Strong's Greek dictionary has 5624 entries.
Do you need to know all of them to understand the New Testament?
Learning word families greatly reduces the burden of learning vocabulary
Clearly some of the 5624 words are more common than others, and you don't need to know every word to be able to read parts of the New Testament quite comfortably. But there is another factor that reduces the burden of learning Greek vocabulary.
Greek, like English, has different forms of the same word.
A word may have a noun, verb, adjective and adverb form for example. All related.
Easy to recognize.
Recognizable.
Recognizably the same.
Capable of recognition.
You get the idea.
These words are listed separately in the dictionary, but you didn't learn them separately. You learned the endings, and you can recognize the words.
Let's look at a Greek example of word forms
Remember the story of the rich man who asks Jesus "what must I do to inherit (κληρονομήσω klēronomēsō) eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
The man uses κληρονομήσω (klēronomēsō) which is a form of the verb κληρονομέω (klēronomeō), "I inherit".
Note: κληρονομήσω (klēronomēsō) is used 18 times, so it would be defined in a Reader's Greek New Testament* in a footnote. Reader's versions give you possible translations for less common words, such as those used less than 30 times.
"Inherit" κληρονομήσω (klēronomēsō) is closely related to the noun κληρονομία (klēronomia) which means "inheritance".
The ending is different, just like it is different in English.
Walking through the Strong's dictionary, we find κληρονόμος (klēronomos), which means "heir" or "inheritor". And κλῆρος (klēros) which means "portion" or "lot" or "inheritance" and is where the other words come from. Plus νόμος (nomos) which means "law" or "rule".
Finally, we have κληρόω (klēroō) "I obtain an inheritance" which is used exactly once, in Ephesians 1:11.
How recognizing word families helps you learn Greek vocabulary
If you are reading Ephesians in Greek, you will need to know something about Greek verb forms before you recognize that ἐκληρώθημεν (eklērōthēmen) is derived from κληρόω (klēroō) but you can see κληρ (klēr) in all of these words.
So instead of 5 new words, used from 1 to 18 times each, we effectively have 1 word family used 61 times.
If you can recognize related words like this, then the task of learning enough Greek vocabulary to read the New Testament in Greek is greatly simplified.
It is helpful to learn the endings that tell you what verb form it is, or what noun form it is, but you can often figure out how the word is being used from context.
How many words do you need to learn to read the New Testament in Greek?
So how many words do you actually need to learn to read the New Testament in Greek?
One list I have has 350 word families and about 380 words that do not come in families. (Some of the loners like "mustard" are not particularly common.)
Now the task is much simpler.
What would it mean to you to be able to read the Greek New Testament?
The New Testament Greek 1 course at Alpha-Omega Greek Academy will teach you to read one full chapter in Greek.
After that, you will have a foundation for learning more.
The course introduces you to some of the features of Greek grammar so you can read and recognize related words, like the ones above. But it introduces it in a way that is accessible and understandable. You already know the story...
