A mono-lingual Greek Lexicon for Homer now available

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
1

I just posted my Amazon review:

http://www.amazon.com/Homeric-lexicon-Ancient-Greek-Lexicon/product-reviews/1448610346/ref=sr_1_4_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

As I say there, you can preview very much of the book on the Amazon cite. (Just keep on hitting the “surprise me tab” under “look inside.”)

Here I will only add that even after the publication of this book, for which I am grateful, there remains a huge need for Ancient Greek dictionaries in Ancient Greek. Really, a modern one needs to be produced with learners of Greek in mind. It should be written in very easy Greek, it should include pictures, it should be comprehensive, printed in a good modern font, user friendly, designed to actually be a practical, Greek-immersion alternative to L.S.J. or BDAG. W.H.D. Rouse gave a sample of one this could be like a 100 years ago, but nobody, as far as I know, has done much since.

Such a resource, I think, could only be produced by a large group of people, and it would take much time and effort. Serious learners of French or Chinese (or English!) would refuse to settle for a situation where they are dependent on bi-lingual dictionaries, but such is the state of Ancient Greek pedagogy. We have thousands of books in English ABOUT Ancient Greek but not one modern dictionary IN Ancient Greek. And we wonder why so few people attain fluency in Ancient Greek!

What IS available to those of us who want to move beyond Grammar-Translation are various versions of mono-lingual Greek lexicons produced by Ancient and Byzantine Greek writers themselves. But these suffer from some of the flaws that I point out in my review of Apollonius’ lexicon. They are incomplete, sporadic in approach, and tend to be written in Greek which is difficult for beginners to understand. More basically, as I understand it, several of these works are spread out in various editions of the Scholiasts and exist only in editions which use the old, hard-to-read cursive script with the ligatures, rendering them in practice of little use for most of us. As I understand it, the new editor of this edition of Apollonius’ Homeric Lexicon, one, Gregory Zorzos, used one of these old editions and produced the book in a more readable (though still not ideal) font.

More works like this should be produced until the day when we get a real L.S.J. or Cunliffe written in Ancient Greek.

2

A couple of links related to the post above:

Jonathon Robie is interested in working on a Greek-Greek dictionary.
Excerpt from this page:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!searchin/ancient-greek-best-practices/robie/ancient-greek-best-practices/bMYtNuLDyLM/D4RqjPd7E0sJ
“I would love to have Rouse’s dictionary corrected. Once that is done, I would like to have a group work on a New Testament version by adjusting it to New Testament usage and adding the missing entries from Abbott-Smith, providing definitions in Greek as Rouse has for the words he has done so far. If anyone is interested in joining such a project, please contact me.” Jonathon Robie
Michael Palmer is interested in working on a Greek dictionary which follows a different approach. Read also comments below his article.
Excerpt from this page:
http://greek-language.com/grklinguist/?p=1548
“What I envision for a future lexicon is one that does not fit comfortably into either of these categories. It would provide examples of usage, of course, but it would provide a definition along the lines of modern dictionaries such as http://www.merriam-webster.com, and the discussion of examples should be different from what we currently find. Entries for nouns, for example, would also include information on the types of predicates for which the noun may function as an argument.” Michael Palmer

3

I started such a project last year (scroll down to my comment) but no one else joined in.

http://sxole.com/profiles/blog/show?id=3482468%3ABlogPost%3A28789&commentId=3482468%3AComment%3A28389

If a few more added their own entries, I might be persuaded to continue. There is no reason why we could not finish the NT words that start with ξι.

4

Mark,
I understand the desire for a Greek to Greek dictionary, and I would enjoy seeing one. But it seems like a mammoth project.

Compiling a Greek to English dictionary of modern objects and verbs, would have a more specific use (teaching, composing, conversing) and would be feasible.


That ancient Greek to Greek dictionary by Camertus still intrigues me. I wish my Greek and ability to decypher minutely written minuscule running script were up to par. I don’t suppose it will ever be. I’ve lost the link to that dictionary, but have a 100mb pdf file of it.

Have you seen this?
Μέγα λεξικόν όλης της ελληνικής γλώσσης: Great dictionary of the Greek language (Ancient & Modern) by Dimitris Dimitrakos (Δημήτρης Δημητράκος) (1964)
I guess it’s a Greek dictionary of all Greek from Homer to modern, but I think it’s written in katharevusa. I gave up trying to figure it out after an hour of searching. But in case you’re interested, here are the best links i found.

5

Σαῦλε,

Do you think you can find a way to upload that dictionary, or else track down the place from which you got it? Maybe Scribd would allow you to upload it, or even archive.org.

Thanks.

6

My browser history seems to show that I got it from http://openarchives.gr/contributor/79332
but the link is broken.

Try this site.

http://anemi.lib.uoc.gr/metadata/e/9/6/metadata-42-0000011.tkl

7

I just stumbled across an old B-Greek post (when it was listserve) from Randall Buth about a Koine-Koine dictionary.

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2008-August/047429.html