with your mouth is actually different for different types of letters you have labials which means that you use your lips so for instance say the say mom say mom mom now say it without putting your lips together you can't you can't you because mom ma ma ma uses the lips it's it's a labial now say dog do it without putting your tongue against the back of your front teeth duh duh you can't because duh duh is a dental you're using your teeth right now say uh say lady now do that without moving your tongue la la lady right that's a that's a glossal you're using your tongue all right so whether you're using your tongue or your lips or your teeth or your guttural guh guh guh guh comes from the the throat call that a guttural um depending on and that's english true but greek you know that helps when you start thinking of not only what are the letters but what is the sound of the letters so that's what we're going to start with tonight we're going to go through the alphabet slowly and remember we're not in a hurry tonight I have intentionally only had us down to do one lesson in class and we're going to do that at the later part of class because I wanted to spend as much time as necessary learning the letters and the sounds that go with the letters okay all right so alpha is ah ah alpha ah ah like apple or father ah ah right so what's an what's the ah ah do say ah ah with your teeth together you can't ah ah it's it's it's that's how you're making that sound and that's the way it's always going to sound it's always going to sound like the ah and father right or the ah ah now better better now I know that in sometimes we're going to say beta you're fine you're not going to offend me but understand this if we're following the rules of greek grammar beta is spelled um beta epsilon tau alpha which would not be pronounced beta it would be pronounced beta right and that's why we call it the alpha bet not the alpha bait all right so just just for that point you may say beta I'm not going to correct you but I try to remember to say beta all right so and it's ba ba it's a labial ba ba using my lips right what's this look like hangman what is that also called gallows so what letter is that the gamma gamma it's like I went over to gamma's house and had cookies and then we watched somebody get hung no yeah yeah it's from the south yeah uh no so we have gamma which is our g sound notice there's not notice it follows similar to the english abcd but in greek it's abgd right because there's no c the c sound uh the c is uh not a letter that is used in greek in fact I don't think it should be used in english c is a useless letter explain why c doesn't have its own sound c makes a caca sound and that's k or c makes a sasa sound and that's s c does not have its own distinct sound therefore it shouldn't exist but it does just to confuse well that that again is not you it's pairing with this with the h it does make the cha cha sound which is more in in this would be the ha ha sound which is in uh which is key which is for christ right ha ha sound uh and that's where we get our cha which is why christ is pronounced christ but but it's spelled trist like charles it's spelled ch all right all right so alpha ah beta baba gamma ga ga ga delta da da right y'all can do this with me if you want it's i mean if it's helpful epsilon f f f epsilon like egg uh uh uh these are by the way and i guess i could be making the note uh these are our these are our vowels in greek yes there are vowels and consonants so in our first series here we have two vowels the alpha and the epsilon i know that's hard for you to see dear so i'll move it a little where is that better not really we have mega desk here this is i need to put these on higher uh but yeah the alpha and the epsilon are the are the uh vowels going down the next of the list we have what is the letter zeta zeta or zeta depending on how you want to say it uh zeta it gives the z sound it's the same as our z uh as far as the sound is concerned now the next one is also a vowel but this vowel is known as what eta eta this is where you get the long a if you don't get the long a from alpha that's the the the short a ah the a a sound is in eta next letter that time theta yeah that one's the one most people you know are just going to say theta because you're so used to it you think of like uh uh what are those uh greek uh university clubs or the sororities fraternities yeah and they say that you know the theta moves or whatever and that's where a lot of people are used to hearing these letters is an academic sense but theta is how i would try to say it um and it's the the theta so the noise that it's going to make is the it's the same as the th in english um thinking about this think about theology the word theology means what study of god it's based on the root word theos which is the word for god and logos which is the word for word and so theology is the words about god or the study of god and so they are logos or theology so there's also something in the greek new testament you'll you probably won't run into this just studying but if you ever look at any of the original uh language manuscripts there's something called the nomena sacra the nomena sacra is where in an attempt to save space and save paper because paper was a precious commodity when the bible was being copied they would reduce the name of god to simply the letter theta and so if you come across in a manuscript just the theta it can the that can reference theos the just that letter um in fact there's a major textual question what we call a textual variant in the new testament where it says god was manifest in the flesh and who us or the or he who was manifest in the flesh if you have a modern translation it'll say he who was manifested in the flesh if you have a king james bible it will say god was manifest in the flesh and the difference is literally one stroke of a letter because it's the difference between the omicron and the theta it's a major textual variant based on one mark in a letter yes theos in greek yes would be theta epsilon omicron sigma you wouldn't have to again in english it's t-h-e-o-s but there's no th it's th is theta so is this helpful to go slow like this is this being helpful all right the next letter iota iota also a vowel sound and it is the vowel igloo igloo would be the sound that it would make yeah in fact if you look at your sheet it'll tell you the sounds so in this it says the i in pit it um it can also have a long sound of e um so that's really just uh there'll be certain words where you'll where you'll say eota instead of eota but it can have either sound depending on the surrounding letters and you say well how do we know which is which well you might not in the beginning you take some studies sort of like english right there are certain words that don't make any sense until you learn that word in context all right kappa you know kappa you'll never get me kappa you know kappa kappa uh kappa kappa is um the kakaka sound k sound that's easy lambda la la la lambda it's a it's a gloss it's a making the sound with your tongue mu mu now we could say mu but it's mu and it looks like an m and it sounds like an m mama new looks like a v when lowercase looks like an n in the uppercase but in the lowercase it looks like a v and that is the new sound all right to see there's the next one or xc xc you can say it that way like an xx um brother last week mentioned xavier that's a word that would would be a greek derivative uh x x or that that the noise is actually in the middle it's the sound is is what that's making omicron ah as in like offer p oh missed one vowel i want to point these out because you know if you think about how words typically work is all words are going to have some vowels in them and so if you understand how the vowels sound you'll you'll understand how the words are to be to be understood and and and you have things called syllables right just like in english you know you have like the word construct has two syllables con-struct and typically the reason for the syllables is is you're combining uh words and ideas so structure is the root of construct the the con at the beginning is latin it means with so to construct means to with or give structure right so to construct something is to give it structure uh construction i o n at the end that's the suffix and that creates that creates the noun it's construction it's what you're doing it's a or the rather yes the it's the action that's the verb rather i'm sorry uh well construction can be either right if you're doing the construction it's verb if well i think about that for a second which is it what's the construction is a verb or noun i can't think yeah it's a noun because it's it's it's a thing construction is a thing and but you're constructing is the verb yeah i'm just my brain's all over the place next one is your p p looks like pillars so there's your p and it and it sounds just like p in english p all right the next one looks like a p but it's not this one will throw you off the most as i said last week because it actually makes the ra ra sound it's row and it makes the r sound ra ra ra sigma makes the s sound the s sound it like soup ssa and it has the unique thing about sigma is what sigma it's written two different ways the lower case is either going to be closed or open depending on whether it's in the middle or the end right and that's basically what you what it is is you've got closed open it's it's sort of the same shape it's just you're either closing it or opening it and the only time you'd open it would be at the end oh good evening brother all right so tau is ta ta ta makes the same t sound that our english t would make oop oop salon oop salon is a vowel thank you so we're identifying our vowel letters all the ones that are squared huh salon oop salon you know you gotta pronounce those differently yeah but they're very close yes and oop salon makes more rather than the up up sound that we think of like a u it's more like the ooh ooh as in like hoop uh uh and so or boot ooh ooh sound uh is is what we're getting with oops salon now the next one is fee fee is the ph in phone or the f in everything else that makes the f sound fa fa fine fa fa feeling fa fa funny all that would would be for the fee all right the fee or key is the x now this has an interesting history how many of you have ever heard someone say that you shouldn't use the x in christmas because you're taking away the name of jesus you probably heard someone say that and actually it's not true the x in english is the greek key and it is the first letter in the name of christ so putting the x in front of the x xmas is a way of giving a similar to the nomena sacra that i mentioned earlier taking the name of christ and and bringing it down to a single letter because while god it can be brought down to the single letter of theta christ can be bring brought down to the single letter of key the the x representing christ now my bigger issue is not with christmas and the x it's more with the mass part and tying it to the mass of the roman catholic church but that's another conversation so if we're going to drop something so we've got hey that was easier to do with ice in my mouth hey uh what's that letter above that that last uh last one c c yeah c as i said last think about a trident that's every time i see that letter i think a trident and i think about it popping a balloon and i think of the balloon going that's the noise it would make well it'd go pop but it would if it made a small hole it'd make that sound and that's the think about the word psoriasis what does the word psoriasis begin with a p it's a it's a it's a big time spelling spelling b word because when you say spell psoriasis people go ass nigger it's like pterodactyl which starts with a p all right it doesn't make sense but it does if you think about the fact that psoriasis is a greek rooted word if you see a word that starts with that sound it's probably greek just like if you see any word in english that has a ph for the f sound that's a greek word or at least it has a greek uh etymology if you see a word in english that has an f f etymology unless it's been changed it's probably not from greek so that's how you can differentiate that's how you know phone uh and fine two different words and but both have the same first sound but both have different letters because they have different uh histories language histories english is a english first of all it's a hodgepodge it's a mess it's horrible but it's also a combination of so many languages that if you know english you don't realize that you know parts part and parcel of many other languages and latin german and all kinds of yeah languages have to have distilled into into our uh into our language finally we have the omega also a vowel also a uh o sound but not the short o the short o is the omicron the long o which i always think of omicron i always think about it sounds like a transformer thank you thank you i'm not the only one who thought i like omicron prime yes or unicron or whatever from the transformers so you got omicron which is the ah sound uh and then you have omega which is the o o sound and so now i want to tell you a tale and i want to first of all before i start this i want to tell you two things one i didn't invent this and two if if you think that i'm a weirdo well buckle up because this is weird but when i tell you this story i tell you it helped me leaps and bounds when i was learning the greek alphabet and um you may look you may hear it the first time and say that was the dumbest thing i ever heard and that's okay you may think i'm a weirdo that's okay but just understand this some people learn differently and this is right up my brain alley so when you're learning the greek alphabet you're trying to remember things the first five letters are the easiest ones because they're simply they're just like english right except for the g and the c or replaced so if you can put in your mind i don't have a c i have a g it's alpha beta gamma delta epsilon that's pretty easy and you can do that fairly easy right but then where we really have our first hang up is in the second column with zeta so now i'm going to tell you the story but the story is going to start here because my assumption is everybody probably knows you know this the zeta eta theta you've heard this story yeah okay all right all right this is a story about a man and his wife you're not weird okay you wouldn't you wouldn't did it help you have you done it okay all right this is a story about a man his wife the woman's name is zeta and yes i'm i'm breaking my own rule right away this is supposed to be zeta but for the rule for the for the story we're going to say zeta and zeta is hungry so zeta eta theta and that's how you're going to remember that she ate a theta and that's what made her not hungry and her husband yoda wore a kappa and the two raised lambdas and the lambdas made noise they went moo noo moo noo and one day yoda was out and he saw his lambs eating his corn he said oh my corn i'm a crunk so to make him happy his wife took him to a ball game where he got to see p ro pete rose play ball and after the game as pete rose was walking by he said you're my hero and so he gave him his towel oh wait no pete rose had a sigma on his kappa on his hat and he gave him his towel well as they were walking out to the car zeta slipped and she said oops salon when she fell and the guy who was taking the money said no charge fee keepsi fee keepsi and there's no real reason for the omega but you know that's last but that's the dumbest story but i promise you the one that it will help you with the most is fee keepsi somebody tries to pay and say no fee keepsi you keep the money okay was that the dumbest thing you've ever heard close isn't it funny though i've not told that story in years i remembered it off the top of my head because it takes you through the letters first time i saw it i'm like this guy's lost his mind told myself 20 minutes later going let's go back to that zeta eta theta and her husband yoda wore a kappa and they raised lambdas and the lambdas went he saw him eating his corn he said oh my corn and the wife took him to the baseball game to make him happy and he saw his favorite player p ro pete rose who had a sigma on his hat and gave him his towel and as they're walking out the wife slipped and went oops salon my kids love that that's the way i teach my kids and when we get to oops salon they go oops salon and they make a big deal about oops salon and so the man taking the money said no charge fee keepsi right there that's the hardest one fee keepsi yeah you'll remember it now won't you so there we go so now what we're going to do is we're going to have some fun we're going to take a break not from class we're going to take a break from me talking i'm going to give you a few minutes in class hopefully you'll have paper and a pen i want you to write your full name in greek sounding using the sounding letters of your name just on your notes it's fine keeping your notebook it's not something for you to show me and once you've done it we're going to go around the room and do a few on the board the greek sound so remind me i know your name but just rebecca so it would be ra ra r ro right so that would be the first letter epsilon would be so write it with the greek letters there is no j sound j is a germanic sound the this is why we know jesus wasn't called jesus joshua wasn't called joshua none of that because j is a later introduction it's a german sound and that's all we know god's name is not jehovah uh so if your name starts with a j just replace it with a gamma that's fine actually actually in greek it would be replaced with an iota it would be johan johan but that's what john right johan so yeah do that are you going to do your first and last name uh yes i want you to do the whole thing just just for fun w you there isn't really there's not a lot of sound so uh what will you uh well we'll we'll let's say billy and right right billy i'm trying to think if there's a there's not a uh you could do you could do a uh diphthong the alpha upsilon would make ow i will i will but just go billy what what sound does it make in your name i would say the kappa would probably be the closest yeah the k well what's uh for john it wouldn't be because you're just making the sound john so it would just be uh it would actually be the first letter be iota because it's yon it'd be iota omicron new that would that would be all it is if you do two else the first one gets a uh no no sound so no not it would just for you it would be beta uh or betta iota lambda uh iota billy or bill it would just be you wouldn't say you wouldn't write being alive just put the uh iota because the iota makes the same time do it by sound yes by sound something my art b what are we getting b for yes just like in steven you can replace that by the way that's how we know steven with a ph is great because it's yes really no w7 now oy is omicron iota we're going to go over diphthongs in just a minute no no no h you don't like my last name anymore it's pretty awesome um yeah o'neill starts with an omega and then it goes to the new iota and then the lambda yeah o'neill yeah john's a little iffy yon o'neill yeah it's like a new tattoo right there that's right i want in addition to your this week you should all write a love letter in greek write a letter to someone you love maybe your spouse maybe your uh remember the movie christmas story where he gets the decoder ring well you guys all have a special decoding language now you can all right yeah how about a u i'm sorry i can't just do it which what's your uh well that would be uh oops salon yeah it'd be humble humble uh it'd be ilson there's no w so can you have uh can you have a letter repeated yeah but you have to say both of them so you wouldn't need to repeat unless it was too like abraham was two days what was yours you would only need one signal i think so i think so yeah yeah there's also a way to accent the the front to give it the ha ha sound there are accent letters if you accent it looks like a apostrophe above the letter yeah and it tells you whether to go ha or just ah if you if you're dealing with a letter all right everybody pretty much good no let's do a couple on the board just for fun easy one uh would be mark uh okay so we have mu we have alpha row kappa all right all right so that would be mark now if you look on your uh if you look at a great new testament it will begin it'll say kata mark on or the gospel according to mark so so that's this is what this is just the addition but mark is your name that's you all right what's another one fero fero alpha new copper frank that's good that works what's another one omega new iota uh o'neill we can put a little something here o'neill o'neill who wants to do another one yes sir all right i got you that that was kind of hard to draw wait a minute did you say he is it that is it the x or the or the uh chi chi okay okay all right so mu epsilon chi or key what's your uh remind me of your name bro michael all right here's where this is going to be something that we have to look at diphthongs do you guys know what a diphthong is when you take two letters and it makes a new sound so for instance if i take the sound o in english it makes the ah sound but if i put o i together that becomes a diphthong and it makes oi so if i put a b and an l on that it becomes boil if i take the l off it becomes oil right the o and the i create a new sound when they're put together that's called a diphthong well greek has that as well so if i want the i in michael i'm going to have to use two letters because there's no i because iota makes the it is not the ii right so if i want to make the i sound in uh in it would be like this you'd have the month for michael and then i would do alpha iota together make the long i sound and then it would be my count like that all right so you have to if you pull out your sheet everybody pull this sheet out you'll see the the diphthongs are there so you can create the yeah it shows you a few pairs of them yep yep so again this week spend some time write a love letter to your loved one tell them how you love them in greek you know what's funny i heard i heard mark lowry say this years ago he was talking about how in the ancient world they would talk about how their seed of the emotions you know in in in our modern world the seed of the emotions is the heart i love you with all my heart right but in the ancient world it was the loins it was the it was the guts and they would they would they would use that that was the seed of the emotions was the was the guts so it'd be something you know like i just i love you with all my guts yeah you make my liver quiver i don't know what you guys can say but yeah however you want to if you write a few sentences write a few things in english with greek letters and that helps you create a phonetic understanding of the language all right i would say fa because like just like va and fa are so similar i would just i would i would replace it with that yeah yeah like i said like john in old english john was yon right and um even today you'll still meet some people who have their name is spelled j-a-n but they pronounce it yon right uh okay so that takes us through the alphabet let's look at our diphthongs real quick making our sounds with the diphthongs first one i've already given to you we've already talked about the alpha and the iota make the i sound and we though and you can see this on your notes the english this it grabs it and uses it in the word isle right doesn't that drive you crazy that that's how we spell isle we absolutely should not spell isle like that isle well isle for island yes but like the aisle at the grocery store is that and for some reason we carry over the greek the alpha and the iota uh diphthong and so anytime you see an alpha iota diphthong that's making the i sound that's probably a greek root word all right next is ow i think about i'm sorry i'm thinking about a e.t.