At 11:16:17 AM on Wednesday, May 4, 2011, CalecM@...
wrote:

> I've been slogging through ON for a while now, and I have
> a question that may lead to divergent opinions.

> As I read through texts, I can usually get the meaning.
> But when I go to the grammars, I slam hard into a level of
> detail which I think of as "pilpul," the Hebrew word used
> to describe the micro-analysis of Talmudic scholars. So my
> question is this: How much detailed grammar do you all
> feel you need to know to read (not write) ON comfortably?
> Can you read to your satisfaction without knowing all the
> different conjugation patterns? All the different
> declension schemas?

I started reading ON about 23 years ago. For much of that
time I was working at it only once or twice a month, but for
the last few years I've put a lot more time and effort into
it. I'd not say that I read it comfortably even now, though
lexicon and idiom are bigger problems for me than syntax and
morphology. Still, I'd be significantly more comfortable if
I finally forced myself to sit down and fill in the details
of conjugation and declension that I've not managed to pick
up by osmosis over the years. (Perhaps I'll actually do it
now that I'm retiring!) I think it fair to say that I'd
need a pretty thorough knowledge of the morphological
patterns before I'd be willing to say that I read ON
comfortably, though I'd need other things as well.

I'm a professor of mathematics, about to retire, with a
long-standing interest in languages and linguistics,
especially historical linguistics.

Brian