Koine Greek/Preface

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As you probably already know, Greek and English use different alphabets. Because of this, you need to download and install a Greek font to properly view any of the following pages. If you don't, they will appear as jibberish.

The font used throughout this textbook is SPIonic, a free font developed primarily for Biblical researchers. To download and install it, follow these simple instructions:

  1. Visit the Society of Biblical Literature's Biblical Fonts[deadlink - guessed replacement: Biblical Fonts - SPlegacy Fonts ] page. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
  2. The second item from bottom reads, in part, "SPIonic is a Greek font." Click the attached MAC or WIN button to download the zipped font file.
  3. When the download is complete, open the zip file. It should contain one file, named SPIONIC_.TTF. Copy the file into your system's fonts folder.
  4. To test the installation, open any page below. It may be necessary to completely close all browser windows before the font will display correctly.

Before you begin, a word on prerequisites. This course assumes no previous foreign language knowledge. As I mentioned above, learning a third or fourth language is usually easier than learning a second, but all this course presumes is English fluency.

I have tried to avoid rote memorization where possible, but the fact is that memorization is impossible to avoid completely. Rules of grammar, of accent, even the alphabet itself must simply be memorized. This is not as difficult as many people seem to think, however, and the text will try to provide helps where possible.