Interview with Fletcher Hardison on the Podcast - Greeking Out.

Alpha with Angela

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In this episode, I'm talking with Angela Taylor, who produces the

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Alpha with Angela YouTube channel. We talk about how she began learning Greek and spend most of the episode talking about Alpha with Angela and what it takes to produce a series like it.

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Alpha with Angela is a free comprehensible input -based series that assumes little to no prior knowledge of Greek and uses no

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English in the videos. As such, it's meant to make Greek accessible to anyone regardless of their current languages or background.

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It's a great series and I hope you'll enjoy learning more about it in person producing it. Hi Angela, it's great to have you on the podcast.

01:04

Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. Hi Fletcher, glad to be here. I guess

01:12

I got to know you ultimately through Olive with Beth and you starting the

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Alpha with Angela channel, which for people who are unaware, you're producing videos using comprehensible input -based methods to help teach

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Greek and publishing them on YouTube for anybody who wants to use them. Is that correct? That's right, yeah.

01:35

Yeah, that's a really great resource and I love how it's combining visual and audio and it's free, which is wonderful.

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And they seem to be paced really well and they're, as I can tell, it's not really, they're not very intimidating, so you can start slow and they build.

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So I think that's wonderful. Yeah, my audience is actually

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Bible translators, especially those that English is not their first language.

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And since everything is in Greek, it's accessible to them, so anybody from any language background can use them.

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And so it's important for me to just really pace it very slowly and make sure that everybody can keep up.

02:27

Yeah, I think that's so helpful because, I mean, I know your model is kind of similar to Olive with Beth, but Greek has just got so much morphology that you have to deal with all the time.

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There's so much complexity, even in basic sentences, that you really have to go slow or you overwhelm people, right?

02:47

Right, there's the reason they say it's Greek to me. When I started off with Olive, Andrew and Bethany Case helped me start off with Angela and we kind of looked at the

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Hebrew and the way that she started and so on, and it's just not possible to do the same with Greek just because, you know, even the simplest thing like having three genders just complicates everything.

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And yeah, so I just have to go at a different pace and it's taking a little bit longer to cover the base, you know, to lay a foundation, but we're getting there.

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Yeah, I know you're just working, you're about to publish lesson 28, is that correct?

03:33

I did publish it yesterday, I think. Oh, great. Which would be your today,

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I think. Something like that. Yeah, I don't know, or the other way around.

03:45

So that's really cool. So when you started learning Greek, was there anything like what you're doing available or any kind of audio courses that you were able to use when you were first learning

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Greek? You know, I didn't even, I don't remember even trying to look if they were who they were.

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I actually started learning Greek by teaching myself.

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And I just read the Bible, really. So I tried to do it that way and I realized that that's kind of hard.

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And then I looked into getting a textbook, I think, and then I started doing research and I decided that I actually wanted to go somewhere and study

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Greek and Hebrew. And so then I went to Polis in Jerusalem.

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Okay. And that kept me pretty busy. So there wasn't time.

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Yeah, I didn't look for any other courses at the time. So, okay, so you started off trying to read the

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New Testament, I'm assuming. Right. So you started trying to read that initially and then found that to be difficult and super slow, right?

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And then a textbook on your own wasn't enough. So then you sought something, another course. Is that what

05:12

I'm understanding? Yes. So why Polis?

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A number of reasons. I was really just praying about what to do next. And I thought of a friend of mine that was a linguist and I contacted her and ironically, she'd been looking around kind of the same thing.

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I thought either I'm going to do a theology degree to be able to learn Greek and Hebrew or go to a language school.

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And she recommended Polis. And I used to volunteer at the

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Home for Bible Translators as well in Jerusalem many years ago. And I contacted them and asked them if they knew anything about Polis and they had good things to say.

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And so I asked around and I read about the method and I decided that was the way to go.

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And then the doors opened for me. So Polis in Jerusalem. And what was the program like there?

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It was intense for me. I mean, coming with absolutely no

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Greek background. My undergraduate degree was in science. And so the only

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Greek that I have is medical science, which a lot of the medical terms that come from the Greek. So that's all

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I had and to be able to barely read the alphabet. So it was a bit tough for me in the beginning, quite honestly, especially being in a class where most of the students there had some kind of Greek background, either an undergraduate degree or they were teachers.

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And it goes fast. It's not the first time that I've been in a full immersion setting.

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I learned modern Hebrew that way. And so I kind of knew what to expect, except that it's an ancient language, so you don't really get to speak it outside the class.

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And so it's a lot tougher. And the pace was quite fast for a complete novice.

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And so you just have to trust the process that you're actually going to get somewhere. I feel like that's trusting the processes is really important when you're trying to use any sort of methods that are comprehension based, because you can't, you can't measure your progress in the same way where you're, oh,

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I've memorized this paradigm or I've, you know, I've got a hundred flashcards that I can look at, right.

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It's a different, you know, you kind of just have to trust the process. And it takes time to, to, you're, you're kind of building that mental grammar and your mental model of language slowly.

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So I feel like that's really important for, you know, for all of us as learners, it's just to relax and say, okay, this does work.

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We know it works. We have research to show it works, but it, our experience doesn't always feel that we're making lots of progress.

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Right. And especially when you with a group of other people that seem to be much more fluent or learn faster than you or have a background that can be rather intimidating.

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But yeah, you, you definitely, you definitely learn fast when there's that much input.

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When I did Hebrew, modern Hebrew, Hebrew university, it was also, you know, you feel like somebody put a funnel in your mouth and just pouring stuff in there, you know, get a chance to do it.

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So, but I knew that it's just got to go in and then you need to use it.

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And once you start using it, it kind of things start falling into place. Well, that's, that's interesting.

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So then, so you did the POLIS program and I'm, I'm not super familiar with, with that.

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Is it, how long is it? Are there multiple levels of it? How much did you do?

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It's changed. It's changed since, since I started there, I did a master's degree.

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So I did two years of courses and then I wrote my thesis. But they now have introduced just like a year, probably more of just Greek.

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So like a Greek fluency program. Okay. But since I did a master's, I did biblical

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Hebrew and Koine Greek. And I guess my elective, most people would have done

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Latin, but I was interested in learning Arabic. So I did

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Palestinian spoken Arabic instead. Oh, fascinating. Yeah.

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Because I guess I'm more of a practical person. I just wanted to be able to use it rather than, like I said, my academic background is science and medicine.

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And yeah, I'm not, I'm not a, I've done linguistics, but I don't see myself as a linguist or a

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Greek scholar. I'm more kind of on the practical side. Just want to be able to read the

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Bible and yeah. And teach others. Hmm. So I'm more of a teacher,

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I guess. It's, it's funny, you mentioned the medical science background and that being your exposure to Greek.

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For me, it's the opposite. I have medical, you know, I have nurses in my family and, or, you know,

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I'll go to a doctor's office and they'll say, they'll throw out some term and I've not necessarily heard it before, but I know the

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Greek words it's made up of from, you know, from reading the New Testament or other things. And then like, oh, okay.

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I think I know what that must mean. Yeah. When I, I, before I started this,

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I taught a group of friends and so on Greek and one of them was a doctor and yeah.

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Every now and then she'd go, oh, I know what that means. So it's kind of fun. Yeah, it is.

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The, I guess it shows the influence of the language in our, you know, in our culture down through the ages and things.

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Right. Yeah. It's fascinating. Okay. So from, from polis, where did you go next?

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What was your next stage in Greek? Well, teaching.

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Teaching. I, right. I, I was,

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I had other plans, but then COVID hit and all that, all those things got cancelled.

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And so I started to just teach it. I know that teaching is the best way to learn.

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And so I got a group together and I taught them through the first, the first book of polis or first and the half of the second one.

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Yeah. So that's what I did for a while, which kind of laid the foundation for me to learn to put together a curriculum and teach and prepare classes.

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Although that is also, I took a teaching emphasis. I don't know if it's called the same now at polis, which in which we learned the method and learned how to prepare classes and, and, you know, create exercises and so on.

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So I got to practice that. That sounds really helpful, especially with the

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Alpha with Angela channel where you're having to plan and script to do all that.

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Right. Except that, you know, it really is different to a fully immersion class where you have direct contact with your students which

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I think is much easier. You get that immediate response. You can see if your students understand, you can kind of adapt.

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So with my videos, since I, one of the advantages of me struggling through Greek in the beginning was that I remember what it was like.

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And so I'm trying to make it very slow and remember the things I struggled with and try and make those clear.

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And just imagine what it would be like for a student listening. And then you have to be kind of creative in how

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I can't interact with the students. So how else can I, can I get those points across?

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Hmm. And yeah. And like you mentioned with, I think before we started recording, you get comments on YouTube, but those are not the same kind of feedback.

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And sometimes it's just people complaining about pronunciation systems or whatever.

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At least once a week. Yeah.

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I always find that funny, but. Yeah. It's usually people who haven't even taken the time to, to find out what the project is about, you know, who my target audience is.

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And I just tend to, unless they're really sincere, I just ignore those kinds of comments.

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You know, it's kind of a waste of time. Well, and the reality is modern languages have different pronunciations.

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So, you know, as long as there's, as long as you and I do not. Pronounce things the same.

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You know, from my perspective, as long as it's a useful and understandable pronunciation, then what's the problem?

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It's not like the, an ancient Athenian is going to come fuss at us or anything. Right. And I also, you know, we wanted to get this project started and I didn't want to have to learn a whole new pronunciation system or spend time trying to decide which one.

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So it was more and more, more than that, I needed to learn.

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About videography and sound and video editing and you name it.

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And then also being an introvert, then suddenly being thrust into on YouTube. It was very overwhelming.

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So really to try and this pronunciation didn't seem that important. Well, it's not that it's not important.

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It's just that for my target audience, the Erasmian pronunciation system is.

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It's kind of just easier for them. Other resources, especially within the

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Bible translation world are in Erasmian. Things are changing, but.

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Yeah. It's and also I can listen to other resources and understand them if they're in a different pronunciation.

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So I think just as a beginner, maybe it's a bit overwhelming if you hearing different kinds of pronunciations, if they're very different, but.

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You know, beyond that, it's not really important in understanding, in my opinion. And one of the things

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I noticed from listening to some of your videos is it seems like you do, you preserve vowel length.

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Phonemic vowel length and things and pronounce the different accents, which to me is really helpful because even if you're, you know, even if you're pronouncing that vowel, maybe slightly differently than someone else in a system, it's still preserving features of the words that are useful in distinguishing between different grammatical forms and things.

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So I think that's really helpful for students. Yeah. It's basically what I learned at Polis.

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And there's some things when I try and pronounce things, I think might not have been like this because this is really difficult to say.

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And it's kind of a vowel next to a consonant. I think probably wasn't like that. But the most important thing at the moment is just consistency.

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So I've got somebody just checking that I'm consistent. Yeah. One of my checkers. Well, yeah, that's great.

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And again, such useful, such useful material. So, okay.

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So you taught, you taught through the Polis, one or two of the Polis books. And so then how did that, what got you interested in doing

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Alpha with Angela? How, where did that project come from? It was just basically a need that there was that I guess no one else wanted to do.

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But yeah, if you'd asked me, it's never been my aspiration in life to teach Greek.

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In fact, if you'd asked me, I would have, I would have thought I would be teaching Hebrew, not Greek. But like I said,

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I had other plans that, that because of COVID couldn't happen. And then

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I heard the need that, that Bethany and Andrew Case of Aleph with Beth were looking for somebody to do something similar in Greek.

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And so I got to speak with them and yeah, we decided that we'd give it a try.

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And I went over to Mexico to meet them and they helped me get started. And yeah.

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Yeah. I think I remember seeing either you in some of their videos or maybe them in some of your earlier videos, which was, was really kind of fun.

18:43

So. They were in mine. Yes. Yeah. I know. Yeah. It's fun to have other people around. My wife and I know

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Bethany from graduate school in linguistics and stuff. And so it's, it's really fun seeing, you know, seeing them and seeing how, you know, what, what they're doing and then seeing how that spun off into help the ancient

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Greek world too. So. Right. So that's how you and I got acquainted.

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Yeah. So that's yep. That's how we met. Okay. So that got you into starting to do, to do this.

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So can you with Alpha with Angela, is that, is that something you're able to do? You're not doing that by yourself.

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You said you had someone helping with consistency. Is it, what's, what's it like producing one of these episodes?

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Could just, you know, maybe for people interested, what would it in a project like this, you know, from, from start to finish, what's, what does it take to do an episode?

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I am basically doing it on my own the bulk of the work, but then I have, like I said,

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I'm not a Greek scholar, so I have others that just check what I'm doing to make sure that the

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Greek is correct, or perhaps just to make sure that it's comprehensible, makes sense.

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So I, the whole process starts with me just planning the lessons first. And then

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I've now got somebody who does work with me actually twice for two hours a week. And I'll get somebody like him to, to just read through the scripts and see if there's anything,

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I don't know, either really wrong, or if they have ideas with the pedagogy.

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And then I have to get props together, ideas of how to get things, how to, to make things work.

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And then I will film, which is a whole entity on its own.

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Sometimes it goes smoothly, sometimes it doesn't. I have to redo it. So I think planning would, could take a couple of, a day or two, sometimes longer if we have to change things.

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And then filming, I don't know, for about a 15 minute lesson could take up to five hours or more.

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Because I'm on my own, I have to, I'm going to do it a little bit differently to what

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Beth and Andrew do, because they work together. I have to be the cameraman and the teacher at the same time.

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So, you know, I want to stop and check that what I've done is correct, that my head's not chopped off or my hands out the frame.

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So I'll kind of edit it as I'm going along. And that's why the filming could take an entire day sometimes.

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And then, then after it's the editing, which can take a long time,

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I think the editing can take anything from 20 to 50 hours if we're going back and forth, correcting things or trying to find stock footage or, and now that I've got text on the screen, that's really finicky, getting the text, you know, the timing of it and so on.

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Yeah. And then I've got volunteers who help me with, got a group that helps me with just checking once, once I've put the first draft or whichever draft up, just to go through it and check that I haven't made any mistakes.

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There's always accenting mistakes. Don't matter how many of us look at it, we'll still find another one.

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And, and yeah, once we're kind of happy with what it looks like, publish it.

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And that's, yeah, even publishing it, sometimes I'll put it up and then we'll make a mistake, see a mistake or something wrong, take it down.

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That can take hours sometimes just uploading and changing and putting it back. Yeah. And then there's, there's resources surrounding that, like vocabulary lists.

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And I've got somebody working on doing a grammar lessons that go, that accompany the videos.

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Hopefully that'll be ready one of these days. And then there's writing the scripts and making those available.

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There's, there's just a lot of things, but that's about as much as I've been able to do on my own so far.

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Cause there's obviously a lot of other admin as well that goes alongside it, which keeps me busy.

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Yeah. Huh. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that sounds like it's a, it's a big process and like you said, you're doing the bulk of the work yourself, but you've got a team of people checking and things.

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So it's you're so these, these lessons represent the collaboration of a lot of people.

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Correct. Yeah. Even if it's only, you know, even if a lot of them are maybe only making relatively small contributions, it's still a lot of eyes on it.

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So that's, you know, makes the quality high and people can trust that. Definitely.

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I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to do it on my own. I mean, it's, it's just even just having moral support and I also sometimes if, if Bethany has time, her

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Greek is kind of at a level that she can watch it and tell me, well, I didn't really, you know, pedagogically also because of what she does, and she's really good at it to just point out, maybe this isn't clear or how about doing that or, or yeah,

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I understood what you, what you taught. So that's helpful as well. Yeah. And I know I know at least one or two people that I've interviewed on this podcast,

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I think help out to seeing some names occasionally I recognize. So that's, it's neat to see how the

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Greek communities sort of works together to, to help each other. Yeah. It's amazing.

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Yeah. Like I say, it's, it's not my project. It's, you know, I'm just spearheading it.

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I'd love to, for more people to get involved. I'd love to be able to put out the resources faster, but it's just so time consuming.

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So I'm just curious as you're, as you're planning lessons, like what, where do you get your, where do you get your ideas from?

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Like what, do you have any resources you're using to kind of help sequence things? Or is that another one of the tasks you have to kind of say, well,

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I've gotten this far now. What should I do next? Yeah, basically. I do, you know,

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Aleph with Beth is a great resource, but it's, but as we said before, I can't follow the Hebrew. It just doesn't work, but it gives me some ideas of, of kind of what to do.

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It also saves me a little bit of time with being able to use the resources, like stock footage and sometimes some of the stop motion or other videos or things that, that Beth has used.

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And since it's all biblical, it's really useful to try and save some time.

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Other resources I do, I do kind of look around. I've got some stories, you know,

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I bought, bought a couple of the books that are written in Greek, like Peter Rabbit, and, you know,

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I try and get ahold of things like that. Yeah.

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I don't know what else. It's nice to see what other people do because it's inspiring, but sorry,

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I see you were asking me about planning. So I find, and also

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Beth had said, we find that you can't plan too far ahead. So you've got kind of like a skeleton of where you want to be.

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And then it doesn't, doesn't help having too much of a detailed plan because as you go, you see, oh wait, this doesn't work, or you get another idea and it just goes in a different direction.

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And so I'm only just a couple of lessons ahead with a goal to get towards.

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And then obviously a list of, of basic grammar and vocab that you want to cover. That makes sense.

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And I think I remember reading somewhere in some of my linguistics, you know, is that they sort of think there's sort of a fixed order of acquisition of things to some extent anyway.

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But then I think pedagogically, it doesn't necessarily make sense to follow that is the other thing I read, read in the research. So it's kind of just, you follow what makes,

27:29

I guess, makes the best sense for the language. Yeah. There's always limitations to what you want to do.

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I mean, even in a full immersion class, ideally you would want just a few students and to have, to be able to speak together outside the class and so on.

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But sometimes it's just not practical. People have lives and most of these schools, you have to have a lot of students in the class to be able to afford, to be able to do it.

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And so just from a practical point of view, you just have to manipulate and see what's, what works.

28:11

Yeah. Well, that makes sense. So I'm curious, try to do these podcasts, thinking about what would be valuable for people as they're trying to chart their own course through learning

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Greek. As you were learning besides, you know, an immersion class, what resources did you find to be your favorites or most helpful as you were kind of coming through, you know, getting, you know, learning

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Greek from, you know, starting to read the New Testament to polis and things like that? Just during my time at polis?

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Or just in general, like what are your, what are your favorite resources that you've used to, just for you to improve your own

28:54

Greek? Okay. Well, reading the Bible, main thing.

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I had a goal right in the beginning from, even from before I went to polis to read through the

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New Testament in Greek. And so I started back then and it took me two years to get through the New Testament once.

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And then the second time I read it, it took me six months. And now

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I'm going through it again in a year because I started going, reading the Septuagint as well.

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And so, yeah, so my goal this year is to get through the Septuagint. And I think,

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I really think that's, that's one of the most encouraging resources for me anyway, because I can see how

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I used to read in the beginning to now I can actually really just sit back and enjoy reading the text.

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Of course, some of the books are harder than others, but the narrative is really enjoyable. Yeah. That's how

29:53

I feel. Like you read the New Testament, you read anything written by John and you're like, oh, this is great. And then you go to second

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Corinthians and you're like, wait, what? I don't, maybe it's because I know

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Hebrew, I knew Hebrews better in English, but I felt like second Corinthians, which is the hardest, I think it's the hardest of all the

30:11

Greek in the New Testament that I've ever read. And I guess it just felt maybe his usual grammar just felt different or something there.

30:19

But Hmm. I think I can't remember the second time

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I read it, but I remember the first time just going through, I think it was Romans and Hebrews stood out to me difficult, but I think it's also because of the concepts are so, sentences are so long and you try and if you're not reading fast, you try and get from one end of the, from the beginning to the end of the idea.

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And you've kind of forgotten what it was about by the time you get to the other side. And then the Greek's not easy. I remember in college,

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I had a history professor who, who stood up on the first day of class and said, here's the textbook.

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We'll have a quiz halfway through, you know, the first half of the semester, there's a midterm and a final. I will not test you on anything

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I say in class. It's all going to be out of the book. And, but he then went on to like spider web and make every, like he would connect this thing that we learning about to everything and how the major flows of history, but the man thought in spider webs.

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And I feel like Paul does that sometimes when you're reading his Greek, he's like, oh, this thing's connected to that. So he dropped, he drops mid sentence and switches topics on you.

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And you're like, wait, what? All right. But, and you mentioned reading

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Septuagint and I, I think I saw someone on Twitter the other day talking about how, like you read

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Genesis or whatever, you're like, oh, this is great. And you get to one of the books, like bell and the dragon or something that we're not as familiar with.

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And you're like, is this the same? Like, I, you feel like you didn't know nothing you've learned. I think that's only coming at the end of the year.

31:51

I've never read. I've never read any of the, of those. So I'm going to be reading it the first time in Greek.

32:00

Yeah, that's, that's I've played with Septuagint a little bit.

32:07

I've started reading bits and pieces and I've tried to do some analysis work, but that's one of the things that kind of bugs me about Greek, the

32:16

Greek world is we don't really have an openly licensed Septuagint text yet. Okay.

32:24

I mean, we've, there's, there's tons of them, but there's no, like, there's none that are under like a creative commons license, like you have for the, you know,

32:33

New Testament and things, which is kind of frustrating, but I know there's people working on it.

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So hopefully we'll see that soon. Do you mean, so, so that you can use it to publish?

32:46

Yeah. Publish or things like that, you know, cause we could, we could do all sorts of cool readers, you know, and resources for people, right.

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You know, online or otherwise put in, you know, reading tools and, you know, make like a

32:59

Lingua Latina Partia Illustrata kind of text, but there's no there's no text that doesn't have a copyright on it yet.

33:09

That's been like well -checked, you know, I know there's, I think first thousand years of Greek has one, but I think it's got a lot of errors or something like that.

33:17

So anyway, I know people are working on it. It's an interesting experience reading it and then reading it next to the

33:26

Hebrew. Yeah. See how different it is. Yeah.

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And also one of the reasons I'm reading that is because to teach at this level, you want to have a lot of narrative and the

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New Testament, quite frankly, has very little, just common nouns.

33:47

You know, a lot of the nouns are abstract terms like love and grace and hope and there are, okay, the

33:55

Gospels and maybe Acts, but then when you get to the rest of it, there's very limited, simple context for beginners.

34:05

So I'm going to be using stories from the Old Testament. Yeah. And even within the

34:12

Gospels, you hit these you hit these sections where there's lots of very technical terms or yeah.

34:21

Yeah. I think that's, I think that's great. I feel like Septuagint is probably really underutilized in Greek teaching for exactly what you said.

34:30

You've got these nice long narratives where you can read a chapter. And the Greek's not that difficult. Yeah. And a lot of people already know the story.

34:39

So it's, you know, they kind of know where it's going. So their mind doesn't have to struggle to sort out, you know, what's the plot it's going to enjoy the language more.

34:49

So I think that's really helpful. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. That's really cool.

34:57

Yeah. I said that other resources were like stories and I'm grateful for other people who have written simple stories and made them available on the internet.

35:07

So I guess those are the kind of resources I like the most, but then

35:12

I do have some grammar books. I learnt, can't say I didn't learn grammar at Polis because you do, you kind of, you just don't learn it in the traditional way.

35:23

Right. But it's really makes more sense to me to learn, to understand and speak the language and then look at the grammar afterwards.

35:32

And then you read a grammar book and it's so much easier to understand than the other way around. So you've already got the examples like,

35:39

Oh, I know this word. So I can understand the sentence. And that's, and that's how we learn our first languages, right?

35:46

Like we learn to speak them. And then in school they teach, you learn the grammar of like, Oh, well, that's what that is. Or, you know, so yeah,

35:53

I think that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like for myself,

35:58

I, I learned Greek grammar best as I was reading, like I'd be reading through something and say, Hey, what is this?

36:04

And then I go look up the structure and like, Oh, that's what this means. Or, okay, that's this paradigm. That makes sense.

36:10

You know, and that stuck a lot better than just trying to read a grammar. Yeah. And that's why I think just reading, reading

36:16

Greek every day, especially since that is our goal is to be able to read the text is just the best resource really.

36:25

Yeah. And like you said, if you, you can be aware of which books are more difficult and that narrative is going to be easier to follow.

36:34

So, you know, we can do that strategically, even probably from, you know, still a beginner level, you know, maybe advanced beginner could still get into reading some longer check chunks if we had the right resources.

36:46

I'm a terribly slow reader, even in English. So yeah, it's, it was a really a slug for me in the beginning.

36:56

But so it's, it's really exciting that now I can actually sit and read and enjoy it. It still takes me probably longer than most people, but yeah,

37:08

I enjoy it. I think that's no, go ahead. No, I think that whatever level you are at, and I was taught this right from the beginning also is to just read, even if you don't understand, because just the process of reading the language and even,

37:26

I think I've always from the beginning spoken it out as I'm reading so that I can practice

37:33

Greek as well. And then also you hear it, which is good for you for learning the language, internalizing it.

37:44

Yeah. No, that's yeah. Cause you're, you're engaging multiple different senses and it's creating deeper, you know, creating deeper memories and things.

37:53

And, and that's, that's the goal, right. To move from working memory into long -term.

37:58

So we build up that language model. I'm sure practice speaking, which I don't, unfortunately don't have anybody close to me here that I can practice with.

38:08

So except my cat, but he doesn't answer back. Yes. Yeah.

38:15

That's, that's funny. Yeah. I've, I've definitely yelled things at my cats before in Greek.

38:21

I think we have like six or seven, you know, outdoor cats cause we live in the country and that keeps, they keep snakes and mice out of the house and stuff.

38:30

So yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned stories and things.

38:43

Are you familiar with the Greek learner text project? I might be.

38:49

Tell you, tell me more. So it's, it's you know, it's, it's a collaboration from various people.

38:58

You know, I think of actually it's a lot of people from all over now that's working to digitize

39:03

Greek texts with, you know, specifically for learners. So like a lot of the 1800s, early 1900s public domain, you know sort of short story sets and things like I think chambers,

39:17

Greek war of independence and, you know, selections from some of the classical texts and stuff, but there's Rouse or Ruse's a

39:25

Greek boy at home. That's, that's one. There's been a lot of things. And so they're trying, you're trying to digitize and publish publish those online with creative commons, open licensing.

39:36

So people can use them and remix them to make other resources and things. Okay. That's great.

39:45

Anyway, I think it's Greek learner text .org if you're interested. Yeah. I'll have a look.

39:50

I might even have had a look already. You know, I, there are some resources that I use like that, or I'll go and look at them, but to be able to, if I don't get lessons out at a certain speed,

40:05

I really get moaned at by my subscribers. I kind of focus on, on yeah.

40:16

I'm learning Greek and I have, I have some of my volunteers who I kind of outsource things like that too.

40:23

Yeah. Yeah. Try and find things that are relevant. That makes sense. So, so what's the, so you're at lesson 28 now.

40:36

28. Is there a, is there a long -term plan for Alpha with Angela in terms of how many lessons you're trying to put out, or is it just, we're going to keep going and see how far we get.

40:47

And could you use more people? What if people wanted to help, how could people get involved with your project?

40:54

I always need help. Unfortunately, it's often in, in the, the things that are not so exciting to do.

41:01

And, but there's always a place for help. I have pretty good team that check my lessons, but you know, if, if there are people that have very good

41:16

Greek that are advanced Greek experts, I don't know who, if they feel like they want to help me always, always happy to have more help because everybody's busy and it's always on a voluntary basis.

41:30

And so sometimes that's a hiccup. I have to wait until people have time to check things and that also can make things take longer.

41:39

But yeah, I'm hoping to one day get like a volunteer coordinator who can kind of take over the, the, the admin of keeping up with people and just follow, follow up.

41:57

Cause I find it very difficult to do that and keep up with all emails and correspondence and things that are a little bit outside of what

42:06

I need to focus on. So that may not have been too helpful.

42:12

I know that on, on my site, free Greek, there is a page there for volunteers and you can kind of read up there on the kind of, kind of things that one can help with.

42:25

Okay. So it sounds like just, you mentioned the volunteer thing. So if somebody is like excited about the project and even if their

42:32

Greek is not the best, they might get help with some of the admin activities that would give you more time to help create lessons.

42:39

Absolutely. Like if I've got somebody now that is opened an

42:45

Instagram page for me, I absolutely do not want to have more admin like that to do.

42:51

It just, you know, it just distracts me and then the lessons take longer. So yeah, she opened a page, but we'd, you know, it'd be nice to have something like that.

43:01

Similar to what Aleph with Beth has. And they'd need to have some

43:06

Greek to be able to do that. But I mean, I can check what they've done. There's that kind of thing, but I guess in the beginning

43:15

I need people more to, to be able to help me to get the project moving forward faster.

43:28

And, but yeah, there's so many little different things.

43:34

It just depends on how, what they are willing to do. So it sounds like unless someone's going to be able to come to South Africa and physically, you know, live close by and help you film things, you know, maybe lesson planning and some of the, you know, checking and things like that would be, are things people can do from a, from a distance if they wanted to be involved.

43:55

Right. Lesson planning. It can be a bit tricky having too many people involved.

44:02

Ah, okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Cause then I have to email back and forth and it really, there's Duke. And then, yeah, then

44:13

I end up spending a lot of time just emailing back and forth about, and trying to explain people to people why

44:18

I'm doing it like this. And so that can get a bit complicated. So keeping that group small is better.

44:27

But there's also like things like vocabulary lists and scripts and putting pictures on the scripts and, you know, checking things, translating, translating the

44:41

YouTube channel into different languages. There's a lot of things to do. People that are, thank you.

44:49

People that are, sorry, my cat just walked past and distracted me.

44:59

So I can't remember what I was saying. Yeah.

45:04

I'm translating things into their language and I was going to say something else. I don't know. Creating artwork.

45:14

Yeah. I would love to be able to make like a video clips in a,

45:22

I don't know if AI, if there's any free AI or something that can make little stories of drawings, animations.

45:31

That's what I'm looking for. People that know how to animate, that would also be great. Okay. Well, those are not my skillset, unfortunately, but I'm sure there are people listening who could have those.

45:47

And also people that do know Greek, we want stories, you know, that can kind of using the vocabulary that they've already, that the students have already learned.

45:58

That would be nice, little short stories. And we could add some more stories for practice in amongst the lessons.

46:06

Yeah. And you've already got the vocabulary list or you have people working on those vocab list. So that wouldn't necessarily be all that difficult to sequence, you know, to know what kind of words to include and things like that.

46:21

Yes. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Vocabulary list is available and we try and make it the words that, or the form of the word that is being taught, not only the lemma.

46:38

So you would know which of the declensions or inflections, whatever that word that the students have learned from that word.

46:53

Right. And that makes sense. Right. Because, you know,

46:58

I think if I remember early on, when you're learning a language, like you learn each word form as a separate vocabulary item until the mental grammars realize that all these things are the same and can discern the patterns.

47:11

So that makes a lot of sense too. Yeah. Some people are concerned about me not teaching the paradigms, but it's not that I won't,

47:22

I just wanted to teach all those forms in, well, maybe not all of them, but the most frequently used ones in the

47:31

New Testament before I put it together in a table, you know? Right. So once it's in the table, you actually know those words and you've seen them in context and then you can see the pattern.

47:43

Yeah. And like you said, you already have the examples in your head at that point. So it's much easier to consolidate information and you already know, rather than trying to internalize vocabulary and patterns and things all at the same time.

47:57

Although I do give it in little bite chunks, you know, kind of hinted, oh, this is the pattern. So that it's not too much grammar, but that by the time we get there, they'll be familiar with the patterns.

48:10

Yeah. That makes sense. One thing I've thought about is discussing

48:17

Greek grammar in Greek. I think it's really interesting. We have Greek grammars from the

48:24

Koine period after the New Testament, but, you know, like Dionysius Thrax and some of these others.

48:29

So we kind of know how they would have talked about their own language. And, you know, that's a fairly limited set of vocabulary that, you know, these grammar terms are, there's not that many of them, but then you build a lot of sentences and things talking about it.

48:49

But again, this is just ideas that float in my head and probably would be almost useless for what you're doing, but.

48:56

Well, that is how we were, since we learned in full immersion at Polis, we did talk about the grammar and we talked about the grammar in Greek.

49:04

We were taught the Greek terms for all of that. And so sometimes, you know, because that's how

49:10

I learned it, the terms in English don't come to me so fast. And yeah, it's,

49:17

I have used one or two of them in the lessons and I'm contemplating using them in the future, but by the later stage, probably, but I will be using them.

49:29

Well, that's really cool. I think that's, like I said, I think that's a neat way to be able to, just another way to be able to talk about the things in the text, you know, people can use as a, you know, to, as they're studying to talk about what they're reading in, in Greek and, you know, it's another way to keep using it.

49:48

So. Well, cool. So I guess as we, as we wrap up, so where can people find you if they wanted to get involved or, you know, learn more about the project?

49:59

You mentioned a website, FreeGreek. I forget the rest of it.

50:06

It's www .freegreek .online. But you can go, if you go to Alpha with Angela on YouTube, in every lesson, there's a link to the website and to other resources.

50:20

So I can find it through there. And then I think my email address is there.

50:27

People can contact me that way. And, and correct me if I'm wrong, did I, did

50:32

I see on one of the lessons that you also published the audio separately? Yes. I have some wonderful volunteers who do that for me that I don't even have to think about it.

50:41

So they, they strip the audio and they put it on Spotify and it's another podcast.

50:50

Okay. So, so it's available. Yeah. So in theory, someone could watch your lesson and then go, you know, as they're driving, when you don't want to watch a

50:57

YouTube video, they could listen to it or jogging or whatever, listen to the audio to review. That's great.

51:03

Yeah. Yeah. So I have, I have a lot of, sorry, volunteers who have done various things that's, you know, here and there, which

51:11

I haven't mentioned, but there's always little things like that. People, they took the initiative and said, look, we're doing this for,

51:16

I live with faith, can we do it for you? And that's great. If somebody can do something like that, that, that I don't have to worry about, it's great.

51:24

It takes the admin off me and I can focus on my lessons. Well, very cool.

51:32

Yeah. So Angela, thank you for sharing your story and, and telling us, giving us behind the scenes for the, you know, the, the project you're working on and how people can get involved.

51:44

And I'm really excited to see it continue to grow. I think it's a real help to both beginners and people who have learned

51:52

Greek, but want to try to use Greek in an active way and kind of get, get to talking and listening and things.

51:58

So it's wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, it's my pleasure. And it's also encouraging to hear having comments from all over the world, from people who are using my lessons and enjoying them.

52:12

And yeah, so keep, keep interacting and yeah, just thank you for everybody that is helping me to make this happen.

52:23

Yeah. Great. Well, thank you. Maybe we'll have to talk again at some point in the future about getting an update on how the project's going.

52:30

Great. My pleasure. Intro and outro music is

52:35

Funky Thanksgiving by Admiral Bob, used with gratitude under Creative Commons 3 .0