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/lit/ - Literature

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14304173 No.14304173 [Reply] [Original]

/lit/ always tell me to start with the Greeks, and I did that. But I'd rather do it prooperly now and read the original texts.

How did /lit/ learn ancient greek to read the original texts?

>> No.14304177

>>14304173
Sorry for asking this but I need to know: Are you -may Allah forgive me for uttering this word- a gay?

>> No.14304214

>>14304177
My sexual orientation is none of your business

>> No.14304659
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14304659

>> No.14305310
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14305310

We had Greek (and Latin) in gymnasium.
The level was kind of low since many of students were unmotivated brainlets, but by the end we were able to read poetry in several dialects with the help of a dictionary. With 3 hours per week it took 4 years to get there, but if you are motivated and smart you could do it in one year. It will also help a lot if you already know a Slavic language, German or Latin.
I think it's probably not worth it to learn Greek just for prose, but the poetry is so amazing you will not regret it.
I don't know a good English language textbook, but I would try to go fast and start memorizing grammatical tables and vocab from the very beginning so you can start reading on Perseus as soon as possible. I'd recommend to start with Lucian or the New Testament, then move on to guys like Xenophon and Herodotus and maybe Plato. When you understand all the grammar you can start reading poetry and realize how none of the translations into English do it justice.

>> No.14305456

>>14305310
Nice post thanks anon.

>so you can start reading on Perseus as soon as possible.
Are you referring to http://www.perseus.tufts.edu here?

>> No.14305463

>>14305310
What compels you to lie on an anonymous forum? Nobody reads Latin, let alone Greek after 4 years of "studying" it in high school. Having Perseus provide you with every single more difficult verb form and generously (ab)using translations does not account for reading.

>> No.14305506

>>14305463
In addition, just so you can see how the poster I addressed in my previous posts is a shameless liar:

The normative grammar of Greek has been derived from classical Attic prose (Xenophon, Plato, Thucydides...). Herodotus (who writes in the ionic dialect) and the NT are not suitable for a beginner.

>> No.14306497

>>14305463
>incapable of learning a language in 4 years
The problem is with you buddy

>> No.14306627

I went through the two Athenaze books over an academic year, then the following year was able to read an annotated edition of the Apology with more or less ease (obscure vocab and very irregular constructions aside). Greek is a really fun language, and you will be highly motivated if you like the philosophy.

>> No.14306667

>>14306627
But can you read Homer? Or NT? Or do you have to learn each dialect?

>> No.14306720

>>14305310
Why German? I get how the other languages would be valuable, but German?

>> No.14306772

>>14306497
4 years of passive high school "learning" is insufficient. At university, >>14306627
is a normal pace; simple prose with commentary during the second year. But saying that you "know" Greek requires a lot more than that.

>> No.14307285

>>14306720
he's saying it would be useful to already know a highly inflected language, which English isn't.

>> No.14307296

has anyone had success in studying more than a single language at once?

I've been studying French for a while, then I have Latin up next and after that I want to learn Greek, but it's frustrating having to put two languages I really want to learn on hold until I'm at a good level with French.

>> No.14307423

>>14307296
I would just do one desu

>> No.14307480

Does anyone have any book recommendations that would work well for self-study? Also Attic not Koine

>> No.14307551

>>14307480
Greek: An Intensive Course, 2nd Revised Edition

>> No.14307559

>>14307480
Either this >>14304659 (second edition, not first edition) or Hansen & Quinn (old classic but notoriously hard)

Athenaze gets shit on a lot, not sure why

Pharr's Homeric Greek has a cult following

>> No.14307660

>>14306667
NT is baby-Greek: if you can read Attic, you can read NT. Besides, the Church Fathers wrote in beautiful Attic prose. Homeric Greek, on the other hand, is an added difficulty, but not an insuprable one. I've tried to read the Iliad and understood about 80% of what happened, with the other 20% mostly being esoteric vocab and weird spellings/constructions. From what I've heard, it takes about a semester to get acclimated to Homer.

Of course, all this comes with the caveat that >>14306772 stated: people spend their whole careers just digging into the meaning of a handful of Greek terms. So, though I plan to study Greek for the rest of my life, I can only call myself "sufficiently competent" at Greek on my philosophy PhD applications.

>> No.14308017

>>14304214
based.

Muslims need to fuck off. Such totalitarian people.

>> No.14308289

John Taylor's course is pretty remedial if you're into that sort of thing