Hello everyone!!
I (and a few others on Facebook) have decided to spend 2021 working thru Mastronarde. I wanted to see if anyone was interested in joining?
My plan is to work thru is slowly but steadily, at the pace of one chapter per week with every 4th week being set aside for review/catch up.
I have just started using the Athenaze textbook in the original Italian edition, but I would love to join this study group. Let me know how I can join.
I’m interested. I have just acquired a copy of the first edition and made a start on the first few units but I think it would be good to be part of a group. I don’t do Facebook but I could probably make an account just for this.
Forgive this late reply!
If you make a Facebook account, search for the group called Mastronarde in 2021.
The second edition is quite a bit different from the first. I suggest you all agree what edition to use. This explains the differences. http://atticgreek.org/downloads/IAG2_Differences.pdf
I dont want to dampen your enthusiasm but I am not convinced that Mastronarde, excellent book as it is in many ways, is a suitable text for self taught beginners.
I dug it out of a library the other day and a quick glance hasn’t shown anything expressly horrible. Could you expand a bit on this?
Thats good to hear. It may be entirely suitable for you. I think the problem is that there are not enough exercises and certainly not enough Greek text to read. If you are a complete beginner I think that could be a problem. There is a web site with additional material but the extra reading material is intended for later on and is relatively advanced.
Athenaze (especially the Italian version) and JACT reading Greek have much more Greek to read than M. . I think that’s important especially in the early stages.
We all learn differently and if it suits you then dont worry. If you can find the other textbooks you might try them in combination with M. and see which you prefer.
I see what you mean now, yes. Is the Italian version of Athenaze really just that much better than the English one? I’ve seen that said a number of times, and even a redditor saying that it was so much better it outweighed not knowing Italian.
We all learn differently and if it suits you then dont worry. If you can find the other textbooks you might try them in combination with M. and see which you prefer.
This might be a good idea. There’s numerous other freely-available resources (some well-reviewed) that offer more reading and writing than Mastronarde. I have to admit, some of its appeal is in the fact that it is a truly monolithic slab of a lauded book 
that doesn’t mean it’s the best, of course, but working through a book with failings sure does beat wasting time trying to find the Right One, I guess.
Mastronarde is comprehensive. It has no failings, except for that, and for a linguist that should not be a failing.
I think I’ll be approaching it with optimism, yes. Of course, we’ll see in a few months, but I’m in some high spirits.
I’ll also be keeping an eye on the Facebook group.
The posters here who are about to tackle Dr. Mastronarde’s Introduction to Attic Greek are a lot better students than I am, but I will give a couple pieces of advice:
When reading textbooks, I have a tendency to miss some concepts or misinterpret them, so I read a unit more than once.
After going down a wrong path, posters here have set me back in the right direction more than once. I would never try to learn a language without being able to ask people questions.
And Hermippean remember that Mastronarde deals only with Attic Greek.
Would be odd that a book called Introduction to Attic Greek would delve too far into other things!
But yes, good point; I’ve been reading on Homeric and the dialects on the side on my own (I assume I’ll be close friends with Pharr and Buck in a while), but I’m trying not to go too broad at once. A classics professor at my university advised I get at least a decent grasp on Attic before trying to diversify too much, so I’m trying to curtail my enthusiasm 
There has been a lot of discussion about this on the forum and if you are interested please search for it.
What the most suitable textbook might be depends on many factors including he object of study and the student’s background and interests. I now see that you are a student of linguistics and so Mastronarde would be an ideal introduction to Attic grammar. I suggest you also get a copy of the relatively inexpensive Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek.
Lukas you are not alone in this. We all misunderstand things and make mistakes. Re-reading what you have learned is an important part of study. My memory of learning Greek is that it seemed to get harder and harder with more and more material to learn, it seemed never ending. When you have completed M. you will have had a thorough grounding. It is then a difficult job to retain everything and so it becomes important to know where to look things up.
It is very encouraging to see so many people wanting to learn Greek. A beacon in an otherwise bleak landscape.
I have just started reading Mastronarde on my own, and if it’s possible, I would like to join your study group. I am not using Facebook. Would be possible to have the discussions on this forum?
I began (and dropped) a live class using Mastronarde last Fall, but I plan to try again in Fall 2022. I agree with Seneca’s view of the text’s limitations, compared to other texts with more readable Greek (I just finished, and very much enjoyed, Peter Jones’s Learn Ancient Greek from 1998–Jones also led the Reading Greek project). I have several older and newer texts, but I would like to join a study group for Mastronarde, since I’m planning to attack it again (I’m working on the online vocabulary app for it). I would also be interested in joining a Greek study group based on another introductory text (I have Athenaze, the White text, Crosby and Schaeffer, Reading Greek, and others),