ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ

Anthony the Great, Pachomius the Great, Shenoute
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jeidsath
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ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ

Post by jeidsath »

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce a new publication from the Polis Institute Press, ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ: ⲞⲨϪⲰⲘ ⲚⲤⲀϪⲒ ⲚⲘⲈⲦⲢⲘⲚⲬⲎⲘⲒ (One, Two, Three: Practice Book in Spoken Coptic), which is available in paperback at Amazon here.

Since the second half of the 20th century when Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria started a national Church-sponsored movement to revive Coptic, the language has enjoyed a renaissance. And, many more scholars have gained a direct understanding of texts written by prominent saints of the Coptic Church such as Anthony the Great, Pachomius the Great and Shenoute.

ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ draws on a new technique for language acquisition developed at the Polis Institute of Jerusalem, the Living Sequential Expression (LSE), which was inspired by two ideas of François Gouin: the influence of sequence in the learning process, and the need to express basic human experience through the language we learn.

This is why most of the pages of ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ show sequences of actions to be heard and seen, and then enacted or retold by the student. These sequences respect the inner structure and dynamics of the target language. By doing so, the process of internalizing a language will thus be all the more swift and efficient as language features are acquired according to an overall natural sequence, given that specific pragmatic features naturally precede others. This is what the pragmatic progression of ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ intends to reflect.

The book is the result of many long years of research, reflection, workshops, classes, and dialogues with students, language teachers, illustrators, and designers. All the translation work was done by a special team at the Polis Institute. The book also marks the latest addition to our One, Two, Three... series of practical language learning textbooks, joining Hebrew. Other planned languages for the series include Akkadian (the language of the cuneiforms), Latin, koine Greek, Spanish, English, and French.

It has been a long anticipated addition to our list of publications and I am proud to finally have it available for you. All the best for a safe healthy summer!

Christophe Rico,
Dean of The Polis Institute
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“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

will.dawe
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Re: ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ

Post by will.dawe »

Sorry for offtopic, but you have reminded me about the textbook of Ancient Greek published by Polis, and this book seems to be made similarly.

I have been visiting a class of Ancient Greek based on "Polis: Speaking Ancient Greek as a Living Language", but abandoned it with understanding that this method is not suitable for me. Probably, it is good for audio-visual learners, but I feel more confident on memorizing lexicon with flashcards, practicing with grade readers, and listening audio.

The general idea seems very good: gradually increasing and highly repetitive lexicon, inductive grammar, well selected "useful" topics, but after 10 (daily) lessons I felt completely devastated and angry, because I was not able to understand even few words and all class activity was a mystery for me. I have lost contacts with other students from this class, so cannot say was their experience successful or not.

I have no intention to criticize the Polis' method. May be, that class was nimis intensive, or the basic part of students were more prepared than me. I would recommend Polis' book as an auxiliary material, such as a guide for class activity or grade reader, but not as a main course for novice students.
Two verses he could recollect // Of the Æneid, but incorrect.

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Dante
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Re: ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ

Post by Dante »

just a heads up: the Egyptologist that I studied Sahidic Coptic with said he was approached by the publishers to check the Coptic in this book before it was published, which he was willing to do, but he said that it was such a mess and so riddled with errors that he gave up and quit.

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mahasacham
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Re: ⲞⲨⲀⲒ, ⲤⲚⲀⲨ, ϢⲞⲘⲦ

Post by mahasacham »

All the Polis books are riddled with errors (beyond what is acceptable in my opinion). And I've seen their unpublished works for levels up to 8 in Greek..... Almost unusable.

I actually wondered about this one. Thanks for the heads up.

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