Please aid with choosing fit...

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peripatein1
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Please aid with choosing fit...

Post by peripatein1 »

Which textbook is considered the most thorough and profound, yet suitable for beginners with Latin proficiency, containing both ancient authentic passages from its start, much vocabulary, and many questions for revise and comprehension as well as etymological and cultural cultivation?

Forogot to mention the following indispensables:

1) I'd like a fine, thorough discussion of the dual, for instance, integrated in the main body.

2) MUCH austere stress on accentuation and its application.

3) Variety of ancient authors in the reading passages.

annis
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Re: Please aid with choosing fit...

Post by annis »

peripatein1 wrote:Which textbook is considered the most thorough and profound, yet suitable for beginners with Latin proficiency, containing both ancient authentic passages from its start, much vocabulary, and many questions for revise and comprehension as well as etymological and cultural cultivation?

Forogot to mention the following indispensables:

1) I'd like a fine, thorough discussion of the dual, for instance, integrated in the main body.

2) MUCH austere stress on accentuation and its application.

3) Variety of ancient authors in the reading passages.
I know no book which meets all the requirements you give. The Hansen & Quinn Greek: An Intensive Course (a modern text; not available on Textkit) does the best job in getting real Greek from a variety of authors before the student quickly. Someone comfortable with Latin is not going to find anything too surprising in this book. The dual is not well integrated. Vocabulary comes quickly.

For texts here on Textkit, William Smith's A First Greek Course moves quickly, and the dual is used from the start, but gives no wild Greek, only lots of practice sentences. And lots of vocabulary, mostly preparing you for Xenophon, it appears.

Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners is mostly authentic Greek, but only Homer of course, the dual is not only presented but occurs in the texts. The vocabulary is only that which occurs in the first book of the Iliad (611 lines of verse), but this is provides a solid foundation.

You need to decide which of the indespensables is most important. Each textbook author writes to correct some failing of other books, but usually at the expense of some other area.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

mingshey
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Post by mingshey »

I have a Chase & Phillips' "A New Introduction To Greek". Which is notorious for being too terse. But it presents in (relatively) quick glance most of the grammatical elements, and shows quotes from various Greek authors and inscriptions for the exercise. Seldom from Homer, mostly from Attic and Ionic, or maybe Doric, and even one or two from NT and Euclid.(This was the beginning of my search for the greek text of Euclid.)

But I think it's not for a self-tutor. Nor it is recommended as one by amazon reviews. With a good teacher, though, it is good, for later reference, too, for its compactness. And with a Latin background I think you'll find it not very difficult. They say if you have no background in Latin the grammar will be frustrating. For an English speaker this might be true. I have little background in Latin, but as a speaker of an agglutinate language the greek grammar was not so frustrating. Just another things for me to get used to. It does not deal with duals in the body, though it does include duals in the tables near the end of the book.

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