Learning ancient greek

[Anonymous No.18318087]

After summer I'm gonna start learning ancient greek and i want to be prepared.
What are the best books, apps and recourses for learning ancient greek?
And what texts are the easiest to read?

[Anonymous No.18318097]

>>18318087
I did it and it's a waste of time. You just want to do it so you can tell people you have learnt it.

[Anonymous No.18318102]

>>18318097
I have things I want to read

[Anonymous No.18318107]

>>18318087
Maybe you can try the "Athenaze" inductive method for ancient greek.

[Anonymous No.18318130]

>>18318107
I'm considering buying luke's grammar lectures on his website and when done with them follow his athenaze reading by getting my own italian athenaze

[Anonymous No.18318343]

Universities love assigning these books. Take that for what you will.

An Independent Study Guide to Reading Greek— Joint Association of Classical Teachers

A Student Handbook of Greek and English Grammar — Corrigan, Peter L.,Mondi, Robert

Introduction to Greek (Ancient Greek Edition) — Shelmerdine, Cynthia W.

Reading Greek: Text and Vocabulary— Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek, Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek

Reading Greek: Grammar and Exercises — Joint Association of Classical Teachers

Greek: An Intensive Course, 2nd Revised Edition — Hardy Hansen, Gerald M. Quinn

[Anonymous No.18318922]

bump

[Anonymous No.18319001]

>>18318087
Ancient greek is hard, has many dialects and it's uses are just translations. Atleast latin could have some future uses: in case it becomes lingua franca again.
So consider it as a passionate investment, only if you really, really, like Ionic or Koiné. Maybe you will like to take notes in it (kinda cool) or another use might be reading ancient poetry properly but you would be singing it to yourself since not many know it.

[other anon No.18319049]

>>18319001
I'm a philosophy student, so I'll use it for future scholarship.
But since Luke (scorpio something) has made latin one of the easiest languages to learn on youtube, I'm considering learning that by myself after uni

[Anonymous No.18319062]

ancient greek isnt very usefull in modern times since no new texts can be studied

[Anonymous No.18319798]

bump

[Anonymous No.18319800]

>>18319062
brainlet cope.

[actually OP* No.18319802]

>>18319049

[Anonymous No.18319839]

Thanks OP my boss walked past and I got fired

[Anonymous No.18319873]

>>18319839
now you have time to learn ancient greek as well

[Anonymous No.18320051]

>>18318087
I've been studying it ever since covid hit and here is my advice.

Start with Homeric Greek and use Pharr (a) or the most recent one Reading Course in Homeric Greek (b). In my next post, I'll copy paste Pharr's argument for the beginner starting with Homeric Greek over Attic.
a) https://archive.org/details/homericgreekabo00phargoog

b, book 1) https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=187CE57C79A379173D5CC751278700C1

b, book 2) https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=C2C8A5B1EA588A56839E01047C56DD8B

Resources for Homeric Greek
1) https://commons.mtholyoke.edu/hrgs/
This website has video lessons that match with Pharr's textbook. Only downside is that words are pronounced with a heavy American accent.

2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJTq1rtB22U&list=PLv6lcWTkqoQgLuiUXHWE_b96RmvR4CIw7
This is an alternative that is also based on Pharr's textbook. Suffers the same issue of a heavy American accent.

3) https://bridge.haverford.edu/select/
A website that outputs an excel sheet of vocab to be easily imported into anki to make a deck of cards within minutes

If you are more interested in Attic, use Athenaze and use the following recordings. Get the Teacher's handbook off libgen for insta translation of the reading passages and to correct your exercises.

1) https://www.patreon.com/posts/36186862
Although these audio recordings are on patreon, Luke provides these for free. He uses the Lucian pronunciation and it's essentially a hybrid of Modern/Attic. Benefits: free and not done with an American accent

2) https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qkvdseujnlsfa26/AABsBWkmL3WvfI7GcIk4fiCOa?dl=0
Audio recordings using the Reconstructed Attic pronunciation. Benefits: free and doesn't have a heavy American accent.

3) https://app.memrise.com/course/2029892/athenaze-vocab-with-audio/
Prebuilt vocab deck for Athenaze books 1 & 2. Uses the Modern Greek pronunciation.

Finally, if you don't know shit about grammar in your own language or any other language, it's going to be like climbing a mountain with your legs cut off. Despite that, make sure you understand the grammatical concepts being taught in Greek and your native lang before continuing on to the next chapter.

[Anonymous No.18320105]

>>18320051
Why Xenophon must be replaced with Homer for beginner students.

The Romans used to do exactly this when teaching their schoolboys Greek. Quintilian himself praised this method and Goethe shilled this method as well.


Textbooks neeeded (3)

1) one that introduces Homeric grammar plus exercises
2) one that shows the differences between this and Attic Greek
3) a reader that introduces the student to simple plays by Euripides and Plato's dialogues

Why Homer over Xenophon

1) Homer's literary quality is higher
2) captures the students' attention
3) Attic Greek is not the pinnacle
4) Starting from the beginning allows the student to develop his knowledge of the language chronologically, more smoothly
4) Homer's grammar and syntax is easier than Attic, less forms to memorize
>83 Homeric Forms vs 106 Attic forms
>most are so rare that they should just be ignored
>if you eliminate these rare ones, 53 Homeric forms vs 78 Attic forms
>here we can see that 50% more forms need to be memorized to read the first 4 books of Anabasis than the first 6 of the Iliad
5) most textbooks rely on making references to Homeric Greek anyway in order to teach Attic Greek
6) there are more grammatical irregularities in Attic than Homeric
7) Homeric syntax is easier than Xenophon's (no winding sentences)
8) experiments have shown that new students acquire the language better via Homer than Xenophon
9) Homeric vocabulary is not as large as Xenophon and allows the student to read the Homeric hymns w/o much trouble
>Both the Iliad and the Odyssey used 1,965 words once
>266 in books 1 - 6 of the Illiad
>Xenophon has 3,021
>433 in Anabasis
10) Since acquiring vocab is of great importance, Homer's words allow the student to begin with the most fundamental meanings upon which he may build his treasure of words.
11) Since Xenophon didn't actually live in Athens, he lived mostly abroad, he was far removed from Attic refinement and how they used words (i.e. would use words differently than Athenians). Thus, his writings are a bad way to learn this dialect
12) Other Greek writers share more words with Homer than with Xenophon.
>Greek dramatists, Hesiod, elegiac poets
>However Prose writers like Thucydides, Demosthenes, Lysias etc share more w/ Xenophon
>Xenophon is better for those who want to read orators and the New Testament, but the advantage is slight
13) Students who wish to read silver age or Medieval Latin will do better if they can read
Cicero, Caesar, Virgil etc. Students who wish to study romance languages in depth would fare better if they start with Latin. Hence, students of Greek should start at the beginning.
14) Homer will keep the student interested to continue thereby making grammar drills not
seem as useless drudgery.
15) Homer interests both the man and the child (children aged 9-14 have proven this via experiments)
16) other languages aren't taught with two dialects, therefore Greek should focus on one.

[Anonymous No.18320263]

>>18320105
How big is the difference between attic and homeric greek?

[Anonymous No.18320416]

>>18320051
>>18320105

Thanks, that seems like a really useful guide.

>Finally, if you don't know shit about grammar in your own language or any other language, it's going to be like climbing a mountain with your legs cut off. Despite that, make sure you understand the grammatical concepts being taught in Greek and your native lang before continuing on to the next chapter.
I'm danish and in public school they had translated all the grammatical terms like verbs pronouns etc. into danish, then when you went to gymnasium (after public school before uni) they started suddenly using the latin terms, so my grammatical terminology is fucked - thank you for a reminding me to catch up on that.

[Anonymous No.18320433]

>>18320263
Pretty small. There are differences in some noun/verb endings, meaning between the original Homeric and Attic words, and there is new grammar in Attic that doesn't exist in Homeric. Besides that, it's pretty much the same.
One thing that must be said, however, is that Pharr was making this argument when there was no such thing as Athenaze, i.e. a graded reader that increases in difficulty as it presents new grammar gradually. In his day, new students were given original sentences from Xenophon, a bunch of grammar, paradigms, and told to translate, translate, translate. In short, since we have Athenaze, the beginner can start with either dialect without being overwhelmed.

[Anonymous No.18320454]

>>18320433
Does it make sense translating shorter stuff in attic? Stuff like the presocratics, the greek magical papyri etc.? I could imagine it would be nice to translate a text from one end to the other, but maybe these texts are to complicated?

[Anonymous No.18320533]

>>18320416
>I'm danish
Ah, seems like it will be even harder to learn the Greek grammar via English grammar, kek. In Pharr/Athenaze they don't use the original Greek grammatical term (e.g. αἰτιᾱτική) but the English equivalent (accusative). If you decide to use one of these textbooks, I advise making a chart/flash cards that has the English (Accusative) on one side and the Danish equivalent on the other side. Best of luck.
>>18320454
Athenaze has what you are looking for. They have exercises that have you translate simple, made up, sentences, that feature a new grammar point being taught, from Greek into English and vice versa. However, it also has original Attic Greek taken from writers like Callimachus at the end of each chapter as a "reward". For example, at the end of chapter 1 they have a line from Heraclitus "πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει" Everything moves and nothing stays
Get the answer book to make sure you get them right. Only downside, it is for the 1990 version of the book so not everything will match up if you get a later edition.
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=2A46D7C3B304D8DC8162A59E27F82A1C

[Anonymous No.18320578]

>>18320533
In gymnasium and uni they use the latin grammar terms like they use in english grammar, so i know some: it's just in need of a freshen up.

About the presocratics: i have the kirk and raven book on the presocs and I'm really excited to read them in the original. The book has a lot of greek words that i have yet to be able to read so I'm excited to read some in athenaze. I've read that the italian version is the one to get - am i right on that?

[Anonymous No.18320632]

>>18320578
Yes. Italian Athenaze has the benefit of using longer reading passages and pictures so that you can connect words to images instead of a translation equivalent. The issue with it is that the grammar explanations are, naturally, in Italian and uses Italian grammar to mirror the Greek. If you can't read in Italian, the English version can be used just for the grammar explanations since both versions of the books line up chapter by chapter. Give this vid a watch if you want more info between the differences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W0rgKnuuiU&t=348s