Ancient Greek

I want to learn Ancient Greek so I can read the classics (Homer, Aristophanes, etc.) and maybe the New Testament in the original language.

Convince me this is a bad idea.

What's the point if you don't share their culture and at-the-time language memes (connotation/intonation)? You won't get the full experience, you can't get the full experience. You're too far removed, even modern Greeks are.

>intonation
*denotation

fomd a good grammar book, read the texts

Hundreds and probably thousands of hours of study for something that is only really a novelty. That said, personally spending so long studying and reading attic and koine Greek made me enjoy studying language as a hobby in itself, with what I read in said language being entirely secondary to my enjoyment of the process of learning it.

If you are doing it solo like I did I wouldn't recommend it if you don't have tons of free time. If I wasn't a former neet who never goes anywhere there is no way I would have had the patience to do it.

It will only make (you) become frustrated with any modern language (you) happen to know because only ancient Hebrew (which is far less sure) competes with it in terms of natural power and raw expressability. [We] laugh and play at zombies and pirates.. Knowing Attic Greek makes one frightfully aware that that is in effect what men and women have become, and on a super small scale. Finally, seeing the world afresh from the lens of the language from which all [our] best ideas flew out of (that have since become irreversibly perverted) may even encourage (you) to become a Jehovah's Witness, as their gloom-and-doom death-in-life doctrines will all of a sudden seem to make perfect sense.
Study botany, instead.

just read it in english

>Convince me this is a bad idea.
it's unnecessary to convince you because you're not going to do it anyway

*tips fedora*...?

lol this, you'll get hrough the introduction to a 'learn greek' book, and possibly chapter 1. Oh well at least you'll know the alphabeta.

Actually, I'm a dirtball. But whatever.

Shows what you know, fag. I'm already on chapter 2.

The Greek of Homer, Aristophanes and the New Testament are all from different stages of Greek evolution and are not mutually intelligible. You would in effect be learning three languages.
If you only want to learn one of them I would go with Koine. That phase of Greek lasted for over a thousand years with people writing in it from all over the Mediterranean. The other two have far, far fewer things to read.

The Greek of homer is closer to modern Greek than Gower's English is to modern English.
It really didn't change that much over time and if you learn one dialect the others would be relatively easy to figure out/learn.

Μιλώ kαι γράφω νεοελληνιkά, η αρχαία ελληνιkή είναι πολύ διαφορετιkή, αλλά υπάρχουν μεριkές kοινές λέξεις. Δεν χρειάζεται να μαθαίνεις αρχαία ελληνιkά για να εkτιμήσεις τα kλασιkά.

μια πολύ νεkρή γλώσσα.

>New Testament
>original language
>Ancient Greek
Typical Christian pagan, doesn't even know the language your own "god" spoke.

Are you saying koine Greek isn't ancient?

Fuck no, it's a great idea to learn Ancient Greek! That being said, there are indeed countless hours of study ahead before you can read something like Homer with anything even remotely comparable to "fluency". 1. Get a good Grammar with tons of exercises. 2. Read a huge amount of easy, dumbed-down textbook stuff as you progress through the course. 3. Make studying a habit, even if you can only consecrate a small amount of time to your daily study. Otherwise your chances of sucess are extremely limited.

Source: Undergraduate Student in Linguistics and Latin, have pretty much spent the entirety of my first semester studying various languages.

I can feel the estrogen and your fedora over here.

Only came in this thread to hand out a This
This

That may be, but Babylonian certainly is not ancient Greek

Who was stronger... Eumaeus the swineherd or Melanthius the goatherd?