hello to all

[redheadwalking]

Um, I've never really done an online chat-forum thingy before, so I hope people will bear with me!<br />I'm a full-time political science major (I'm not becoming a lawyer!) and work part-time for a non-profit. I've studied Plato in translation for some years and have wanted to learn Greek. I was very pleased and excited to discover that this site existed! I go to a small liberal arts school in northern Idaho, so neither Greek nor Latin are taught.<br />Is anyone else trying to teach themselves? If so, do you have any suggestions? I'm not entirely sure where to start.<br />Well, I guess that's it. I'm looking forward to this opportunity - hopefully I can squeeze it in between my other studies when school starts.

[klewlis]

hey! i'm teaching myself too (and i think there are a bunch of others in the same boat, at various levels) so i'm sure we can help each other out. <br /><br />i have some koine experience so greek isn't all new to me... but i haven't tackled classical yet... we'll see how it goes.<br /><br />best advice is just to keep at it... and do whatever it takes to regularly drill those endings.<br /><br />welcome here (though i just got here myself ;)

[redheadwalking]

Thanks for the welcome and the encouragement! I have NO experience with Greek at all, other than reading philosophy and drama in translation. I've managed to pick up a word here or there, but that's it.<br />What kind of time commitment do you put in? I go back to school in the fall, taking 15 credits and working 25 hours a week. I'm not sure about starting the Greek now, because I don't want to pick it up and then have to put it down. I wish I would've found this site two months ago!<br />I'd really appreciate any suggestions or advice you may have.<br />Thanks again!

[mariek]

Hi Redhead, I'm trying to teach myself too. I'm learning Latin. You've really come to the right place to learn Greek. You get not just one, but TWO forums. Don't you feel lucky?<br />

[mariek]

[quote author=klewlis link=board=6;threadid=323;start=0#2271 date=1059540549]<br />i have some koine experience so greek isn't all new to me... but i haven't tackled classical yet... we'll see how it goes. [/quote]<br /><br />What's the difference between koine greek and classical greek?<br /><br />

[bingley]

Basically, Classical Greek is Greek as it was spoken from say Homer's time (8th? century BC) down to the death of Alexander the Great (332 BC). Koine (common) Greek is Greek as it was spoken as a lingua franca over the Eastern Mediterranean from 332 BC to the sixth century AD. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek. Obviously people didn't wake up in 332 BC and suddenly say let's start talking Koine Greek. It was a development from the ordinary spoken Greek of the Classical period and a merger of different dialects. People with pretensions to literature still tried to write in Classical Greek (particularly Attic (Athenian) Greek), even though the spoken language was drifting further and further away from it.

[Keesa]

Hi, and welcome! I'm teaching myself Greek, too, and Latin. I've only started myself a couple of weeks ago, so I have no idea how long each day you should spend on it, but I do know that it's important to do it every day, for however long. Also, try to use it whenever you can. That's how I learned French. The nice thing about Textkit is that they have a forum where you can talk in a classical language without people making fun of you! <br /><br />I hope you enjoy learning Greek.

[annis]

[quote author=mariek link=board=6;threadid=323;start=0#2281 date=1059548319]<br /><br />What's the difference between koine greek and classical greek?<br /><br />[/quote]<br /><br />Koine just means "common" from "the common dialect." Koine is what happened to Attic Greek when Alexander took it to the far ends of Ionia, the Levant, Egypt and the Transoxus regions. So. Some differences:<br /><br />

<br /><br />
• Koine gobbled up some features of the Ionic dialect, so some spellings of words look Homeric. (Ionia - that's the Greek colonies on the coast of the Middle East that originally came from Attica).<br /><br />
• Koine adopted a lot of foreign words. Including a lot of Latin, eventually.<br /><br />
• Many irregularities in declension and conjugation got flattened out. This sort of thing always happens when a language becomes a lingua franca. All those people learning it as a non-native language sand off the rough edges.<br /><br />
• The optative mood was eviscerated. There may be one or two single uses of it in the NT, but I forget exactly. Loss of the optative made deep changes to complex sentence syntax.<br /><br />
• Optative death gave the subjunctive more room to grow. <br /><br />
• The pitch accent was replaced by a stress accent.<br /><br />
• Various sound changes happened: the theta, phi and chi took on their modern pronunciations by the 5th C, I think, and a whole slew of vowels and diphthongs decided to be pronounced as iota. (This stuff shows up in spelling errors.)<br /><br />

<br /><br />Eventually the Koine took over the rest of Greece.

[klewlis]

yes... and I only want to add that part of the melting happened in Alexander's camps, since he had a huge mixture of a number of greek dialects, and they kinda melded together into the "common" that they all understood.<br /><br />in ways it's far more like english (less formal, more exceptions than rules, a mix of many languages) and so going from that to the formal, higher classical is a little tough. <br /><br />the optative appears a small number of times in the NT, mainly repeated in one famous phrase by Paul (mh genoito!) but in a few other places as well. it's infrequent enough that I don't immediately recognize it without thinking about it

[Jeff Tirey]

[quote author=redheadwalking link=board=6;threadid=323;start=0#2272 date=1059540996]<br />What kind of time commitment do you put in?[/quote]<br /><br />Everyday. The last words of my professor when we left school was "study Greek everyday - even if it is only 15 minutes"<br /><br />You asked where to get started. There are many good books. Which one that is best for you is hard to say. I suggest trying White's First Greek Book because it presents clear and easy to follow lessons and the book moves towards a very specific goal - reading Greek. Use the forum to ask questions and above all - read Greek everyday. <br /><br />jeff<br /><br /><br />

[redheadwalking]

Thanks for all the tips and support! I'm really impressed by how kind and supportive people are on this site.<br />My philosophy professor left my school several years ago, so I transferred to a different university. When I had to transfer back here, philosophy had been completely eliminated. Classical history isn't offered either, so finding this site has been a godsend.<br />I did download the First Greek Book and I'm hoping to get started tonight (if I don't get too distracted by baseball).<br />Thanks again, everyone!

[mariek]

How neat. So Koine Greek is an amalgamation of various dialects. It must be very different from from Classical Greek. Do most beginner Greek students learn Koine first?<br />

[Bert]

[quote author=William Annis link=board=6;threadid=323;start=0#2300 date=1059569330]<br /> [*] The optative mood was eviscerated. There may be one or two single uses of it in the NT, but I forget exactly. <br /><br />68 actually (according to William D. Mounce)[/quote]

[klewlis]

[quote author=mariek link=board=6;threadid=323;start=0#2356 date=1059597110]<br />How neat. So Koine Greek is an amalgamation of various dialects. It must be very different from from Classical Greek. Do most beginner Greek students learn Koine first?<br /><br />[/quote]<br /><br /><br />no, i don't think most do... most interest in koine is based on biblical studies... there isn't a whole lot of literature extant in koine besides the bible and a few early christian authors. so a person who is in classical studies, not biblical studies, will often skip koine and do classical. i'm coming from the other end... my BA is in theology so i learned koine and a bit of hebrew.. and now I am tackling the classics!