All right, Veeky Forums, I'm falling for the 'start with the Greeks' meme.
It will probably take months if not years. I figured I might as well learn Ancient Greek along the way.
I know that Athenaze exists. Is it good? Any other good resources to recommend?
My native language is French. Obviously, I can also speak English to some extent.
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N'allez pas perdre votre temps à apprendre le grec en autodidacte ; vous pouvez l'apprendre en étudiant libre dans une université. Une fois une certaine base acquise, vous pourrez continuer par vous-même.
I'd rather study it in autodidact than attend university courses as an independent student.
Are you sure about this? I was considering taking evening courses in Greek (I'm already studying engineering) at my university, but then I found lots of material online. I thought it might be easier to pace it on your own...
I'm curious whether it's at all worthwhile to attempt to learn Latin and/or Ancient Greek for Veeky Forums purposes.
It used to be so commonplace for educated people across Europe to simply learn those two like it's nothing.
y r we so dum now
Okay, so here's the thing:
1) I would recommend learning Latin before Greek - it is much easier and would establish a lot of the grammar and language conventions, which would be a huge pain to jump into both feet into Greek. If you are motivated and a good autodiadact, then you could survive it.
2) Athenaze is what we used at the university. Everyone at the university has problems with it, but it seems to be kept in the curiculum because it has lengthy Greek passages more or less curtailed to what you have learned. The discouraging thing about Athenaze is that in its readings they drop in one or two conventions which won't make sense until one or two chapters later. So, if you take the book, don't get too discouraged when tripping on something in the text, because chances are they haven't taught you it.
3) If you have to study Greek, study Attic. Athenaze is in Attic, so you're fine there. But Homeric Greek is much harder, and while Koine is easier than both Homeric and Attic, it does not equip you to read the Epics, the Pre-Socratics, the Tragedians, Plato, or Aristotle.etc
4) I think the best approach would be to have a strong book on grammar in English (on Greek, or at least Latin), a copy of Athenaze, and another guide. I would encourage you to slowly work through two Attic Greek textbooks at the same time, as they would most likely cover you on both ends.
5) Buy used, or loan from libraries.etc
6) Studying with someone else is always a benefit.
7) Your new best friend: perseus.tufts.edu
It's definitely worthwhile but it's a big time investment. Of the millions of students who were taught Latin and Greek, probably 20% or less were ever able to read Latin and Greek with anything like fluency.
OP I learned Greek with Pharr but I'm not sure if I recommend it. If you don't already know Latin it would be very barebones. But it's really cool to jump right in to Homer, as Pharr has you do.
Whatever method you do just do it every day and you will go far over the course of a year or two. Even when you have periods where you don't feel like doing any Greek, just look at it for 5 minutes a day to keep the circuits warm.
It's easy to put a lot of time into a language via the small times throughout the day. Have a list of vocab in your pocket or even on your phone and glance at it when you can. Or doodle verb paradigms when you're bored.
That's all I have really is general advice like that. Greek morphology is fairly difficult but once you have it down plus a few thousand words, you can actually read a lot of Greek, which I can't say for Latin, where there's a long period after learning the grammar before you can read well.
>y r we so dum now
distractions
jefferson learnt french on a voyage across the atlantic because he had literally nothing else to do other than sit in his cabin all day, every day, with a lexicon
The most popular textbook to learn Greek from French is Hermaion, you can find it very easily in possibly any University library if you wanna see how it is and if it fits you. That's the one we used in class, and it seems to be very well-made in terms of progression (it starts quite easy not to discourage you, and becomes really serious mid-way when you're probably committed already) choice of vocabulary and so on. Also, if I'm not mistaken, all the texts it uses are original, so it's more motivating maybe.
Talking about good choice of vocabulary, maybe it's a little too "optimised" though, in the sense that you might feel like not knowing a lot. I think it's because the book heavily focuses on getting all the grammar (and there's a lot) well-established, assuming that you can look up the exact meaning of the words by yourself anyway.
The book claims that it contains everything to let you start enjoying Greek works in their original version, the simpler ones at least, which is somewhat true if don't just skim through it, and are ready to still not read those books with utmost ease. It's a great starting point in any case. Somehow made me enjoy reading Greek more than Latin even though I'm way less proficient.
>But Homeric Greek is much harder
Respectfully disagree there. It superficially must look much harder coming from Attic but once you get used to its peculiarities of grammar and vocab he's really easy, besides having to look up a hapax every 30 lines. His general sentence structure is very paratactic.
Coming from Homer to Attic, there are some far harder authors in Attic than Homeric imo.
Struggled with Greek for about 5 years now, used a lot of text books Here are my opinions
-Learning Latin first is not needed, the only benefit it will give at start will be a familiarity with declined words (unlike english) and basic grammar concept. If you know what accusative and dative is you don't have to look into it. Moreover almost every greek text book explains what accusative and dative is. I don't believe latin will hinder your progress or confuse you, but it will cost you time, which can be spent on learning greek.
-You should memorize, not learn but memorize, the basic grammar tables before starting intermediate greek. You should be able to decline any word. You should memorize the declensions of verbs and nouns. You just sit and repeat 50-100-150 times until you know them by heart, sorry but there is no other way. It is far better to memorize them from start then to start reading intermediate greek, always looking bad at the grammar table etc.
-In a similar way you should learn the most common 1000ish greek words. Most of them are shit like and,this,that but never underestimate how much you can decrease your dictionary usage by just memorizing a 1000. You can learn other words as you go or use dictionary. IIRC new testament was composed of %80 unique words that were rarely used again and %20 common words that were used repeatedly, by learning %20 you will have a much easy time reading it.
-Use more than one textbook before starting reading intermediate greek. This goes for language retards like me, kudos to those who are linguistic geniouses, but I do believe 2-3 textbooks will not only fill in any gaps that you might have but also will force you to memorize the grammar and common vocab that I mentioned above. Below is a list that worked best for me.
1-Reading Greek. Best for self study as it has a nice self study guide. Going through this book once will put you in the interediate level, if you do as the book says.
2-Athenaze, easier than Reading Greek but it introduces new grammar concepts and expect the reader to get it, you might have aorist(past tense in greek, well kinda not always) at unit 6 but might read it at unit 4 (with meaning given in vocab in past tense) which can confuse you. The teaching book is not designed for self study but for people who are already experts in Greek so it won help. The pacing is very nice though so after reading greek I recommend finishing it to refresh your vocab and grammar.
3-Learn to Read Greek. Do not confuse it with the first book, this is from Yale Press while the first one was from joint classical something something form UK. Learn to Read Greek is very comprehensive you will learn details about gramma and vocab that you might not find in the previous books, it has tons of exercizes and forces you to memorize a lot of vocab and grammar that I mentioned above. The reason you should not start with this is because this book is very intensive and hard for beginners. cont on second post
3-cont, take it easy at first and then pick up the pace with this book. The advantage of this series many. 1-It has an exercise book that is much more than others. 2-All reading assignments are from original greek, you will not read greek designed for students by teachers but actual greek. 3-as I said both vocab and grammar is very detailed and you will learn how x author used a word in such a way while y author used in another, or in grammar tables there will be caveats about how such and such exceptions might occur in such and such authors/period.
For starters it might be a bit more than you can chew but do end your beginning phase with this book. Also avoid the book Greek an Invensive course, fucking orange covered piece of shit which is more of a grammar reference than a studybook.
4-Attica: Intermediate Classical Greek. Also from yale press. start this book after you finish learn to read greek. This book is a mixture between beginner books and actual greek text. Dont jump from a comfy language learning book to translating from the fucking teubner (greek only) book. Use this first, it has a lot of caveats and tips on how to translate/read the greek text. A very useful book tbqh.
5-Loeb, avoid the fucks who attack loeb for a bad learning method (plenty of articles were written about this, how 20th century elitist classicist just discarded method of loeb which was used throughout 19th century), loeb is excellent for starters. Most if not all loeb translations are very literal and you can use it as if its a hand dictionary. Bewarn though some hard works have less literal translation and sometimes grammar is changed to fit better into english (Historical Present in Latin for example is translated sometiems as Past) But mind that you will read from loeb after doing all the work with the previous textbooks so I believe you will be just fine. Just read some easy greek like Xenophon, Anabasis is nice.
6-Read the actual Greek.
So its Reading Greek->Athenaze->Learn to Read Greek->Attica->Loeb->Teubner etc
>learning ancient languages to read books
what is the purpose? over two thousand years have past. you will never catch the nuances and same feelings and moods intended by word choice as will people who grew up surrounded by the language.
>you will never catch the nuances and same feelings and moods intended by word choice as will people who grew up surrounded by the language.
You can, there are plenty of commentaries that point out those.
I meant in the original language you dolt.
its like the difference between speaking japanese and watching anime, vs. speaking english and having to have every joke explained by [translators note: blah blah blah means this in japanese culture, which is referencing blah blah blah....]
I know what you mean, what I'm saying is plenty if not all of the nuances, word plays etc are understood and deciphered, and if you learn the ancient language you can pretty much understand most if not all puns.
Cyclical History, at some point we will reach the same point of society as them.
Thanks for the encouragement. I don't think that I know anyone around me that would describe learning a dead language worthwhile, so it's definitely pleasant to read. Doing a little bit everyday is definitely the best approach.
Thanks for the clarifications in regards to Homeric, Attic and Koine. I also bookmarked your online dictionary, it will probably be pretty useful.
Thank you both for your thorough recommendations. It's really nice to have an overview of different materials, like this.
I'll try both approaches in parallel. That is the French book, Hermaion, and Reading Greek to see what fits the best to me. Then, I'll go on with the rest of the list 'Athenaze->Learn to Read Greek->Attica->Loeb->Teubner etc'.
Better get started soon if I want to ever finish!
Do yourself a favor and get this and nothing else as of yet.
I will take what you said and turn it into a nifty chart for people to use in the future.
Have you done Latin as well? I would be interested to know what your flow of recommended texts in Latin would be.
Not him but I can tell you what worked for me learning Latin.
Get Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, the grammar/vocab pamphlets, a decent dictionary and a grammar (I've always used Greenough but I'm sure it's not the only good one).
Read through the stories in Orberg, not progressing to the next lesson until you're sure you understand every sentence of the one before it. Memorize the vocabulary completely. Do study the grammar formally, memorize paradigms, etc. Concepts that aren't explained fully enough for you in the little booklet can be explained in your big grammar. It should go without saying that it is crucial that you have the declensions/conjugations in your head backwards and forwards, just as in Greek.
After finishing Orberg I I like the idea of going to Orberg II, which is just another reader that gradually takes you into unedited prose. I did not do this myself. jumping right into Ovid and Cicero, but that was a steep transition and it was pretty hard for a while.
The most important thing in learning Latin is reading practice. A handful of doctored sentences do not give enough practice for anyone to read Latin comfortably. I'm not an advocate of the pure natural method, by all means study the grammar formally, but Orberg will give you a ton of practice, more than any other textbook out there.
Cambridge puts out really good editions of Classical texts with commentary but I only own one. There are a ton of free commentaries from the 19th century on google books. I generally buy Oxfords/Teubners and when I run into difficulty I turn to those old commentaries.
In terms of what to read, read whatever you like of course but don't neglect the comedians. Getting a feeling for how day-to-day speech worked really helps you get a handle on the language in general.
Some "easy" authors that aren't often mentioned for beginners: Isidore, Ampelius, ad Herennium and Cicero's De Invent., Sallust. For poetry, Ovid is the "easiest" imo.
Macte!
I know this is about the Greeks, but i guess it's better to ask here instead of just making a new thread.
How do i go about learning French?
schaums grammar. memorize all of the verbs in the front and work through it.
pick up vocab any way you want.
So, with other languages, after learning the modern I gradually grow confortable with older texts. I know greek goes waaaaaay back but, would it be possible to use this approach?
The Greek meme is ironic because so many Athenians, most famously Plato, thought their culture was too decadent and preferred the Spartan way of life.
No. Ancient greek and modern greek are thousands of years apart. That'd be like learning french to try and read latin.
yeah but you can just read ancient greek texts translated into koine greek. virtually lossless.
unless youre super worried about the meter, in which case you should still be able to sound out the homeric to get the gist of it, and could even read a side by side homeric/koine translation.
but there are texts in between, would following the continuum work?