I would have thought someone more knowledgeable would have given an answer by now.
I'll give it a crack.
xon wrote:I downloaded "First Greek Book". I've got the alphabet mostly memorized, and can transliterate the Lesson 1 words and give the names of the letters. So, on to Lesson 2. It talks about the cirumflex, which (always?) goes on long syllables. How does the circumflex indicate which syllable gets the most emphasis?
When you see a circumflex you know that that syllable is long, but not every long syllable gets a circumflex.
The accented syllable gets the "emphasis".
In ancient Greek the accents indicated where the pitch rose of fell but in later Greek it just indicates a stess accent like we have in English.
xon wrote:And the grave, can anyone describe in real life terms what makes that different from the acute?
The acute accent indicates a rise in pitch on that syllable.
When there is an acute on the last syllable of a word (with some exceptions) and it is followed by another word, then the acute changes to a grave. The pitch does not rise then but stays the same. So the grave just indicates where there used to be a acute.
xon wrote:Does the long symbol over a vowel make it do this, for example: a without long symbol sounds like o in rot, a with long symbol sounds like a in race ?
The long symbol (macron) just shows that the vowel is long.
This is not the same as what you just described but it simply means how long the sound is held but is the same sound. So it is not the difference between r
ot and r
ace but the vowel of rot held for 1/2 a second or for a whole second.
xon wrote:After getting the pronunciation down, what would be the best way to begin learning Lesson 3 and so on, completely understand each lesson, or just understand the basics and quickly move to the next lesson?
I would think it is best to get a good understanding of a chapter before moving on. You will have to review once in a while as well.
If you don't understand the lessons before moving on, the following lessons will be very frustrating for you.
I hope that this is helpful to you.
Best wishes.