Why is Greek so damn Hard?

[Diocletian]

I've been studying Greek for 3 years now and find it impossible.
I've studied Latin during the same period and I find it quite easy
but Greek literally drives me up the wall ... mostly with the bewildering amount of forms... especially with all the damn
vowel and consonant changes..

Does anyone else feel like this or am I the only one slowly
going insane with Greek? lol

[Lucus Eques]

I recommend Athenaze -- it's been fairly painless for me.

[GlottalGreekGeek]

If you understand Greek phonetics, the sound changes make a lot of sense (well, most of the time).

[swiftnicholas]

Hi Diocletian, I'm sorry to hear about the Greek. I couldn't help but wonder if it had anything to do with your taste for the literatures. Do you like what you're reading in Latin better, or do you think it is really just the language that is giving you trouble? I'm just curious. If you do really like the Greek literature, then stick with it, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it, and it's definitely worth it. Are you studying at school, or on your own? Best, N.

[CanadianGirl]

Diocletian: I feel your pain-I have worked on Greek for three years in school & three years on my own & i am still often baffled. I think Nicholas is correct-I like some Latin authors alright, but I am totally fascinated by Greek civilization (esp. archaeology), so I keep laboring on. Now & then you will see a text & be able to translate it surprisingly easy-I did this just a few days ago with a few lines of Homer-& that will get you cranked up again. P.S. If it helps, even the experts admit how hard Greek is. Good luck. Paige.

[IVSTINIANVS]

It's true that the forms of Greek morphology are much easier to understand if one has a grounding in linguistics. This is probably not a helpful observation, especially as most people would rather just learn the language and find linguistics pretty uninteresting, alas.

I wonder what sort of examples Diocletian can give of forms that have given him particular trouble.

[spiritualfields]

IVSTINIANVS, I've been studying Attic Greek (5th and 4th century) for exactly an hour or so, actually only getting through the preface and some introductory history. But one thing I realize right now is that I must develop a basic understanding on linguistics before I proceed further. Fricatives, implosives, vowels, consonants, hiatus, are just some of the terms used to describe the sounds, and from what I can gather so far, it is precisely the sounds that these terms define, and the resultant noise that comes out of the mouth when they are connected to form words, that actually determines the morphological rule that arranges the letters, and, why sometimes the rules are deviated from. I almost get the feeling that, to learn ancient greek, one must completely understand the phonetics.

This is a guess right now, based on scanty knowledge.

Are you aware of a good online source that gives a tutorial on linguistics?

[GlottalGreekGeek]

Are you aware of a good online source that gives a tutorial on linguistics?

You need look no further than here at Textkit!

http://www.textkit.com/tutorials/200312 ... id=2&tid=5

[spiritualfields]

GlottalGreekGeek, outstanding. Thanks. Prior to finding out about this site, I had bought the book Introduction to Attic Greek, by Donald J. Mastronarde, along with the answer key, but I can see that I'll be using (and needing) Textkit as a primary supplemental source.

[frankathl]

By the way, you will find a set of very useful tutorials to accompany Mastronarde's text here:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ancgreek/ ... start.html
The lessons can also be used independently of the textbook and are very helpful, in my opinion.

[spiritualfields]

By the way, you will find a set of very useful tutorials to accompany Mastronarde's text here:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ancgreek/ ... start.html
The lessons can also be used independently of the textbook and are very helpful, in my opinion.

Yes, I had already found that site. What helped tremendously was the pronunciation drills. I had no idea whether I was pronouncing the words right, and it was extremely helpful and confidence building to just click on the word and hear its pronunciation.

[抒情时代]

[runicus]

Three years of Greek learning and still impossible?
I've tried it about 3 months or so, and although I found the morphology very awful-especially the verbs-I think it is POSSIBLE for me to master this language: the thing is, I just have to do a lot of rote job. Memory makes perfect.
Cheer up, man^^

还有，楼上的朋?，何必先写一段汉语呢，没有几个人能看懂的

[Arvid]

IVSTINIANVS, I've been studying Attic Greek (5th and 4th century) for exactly an hour or so, actually only getting through the preface and some introductory history. But one thing I realize right now is that I must develop a basic understanding on linguistics before I proceed further. Fricatives, implosives, vowels, consonants, hiatus, are just some of the terms used to describe the sounds, and from what I can gather so far, it is precisely the sounds that these terms define, and the resultant noise that comes out of the mouth when they are connected to form words, that actually determines the morphological rule that arranges the letters, and, why sometimes the rules are deviated from. I almost get the feeling that, to learn ancient greek, one must completely understand the phonetics.

This is a guess right now, based on scanty knowledge.

Are you aware of a good online source that gives a tutorial on linguistics?

I agree completely about the importance of linguistics in the study of Greek. I think that things which seem so arbitrary just as paradigms written out in columns will become largely predictable with a grounding in comparative linguistics.

I have to admit after plugging away for a while with Pharr (whose basic theory of starting with Homeric I heartily endorse) that while I do want to be able to read Homer (and Herodotus) in Greek, it is the linguistic aspects that fascinate me.

Unfortunately, in this Chomskyan era, Comparative (or Historical) linguistics is a dead science. Since the so-called "deep structure" of all languages is the same, one only has to analyze English more and more closely to find out how all languages work...right? Consequently, it's only in the (rapidly disappearing) Classic-oriented environment that any interest in this type of Comparative Indo-European (and other families) study remains. Thank heavens for Textkit!

[acarrig]

Unfortunately, in this Chomskyan era, Comparative (or Historical) linguistics is a dead science. Since the so-called "deep structure" of all languages is the same, one only has to analyze English more and more closely to find out how all languages work...right? Consequently, it's only in the (rapidly disappearing) Classic-oriented environment that any interest in this type of Comparative Indo-European (and other families) study remains. Thank heavens for Textkit!

How does Chomsky's idea of universal grammar kill comparative linguistics? It would seem to me the opposite - encouraging more comparative study, especially of non-Indo-European languages.

Only classicists care about comparative lingusitics?

[Arvid]

I shouldn't have been quite so dismissive of the linguistic work that has gone on in the last 50 years; of course there are people out there doing work on new languages, particularly the ones that are dying out every week here in America. The problem is, they're so few, and they're fighting against the ruling paradigm in academic linguistics, so they get very little encouragement or academic reward for their good work.

Chomsky and his followers are extremely contemptuous of the previous school called "Structural Linguistics," whose contribution was to stop trying to fit all the world's extremely diverse languages into the Procrustean bed of Latin Grammar, and analyze each one in its own terms. Many languages, particularly American languages, seemed so bizzare in their structure compared with Indo-European that the feeling developed that languages could vary almost indefinitely.

This is the attitude that modern linguistics laughs to scorn. Their theory is that all languages are at root the same, controlled by the same "linguistic organ" in the human brain, and it is the business of linguistics to map that organ, not to study all the ephemeral "surface structure" displayed by real languages. Also, Chomsky himself is quite dismissive of mere "polyglots" who go out and learn different languages; a truly intelligent person such as...well...himself, "finds learning all those words much too boring." And since all languages are really the same, you can learn all you need to by analyzing your own language ever more deeply.

The stultifying effect this has had on Comparative Linguistics is bad enough, but the tragedy is, there are languages whose last speakers are dying somewhere in the world every year without ever being described adequately, and so when interest revives again in studying the incredible diversity that human language displays, a lot of material for that study will be forever unavailable.

Also, those few who still try to discover the affiliations of languages, in the fear of being labeled "mere speculaters," have become extremely conservative; requiring any suggestion of a relationship between families be accompanied by a thoroughly worked out grammar of the proto-language ancestral to both. If Sir William Jones had been held to such a standard in 1794, the Indo-European family would be regarded as nothing but a childish speculation, as Greenberg's Amerindian or Shtaroshtin's Nostratic Superfamilies are today. That's not to say that every suggestion of larger groupings is correct, but the majority of academic Linguists these days won't even look at the evidence.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I feel very strongly on this subject! Have a nice day, all!

[IVSTINIANVS]

Wow. You've raised a lot of interesting issues about theoretical linguistics, Arvid. And it's a lot more to discuss than folks on a Greek & Latin forum are going to want to read about.

I myself studied what you refer to as "Chomskyan" linguistics when I was in graduate school; I didn't do so at MIT but down the river at Harvard, whose linguistics department was centered in comparative Indo-European historical linguistics (Cal Watkins was there at that time, for instance). The Indo-Europeanists there had quite a lot of skepticism about modern theoretical linguistics, partly I think because they had seen a lot of fads come and go in their time, but also because of something very similar to what you're talking about: i.e., the realization that not only is the bulk of "Chomskyan" linguistics done in English (though by no means all), but more importantly: that even when evidence from other languages (including very "exotic" non-Indo-European) languages is adduced for some hypothesis or another, the author often had an eggshell-thin knowledge of that language and really basically didn't know enough about it to know whether his "evidence" held water or not.

Not all MIT-trained linguistics are native English speakers, however -- there are major linguists from Italy, the Netherlands, Korea, everywhere. And even some of the English speakers really do have genuine deep knowledge of "exotic" languages to back up their theories. Nonetheless, it is an issue: English is still the prime source of data for that line of research, and I'm sure that more needs to be done to enrich the data pool.

I would strongly take issue with what appears to be your implication that somehow (a) theoretical linguistics takes away resources from other branches of linguistics or that (b) it's somehow less important or less valid. There is a place for theoretical linguistics no less than for historical linguistics, descriptive linguistics in the field, etc. The insights of MIT-style linguistics are extremely valuable and have done more than any competing theoretical framework to explain how the brain makes language work, and especially how children acquire language.

Furthermore, the aim of study is to describe Universal Grammar -- i.e. to discover WHAT is universal across languages. Not to simply dictate that "all languages are the same". Clearly they are not the same. And ignoring the differences, as you seem to be suggesting a "Chomskyan" does, would in fact, cloud the issue. Only by identifying the differences and seeing what's left can the science of linguistics ever hope to discover what makes up Universal Grammar -- i.e. what is innate and what makes it possible for children to acquire language so quickly with so little information.

[Arvid]

Thanks for you response, IVSTINIANVS, obviously you know more on the subject than I do, so I'll take your word for it. I'm glad to hear that historical linguistics hasn't been abandoned in academia as thoroughly as my reading as a mere "linguistics groupie" might indicate.

I can't help gathering from my reading that the Golden Age of fieldwork on exotic languages is over, though. I hope I'm mistaken, but if the kind of work that Boas and Sapir and Haas and Bloomfield, etc. did is still being done, it's not making it into the semi-popular treatments I'm encountering.

Right here in Washington, we've got Quillayute, with less than 10 speakers the last I heard. Its only relative, Chemakum, died out without a really thorough description. (And in today's climate, that relationship probably wouldn't be accepted.) Were they related to Makah and Wakashan? (Is Makah Wakashan to begin with?) Without the kind of thorough fieldwork that Structural Linguists used to do, where would the material come from to construct the convincing "Proto-Wakashan-Chemakuan" that would be accepted as proof of affiliation?

I know all this is completely off-topic, and I'll leave it alone after this. I'm glad to hear that the situation isn't as thoroughly one-sided as I thought, and thanks for the inside story!

[IVSTINIANVS]

Alas, I lost my status as an insider 20 years ago when I decided I was sick of being a poverty-stricken graduate student and doubtful that a career in linguistics would allow me to climb very far out of the well of poverty. Nonetheless, I do keep myself at least moderately abreast of what's going on in the field (I have even managed to follow at least some of the multiple renamings of MIT linguistics, from Transformational Grammar to Government and Binding to Boundaries to Principles and Parameters to the Minimalist Program).

Your concerns about languages dying before they can be fully described are very well-taken, though. It is a tragedy that languages die off all the time. And you're right that for the most part those who are drawn to theoretical linguistics are not likely to be the ones to take on the fieldwork needed. But I am confident that there will always be some dedicated souls who want to take on this work. There will always be people for whom pure theory is just not enough.

[acarrig]

IVSTINIANVS-

So, if one wanted to go into developmental or cognitive psychology and study lanaguage, do you think that knowing different languages (maybe including Latin and Greek - to keep things on topic ) would be a tangible benefit? It appears the answer would be no? Just wondering.

[IVSTINIANVS]

IVSTINIANVS-

So, if one wanted to go into developmental or cognitive psychology and study lanaguage, do you think that knowing different languages (maybe including Latin and Greek - to keep things on topic ) would be a tangible benefit? It appears the answer would be no? Just wondering.

Depends on what you mean by a benefit. A benefit in the sense of increasing your chances of acceptance to a program? That would depend entirely on the department and the sorts of attitudes the faculty there have; but I suspect that your impression is right that Latin or Greek would probably not impress a Cognitive Scientist or Psychologist, more's the pity .

If, on the other hand you wonder if such knowledge would be a benefit in the sense of making you a better scholar in development or cognitive psychology with a focus on language, then I'd say the answer is an unqualified Yes -- the more languages, the better!

I should have mentioned that the Harvard Linguistics Department had an interesting policy: you had to demonstrate a knowledge of all sorts of different languages: including a modern European language, one of the Classics (Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit), and at least one non-Indo-European language. I thought that was a great policy. Needless to say, the MIT linguistics department had no such requirement .