Assimil Course: Le Grec Ancien sans Peine

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reltuk
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Assimil Course: Le Grec Ancien sans Peine

Post by reltuk »

I was wondering if anyone here had experience with Assimil's Ancient Greek course. A quick search through the forums didn't turn anything up, but I did see some (mostly fleeting) references to Le Latin sans Peine.

Has anybody here used or evaluated this course? Does anyone know how far it takes the student? How is the pronunciation on the recordings?

Thanks for any information or opinions,

reltuk

Interaxus
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Post by Interaxus »

Hi reltuk,

If you're still around. Just spotted your post by chance. My copy of Assimil's Ancient Greek course arrived this morning so I shouldn't really be expressing any kind of opinion about it yet but I can't resist. I'm absolutely delighted with it even before I've started using it.

It's a gleaming pliable pocket-sized volume that looks at once like a 'friend to man' (ie a thing of beauty). Like one of those yellow Langenscheidt language books. Beautifully typeset, inviting you to dip in. There are 101 short lessons, each with a small ('funny') line illustration. Grammar summary and wordlist at the end. It even comes with a red ribbon place-marker, which could come in handy (most of my other language books are stuffed with post-it stickers, Alibris voucher cards, torn-off strips of printouts, etc).

You ask about pronunciation. I haven't got the CDs (VERY expensive) but the Preface states that the book uses the restored pronunciation based on the research of W. Sidney Allen. Not bad for starters, eh?

All texts have a translation on the facing page. But here's the rub: everything not in Latin is in French.

But I can't think of a better reason for learning French. :P

Cheers,
Int

jk0592
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Post by jk0592 »

Ancient greek "sans peine", so without pain, or without working hard at it ?

Really ??? So, please let us know if the process works for you.

Cédric
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Post by Cédric »

Ancient greek "sans peine", so without pain, or without working hard at it ?
It's without "working hard at it" basicaly.

It's the principle of passive learning.
You go through the first half of the book by reading, pronuncing, listening to sentences (short sketches/stories). At this stage, you just observe the linguistic facts without trying to rationalise them. Then on each lesson you have some exercices of imitations (rephrasing mostly).
When you reach the first half of the book, you go on reading the second part and at the same time, you come back to the first lessons and now rationalise and draw grammatical laws from all you've read/learned before (they call that the "active learning). By the end of the book you've become well acquainted with the language.
I've been through the Modern Greek book, the Breton, German and tried to start the Chinese one. Unfortunately i'm a poorly organised one and it gets pretty difficult to stick to a tight schedule adding this to it, so i come and go to those books when i feel like... and it works pretty well actually.

quendidil
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Post by quendidil »

I think the best speaker of all is one of the males; he is Stefan Hagel from that Austrian site. The female speakers have some slight inconsistencies. There is a short section of Homeric singing at the very end of the recordings; with the digamma and sung to the same tune as the one available at Hagel's site.

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