Hey, Andrew! Teach me some Greek! for a homeschooled child

[sharona12]

I am homeschooling my grandson this fall and will be using Hey, Andrew!
I know nothing about Greek so this is all new to me (us). He is 10 years old, 5th grade and an avg. student. Am trying to go slow so that he can absorb everything and not overload him with too many new things.

Any opinions about this beginners course for his age group? Any comments, suggestions will be greatly appreciated- positive, negative or neutral.

[PeterD]

Hi,

The Hey, Andrew! series teaches the Greek of the New Testament if I am not mistaken. The following website may prove helpful: www.classical-homeschooling.org.

Good luck!!

-PeterD

[Emma_85]

I don't want to put you off or anything, but... (when someone starts a sentence like that there is always going to be a 'but' isn't there )... don't you think 10 might be a bit too young to start learning Greek? Learning an ancient language like Greek is not like learning say French. It's very hard to just 'pick up'. It requires that you know about cases, conjugations, verb classes and syntax. Latin may actually be an easier option, you can start learning Latin at 10 (believe me I know), but I doubt you can learn much useful Greek. Of course it won't hurt to learn a bit Greek ...

[sharona12]

Emma
This is not an intensive course in Greek. Just learning the alphabet and a few simple words the 1st year. Level 3 (which he will not get into until 2 yrs from now)is described as
1) alphabet and vocab review
2)read and write simple sentences (I guess like "See Jane run")
3) 2nd declension nouns , present active verbs

I don't intend for him to be a Greek expert or anything like that. Just familiarize him with the alphabet, some basic words, and an expectation that he can go on to learn more, if he chooses to do so when he gets to college. I think that if we go slowly over the next 6-7 yrs he will probably feel comfortable in a college classroom setting of intro Greek.

Also, we are also learning Latin via the "Latin Road to English Grammar" integrated into his Language Arts classes this year. This too, will be done on a slow and steady track. I am not in a hurry. Have 7 yrs to get him prepared for college level courses.

I do know that if he knows some Latin and Greek that his English vocab will be greatly enhanced. Regardless of what type occupation he chooses when he matures, Latin and Greek words and basics will serve him well. Law, medicine , engineering, architecture, etc. are all heavily influenced by the "classical" languages. Knowing the meaning of the root words and being able to recognize them will help him in anything he chooses to do.

Thank you for your comments. Feel free to add anything that you think is pertinent. I will be a regular visitor- lurking if not posting. This is a learning adventure for me too. And I fully intend to tap your font of knowledge (and others who post here) regularly over the next few years.

[rimon-jad]

I started with Hebrew when I was...hm...10.
This is a suitable age for learning ANY language.

[rimon-jad]

But wait a second! You do not want your grandson to become some kinda geek, do you? Make sure he does a lot of sports. Like Socrates, Plato, Pindar, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, ...
Greeks would probably go nuts if they had a sk8board.
[face=SPIonic]MHDEN AGAN[/face] - Nothing too much.

[Eureka]

I agree with rimon-jad.

Try it. If it's too early, wait a few years and try again. It's not as if there'd be any pressing reason not to.

[Emma_85]

I don't intend for him to be a Greek expert or anything like that. Just familiarize him with the alphabet, some basic words, and an expectation that he can go on to learn more, if he chooses to do so when he gets to college. I think that if we go slowly over the next 6-7 yrs he will probably feel comfortable in a college classroom setting of intro Greek.

Hehehe, then he'll be just fine. If it's just memorising easy vocab and learning the alphabet, well the earlier the better!

I started with Hebrew when I was...hm...10.
This is a suitable age for learning ANY language.

Well... I have no idea how difficult Hebrew really is, but I'm guessing it's very hard. Now I started Latin when I was 10 and I thought it was easy at first - until we hit the Dative at which point my brain sort of started to protest and finally gave up when shorty afterwards the Ablative was introduced and I didn't grasp what adverbials were either. I had no concept of what I was learning, I was just learning it and I just can't see how one can learn ancient Greek without a basic understanding of what a language is, which is something normal 10 year old don't have (especially if their mother tongue is English, that'll make understanding inflective languages intuitively nearly impossible I should think). Some in my class did have that understanding, but I'm afraid I didn't . That's why I had some reservations about this talk of a 10 year old learning ancient Greek, but as long as it's a slow course there should be little trouble. I just don't think most 10 year old can comprehend ancient Greek syntax and grammar.

[rimon-jad]

My language - Slovak - uses nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental, so I don´t have a problem with declining and conjugating stuff. Most of semitic languages are easy, except for the verb conjugations. I study Sahidic Coptic at the moment. Bye.