Alexandros [LLPSI for Greek]

Greek Learning Greek
1

In the past few days I had the oportunity of holding a recent edition of this book. It is an adaptation of Rouse’s A Greek Boy at Home in the manner of LLPSI, meaning the text is presented with constant paralel information both in the manner of images and of simplified grammatical explanations for the Greek text. Most of us who tend toward the so-called inductive methods usually use the italian version of Athenaze, which is a great book, but has the disadvantage of using both Greek and Italian. Alexandros has only Greek, and so is a more faithful replication of LLPSI.

I did not have the time to take a closer look into it, since I had to give my volume back, but I’ll order one for myself ASAP and try to do a review focusing on these aspects:

  • Comparison to Rouse’s original
  • Quality of the book in general (no good being totally in Greek if it is opaque in pedagogical terms, which I doubt will happen, but still)
  • Amount of grammar included.

I think I already have a few words to say on that last topic. It’s a relatively thin volume, that page lists 232 pages, many of them being exercises. I got the impression that it was still very much an Ancient Greek A1.1 in terms of material, it even reminded me of the Polis volume. So failing a huge mistake on my part, the Athenaze edition is probably going to remain the go-to edition, if anything because it consists of 2 volumes covering in practise the whole of Greek elementary grammar, whereas someone completing this Alexandros would have to go back and use something else for the rest, possibly even the Athenaze. Still, it’s good news, and here’s to hoping they’ll publish some following volumes soon.

PS: Also check the exercise book in that page.
PPS: Both books include CDs in the restored pronunciation. I did not have the chance to listen to them.

2

This sounds like a great resource. Thanks for finding it and drawing it to our attention. Are there any previews available on line?

3

I’m very impressed by the presentation of this edition, as seen in the slideshow. I can’t wait to purchase a copy. A lot of work seems to have gone into the podcast samples on the right, although I could be much more critical there. Almost all of the speakers are very clear. Cadence is missing / faked for some of the sentences, especially the longer ones. But I don’t think that this detracts much from their usefulness. I hope that the same level of effort has gone into the Greek Boy audio.

As a side note, there are some obvious typos or other slips in the 1907 original printing of Greek Boy. I hope that they have been corrected (they were not in the Mahoney edition, despite the effort spent to bowdlerize the preface). The PDF on the internet is also missing a page, and I have been meaning to upload that somewhere.

4

This seems to be a preview. It consists largey of the introduction and of the alphabet, but in the end we get the first chapter. I’m drawing slightly back from my earlier enthusiasm, either because it follows Rouse’s book too closely or for other reasons it seems like this very first chapter is already introducing way too many grammatical concepts. If it proves to be the case it might just be more profitable to translate the italian bits of Athenaze into Attic…

5

Περὶ καινοῦ βιβλίου τινός