Real word greek works to read (in one's own native language) alongside Ἀθήνᾱζε A

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marcovlatinforum
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Real word greek works to read (in one's own native language) alongside Ἀθήνᾱζε A

Post by marcovlatinforum »

Hello there! I've just finished the third chapter of... Ἀθήνᾱζε (!) and really enjoyed the reading. I'm planning to finish the first volume in six months (I'm actually quite sure that the difficulty in the presented material is going to grow much faster after the first few chapters), and I would like to pick up by now a text that will actually be "understandable" (at least with a translation on the next page) when I will have more or less finished reading the whole book. It's obvious but, since six moths are a great amount of time, there is the possibility that I will re-read such a book, if I will like it. I do so with other stuff in my native language!

I'm looking for works written in "true" Greek, to read at least one of them in my native language alongside Ἀθήνᾱζε A. So that, when I will be about at the end of the textbook, I will be able to look with more confidence at the side with the Greek text of such a play, historical tracts, or... ?. Actually, re-reading a book in a guest language (what a bad periphrasis for a language I will very be happy to know) you have already read in your native language is a common practice in language learning, so why not?

(Ok, "easy-to-read" is actually quite a subjective thing: I've been able to figure out the general meaning of a small Seneca's epistula before trying to cope with something like Geoffrey Steadman's De Catilinae coniuratione reader, because Seneca writes in way that resembles Italian's (nota: I'm Italian) use of subjunctives, and Cicero does not (and I'm quite far from understanding Cicero ad libri aperturam). But I would not suggest the Greek equivalent of a Tacitus for a task like mine :mrgreen:)

Hylander
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Re: Real word greek works to read (in one's own native language) alongside Ἀθήνᾱζε A

Post by Hylander »

This might be just what you're looking for:

https://www.amazon.it/Anabasi-Testo-gre ... 881136468X

The Anabasis is not necessarily easy when you're starting out, but it's not too hard, and the story is engaging and well-told. That's why it's a good choice for a first real Greek text to read. I think this edition has the Greek text on the facing page: the publisher says "con testo a fronte".

https://www.garzanti.it/libri/senofonte ... 811364689/
Bill Walderman

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Re: Real word greek works to read (in one's own native language) alongside Ἀθήνᾱζε A

Post by markcmueller »

You're in luck. There are a lot of books with Italian facing Greek. Here's another option:
Storia vera. Testo greco a fronte by Lucian available from amazon.it

The language becomes easier after the introduction. Although Lucian wrote in the 2nd century CE, he writes in Attic Greek and is considered to be quite successful at it.

marcovlatinforum
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Re: Real word greek works to read (in one's own native language) alongside Ἀθήνᾱζε A

Post by marcovlatinforum »

Thank you all for the answers.

Regarding the dialect, I'm curious if also works written in the Koiné dialect could be suitable for my purpose, since I've heard that Hellenistic prose tend to be simpler and paratactic (but kind of different when comes to vocabulary).

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Re: Real word greek works to read (in one's own native language) alongside Ἀθήνᾱζε A

Post by seanjonesbw »

marcovlatinforum wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 12:53 pm Regarding the dialect, I'm curious if also works written in the Koiné dialect could be suitable for my purpose, since I've heard that Hellenistic prose tend to be simpler and paratactic (but kind of different when comes to vocabulary).
Congratulations on your progress so far! You can find 'easy' (lots of parataxis, narrative) texts from any period and in most dialects, although you're right that there's lots of this in Koine. In my experience, the biggest questions when choosing texts at this stage are:

1. Are you excited about reading the text?
2. Have you already read the text in translation? (not essential, but it really helps knowing loosely what's in the text before you read)
3. Is the vocabulary you already have roughly the same as the vocabulary in the text?

Based on the vocabulary in Athenaze, I think Hylander's suggestion of the Anabasis is a good one. But if you're more excited about reading the New Testament or Homer or anything else, you'll be able to as long as you're willing to learn some vocabulary - there are lots of vocabulary sets online for this (Homer, NT, Xenophon). The differences in dialect forms are much less of a problem than the huge differences in vocabulary between e.g. Homer and the New Testament, because they're about such different things.

If you want to get a very rough idea of the vocabulary needed for a text, go to this site, put in the author and name of the text and see how many of the most frequent words you recognise (don't worry if it's not many!).

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