I read William's "Greek Dialects: Where to Start" post:
Based on his advice, I found a copy of Pharr's Homeric Greek. I lucked out and found a 1970 Hardback copy on Alibris for $20.00.If you plan to read any other Greek at all, I strongly recommend starting with Homeric. All later literature references Homer to some degree. Even if you plan to read only philosophy, the Greek philosophers like to quote Homer, too.
Some of you may be familiar with me from my Latin posts - where I fully admit my lack of "natural talent" for languages. Regardless, my determination is strong and I've been disciplined with my time, making sure I study every single day. I'm prepared to make a similar effort with Greek and would like some further guidance from those of you who are willing to indulge me.
One of the striking differences that I have noticed so far besides the obvious ones such as the script being different, are all the accent markings and the abscence of the ablative case. I was surprised to learn that Greek is a tonal language - at least more tonal than Latin or French, but less so than say Chinese. [I say more so than French based on the additional accent marks which the Greek language employs.]
It appears to be another dimension of complexity that I wasn't expecting. From what I can gather so far, the various accent marks represent rising and lowering of tones - but the explainations don't appear very clear to me in terms of figuring out on my own exactly how to pronouce these properly. I read the "phonetics" thread where William sugguested a few books which may help. Not so sure I am ready for the more technical discussions on this matter. I'm looking for a more simplistic approach, prefering a more natural methodology than the intellectual one.
How important is it for newbie like me to master the tonal aspects of the language? Are there any good audio CDs?
In terms of learning materials, is there a Lingua Latina equivilent out there? I love LL and think it is a great way to learn Latin. Also, I have found the Cambridge Latin Course to fit my learning style well and use both in my study of Latin.
And lastly... it seems that Kappa and Chi are pronouced the same or nearly the same to me. All the other letters I don't seem to have any trouble pronoucing - at least in my mind. Can anyone show me the difference between these two Greek letters to a native english speaker like me?
Thanks,
Mark