Of the books on the website... which?

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languageleon
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Of the books on the website... which?

Post by languageleon »

Hello all. It's been a LONG time since I've visited this website, due to real life obligations (school, work, etc).

I've rekindled my passion to learn Ancient Greek. I am a Linguistics major and a polyglot, so I don't often have trouble deciphering what's what and why's why. Putting aside this "difficulty of learning a language," as well as cost for the most part (I've saved a bit for this purpose), what books would you guys recommend? I'd like to learn to write, too, so if there are any series that emphasize that, I would be very happy to hear about it!

Also, are there any specific recommendations on the books of this website? I have looked at a few but am still unsure of which to try.
A Brief Introduction to New Testament Greek, Samuel G. Green
A First Greek Course, Sir William Smith
A Short Syntax of New Testament Greek, H.P.V. Nunn
First Greek Book, John Williams White
First Greek Grammar Accidence, W. Gunion Rutherford
First Greek Grammar Syntax, W. Gunion Rutherford
Homeric Greek - A Book For Beginners, Clyde Pharr
Introduction to the Language and Verse of Homer, Thomas D. Seymour
NT Greek in a Nutshell, James Strong
I also own:
Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek, James Morwood. Seems more like a reference grammar than anything else.

An Introduction to Greek, Crosby and Schaeffer. Personally, this book seems unappealing because it does not really teach the alphabet, other than provide a list of them with the sounds all at once; and everything is IN Greek.

Thanks very much, I remember how helpful people were last time I came around the boards :)

<edit>
Also, does anyone have a review of:
Learn Ancient Greek OR Learn Latin
by Peter Jones
</edit>

spiphany
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Re: Of the books on the website... which?

Post by spiphany »

A Brief Introduction to New Testament Greek, Samuel G. Green
A First Greek Course, Sir William Smith
A Short Syntax of New Testament Greek, H.P.V. Nunn
First Greek Book, John Williams White
First Greek Grammar Accidence, W. Gunion Rutherford
First Greek Grammar Syntax, W. Gunion Rutherford
Homeric Greek - A Book For Beginners, Clyde Pharr
Introduction to the Language and Verse of Homer, Thomas D. Seymour
NT Greek in a Nutshell, James Strong
Well...several of these are reference works, not textbooks (i.e., the Rutherford books).

As for the others, I would say it depends on what dialect you want to learn.
JWW's First Greek Book is Attic.
Pharr's text is Epic.
The New Testament Greek books are Koine.

Unless your primary interest is in the New Testament, either epic or Attic is the way to go. There's probably more instructional material devoted specifically to Attic, if that makes a difference.
For more on the different dialects I suggest checking out Annis' article: http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/dialects.html
IPHIGENIE: Kann uns zum Vaterland die Fremde werden?
ARKAS: Und dir ist fremd das Vaterland geworden.
IPHIGENIE: Das ist's, warum mein blutend Herz nicht heilt.
(Goethe, Iphigenie auf Tauris)

languageleon
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Post by languageleon »

Thanks for the info and the website!!

I think I'm going to start out with Epic, with the suggestions of the website well developed and explained. Hopefully I can move to Attic from there. The book you recommended confused me at first, but now that I've figured out what's what, it should be a lot easier :)

Thanks again.

edonnelly
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Post by edonnelly »

languageleon wrote:I think I'm going to start out with Epic
Then I think Pharr is the best choice. A lot of people here have used that book and there have been study groups to go through it at different times. I found it to be excellent. It's a little rough in the first couple of chapters, I thought, because there's a lot of stuff covered fairly quickly, but pretty soon it gets to be fairly smooth sailing.

There's a forum here on the website devoted to discussions about that book:

Homeric Greek and Pharr's Homeric Greek - A Book For Beginners

and the first post there is a "sticky" that sorts most of the threads in that forum by chapter:

Pharr Discussions By Chapter

Hopefully you will find some of your questions already answered, and you will also have some new ones to post to the forum.

Best of luck to you.
The lists:
G'Oogle and the Internet Pharrchive - 1100 or so free Latin and Greek books.
DownLOEBables - Free books from the Loeb Classical Library

languageleon
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Post by languageleon »

Thanks edonnelly!

Your links are very useful. Yes, that is the book I was referring to, and now that I've figured out the structure, I can't wait to get started :)!

Do you happen to have suggestions for the time required for each chapter? I think thinking I would just go through until I was too bogged, but I think that might leave a bit more than I can handle really each time.

Thanks agin :)

edonnelly
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Post by edonnelly »

You can take a look at what the people in my group did:

http://www.textkit.com/groups/pharr/session-d.php

That only lists our schedule for the first 30 lessons (chapters), but it was fairly similar to that for the whole book. Basically we did about a chapter a week on the schedule. I found it fairly easy to stay ahead of that schedule. In fact, those of us that did finish ended up finishing the book almost 6 months ahead of schedule, so depending upon what else you've got going on you could easily set a more ambitious schedule than we did.
The lists:
G'Oogle and the Internet Pharrchive - 1100 or so free Latin and Greek books.
DownLOEBables - Free books from the Loeb Classical Library

languageleon
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Post by languageleon »

Thanks!! This is incredibly useful.

I can't say my schedule is too open, but that may just be my oversleeping... :D

I will use Pharr's, as it does seem like the best, but I wish there were an audio portion! Are there any recommendations as to where to go from there? And also how to master the reading and writing of the letters?

Sorry I'm such a pest :D But I am trying to be more proactive and useful, if that's any benefit?

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