Learning ancient Greek for reading

[Anonymous No.15878859]

Is there any point in learning ancient Greek for this purpose, when very high quality translations will be available for any remotely relevant work? How long does it even take to learn? Where would you get started self-learning it?

[Anonymous No.15878907]

Why are those girls bullying Socrates?

[Anonymous No.15878911]

>>15878859
If you are looking to be a philologer or get into Philology then it'd be a great thing to learn.
I'd recomend this for learning at a basic level: https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/athenaze-book-i-an-introduction-to-ancient-greek-9780190607661?cc=us&lang=en&
if you are not into philology
>very high quality translations will be available for any remotely relevant work

[Anonymous No.15878918]

>>15878907
diogenes

[Anonymous No.15878957]

>>15878859
>Is there any point in learning ancient Greek for this purpose
No, its a stupid pretentious belief. Its more important to read the ancient Greek texts for their content, not for their writing. Learning Italian to read Dante's Divine Comedy makes way more sense than learning Ancient Greek to read Plato. The Divine Comedy is a poem and the beautiful prose plays a huge part in why its still read today.

>when very high quality translations will be available for any remotely relevant work?
There's a lot of debate over which version of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey is the best. Find it kind of silly since they're oral poems anyway. They aren't "good" in the same way Paradise Lost or the Divine Comedy are good, its better to call them "noteworthy" or "influential" or something. As I said before, I feel the content in Homer is more important than the writing. You read Homer to make allusions to it.

>How long does it even take to learn? Where would you get started self-learning it?
Athenaze, pretty sure there are two books in the series. Probably like 2 - 4 years if you're good about it? Personally, I've tried learning languages in the past and I don't have the aptitude for it, so it would probably take me way longer than that.

[Anonymous No.15878983]

>>15878907
Cus he (diogenes) is a cringe hobo

[Anonymous No.15878997]

If you are monolingual and unaware of your own tongue's grammar, ancient Greek will be near impossible to learn on your own.

[Anonymous No.15879040]

Greek is not very important, the corpus is small and entirely translated, and the culturo-linguistic significance of the language and literature in European history is fairly minor. If you want to learn an ancient language, you'll do better with Latin. Loads of later Latin has never been translated and never will be, so you're actually expanding your accessible texts.

[Anonymous No.15879147]

>>15878859
people learn greek mostly to read the new testament. unless you are a christian then there is no point

[Anonymous No.15879177]

>>15878907
Man is merely evil, but woman is cruel.

[Anonymous No.15879258]

It's fun but very difficult. You should learn Latin first in almost all cases. Most of the difficulty doesn't come the fact that you have to really, really do it. You can't be one of those faggots who "learns a little Japanese" for ten years but never seems to know any Japanese. You have to be doing real language study, memorizing grammar and working your way up to real translations.

You will also never be fluent. It will always be at least somewhat difficult to translate ancient Greek. There is no such thing as knowing it like you can know a modern, living language. It's too diverse and too complicated to reconstruct. It's often a bit more like doing math, math which you can get good at, but still, math. Reading a page in your native language flows like water, but doing a calculus problem even in a domain you're quite experienced with will always require some "taking apart." Certain authors like Thucydides will always be HARD math, to boot. That can be lots of fun, and like math, Greek can be a lifetime companion to you if you are truly interested in what you're translating.

If you only want to read some major classics, I wouldn't recommend it. It will take you years to be able to read highly virtuous prose, let alone poetry, and it will still never flow like water, like I said. No one sits down with Aeschylus after "learning Greek," goes "hmm I wonder what Aeschylus is like in Greek!," and just begins reading.

You can get a lot by studying Greek without ever attempting to learn it perfectly. If you want to learn Latin, I recommend learning Latin first, and when you get good at Latin grammar, start taking a look at Greek. Memorize some paradigms, memorize some key vocab using a frequency list (try Dickinson College), and start reading through a Loeb parallel edition of something you like. You might find that you enjoy it and want to learn more. Or you might find that you want to learn just enough to be able to "read Greek" when necessary, but not enough to be a specialist.

[Anonymous No.15879537]

>>15879258
I agree with certain points, as a classicist myself, as Greek is difficult and you often feel like your just 'translating' then really understanding it. However there are people who have been and are able to read Greek as a living language

>“I arrived at Gastons (so the Knock’s home was called) on a Saturday, and he announced that we would begin Homer on Monday. I explained that I had never read a word in any dialect but the Attic, assuming that when he knew this he would approach Homer through some preliminary lessons on the Epic language. He replied merely with a sound very frequent in his conversation which I can only spell ‘Huh’. I found this rather disquieting; and I woke on Monday saying to myself, ‘Now for Homer. Golly!’ The name struck awe into my soul. At nine o’clock we sat down to work in the little upstairs study which soon became so familiar to me. It contained a sofa (on which we sat side by side when he was working with me), a table and chair (which I used when I was alone), a bookcase, a gas stove, and a framed photograph of Mr. Gladstone. We opened our books at Iliad, Book I. Without a word of introduction Knock read aloud the first twenty lines or so in the “new” pronunciation, which I had never heard before. Like Smewgy, he was a chanter; less mellow in voice, yet his frill gutturals and rolling R’s and more varied vowels seemed to suit the bronze-age epic as well as Smewgy’s honey tongue had suited Horace. For Kirk, even after years of residence in England, spoke the purest Ulster. He then translated, with a few, a very few explanations, about a hundred lines. I had never seen a classical author taken in such large gulps before. When he had finished he handed me over Crusius’ Lexicon and, having told me to go through again as much as I could of what he had done, left the room. It seems an odd method of teaching, but it worked. At first I could travel only a very short way along the trail he had blazed, but every day I could travel further. Presently I could travel the whole way. Then I could go a line or two beyond his furthest North. Then it became a kind of game to see how far beyond. He appeared at this stage to value speed more than absolute accuracy. The great gain was that I very soon became able to understand a great deal without (even mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in Greek. That is the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the lexicon, and who then substitute the English word for it, are not reading the Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle. The very formula, ‘Naus means a ship,’ is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, as behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.”

-C.S Lewis

I know I'll never get to this level

[Anonymous No.15879652]

>>15878859
Ancient Greek is to a certain extent untranslatable, 'high quality translations' don't mean much in this context. I don't know if you can ever expect to sit down with a book in ancient Greek and read it like you would a newspaper. But learning at least some ancient Greek, ie getting a grasp on its significance, is very important.
>>15878957
The content is the writing. You have no idea what you're talking about.
>>15879040
You too know nothing.
>>15879258
>You should learn Latin first in almost all cases.
I doubt that's necessary. These are two different languages. There's no reason to spend long hours learning Latin grammar if it's Greek he's after in the first place. Of course like you say Latin is extremely profitable to learn on its own.

[Anonymous No.15879799]

>>15878859
Hello OP, I started learning Greek last year out of personal interest. As of now I'm able to read through most of the New Testament and Xenophon without much trouble. It took about 1-2 hour a day to get at this point.

To answer your question, you need to ask yourself what you want to get out of it? Will you gain a much greater understanding of The Republic reading it Greek vs the multiple translations by people devoted to the study of the language their entire lives? No probably not.

Does the idea of being able to read in The Republic and read the very same thoughts that Plato had as he put pen to paper excite you? Is this going to be enough to motivate you to put in consistent daily effort for the next couple years?

I can tell you at this point after half a year of effort, yes the effort was worth it for me, personally. The other day I was flipping through my copy the Iliad, and was able read through about 25 lines in a row in total clarity. The next line was almost complete gibberish. You need to find the motivation in these moments rather than get discouraged.

>>15878997
I'm a monolingual American and taught myself.... It's not like this is some obscure dialect of Hittite, Greek has been taught in almost every podunk college for the last ~300 years. There's tons of resources available online and in print, bilingual editions of the entire Greek corpus.

>>15879258
I agree with this post for the most part but I don't get why everyone recommends learning Latin first?

[Anonymous No.15880101]

>>15879652
>>15879799
Latin is a good language to learn before you dip your foot in other languages because it's relatively simple in terms of grammar and extremely regular in terms of how to inflect verbs and nouns. It's really does help to learn it because it teaches the bedrock of the concepts of linguistics you'll use when you learn other more complicated languages. If you are dedicated, you can learn most or all of Latin in 3-6 months.

[Anonymous No.15880129]

>>15878907

[Anonymous No.15880558]

>>15878907
That is Diogenes. Socrates would bully the girls.