Here is an idea. There seems to be several people present that participate in the board and have a good deal of knowledge if not a great deal of knowledge concerning Greek without a lack of enthusiasm, too.
Why not make a textbook that would be ideal to begin with and advance through. This textbook could be make online collectively.
The problem is not that there aren’t any good textbooks available – there are quite a few, both in print and here online – the problem is that Greek is hard. Constructing yet one more textbook would be a reduplication of effort. On the other hand, since the purpose of this forum is to help people learn Greek it helps to have some kind of standard that everyone is familiar with and is working through, but forums have been set up for that very purpose. I’m not sure what other advantages can be gained from constructing a communal textbook?
Honestly, I’d get a lot more use out of a large graduated excersize book that honed the concepts you learn in Greek. Maybe one for Homeric, Koine, and Attic.
I’m going to go with adz000 and psilord here. There are already several acceptable Greek textbooks available, both free and currently in print.
I’m going to go out on a limb, and assert that you don’t actually learn Greek (or Latin) from beginning textbooks. Rather, these books prepare the mind with the basic mechanics of the language, the technical vocabulary used to talk about language (accusative of respect, result clause, contraction, etc.). Plenty of people have learned this - they go through a textkbook, and then wonder what language they learned once they hit a real Greek text.
You learn to read Greek by reading Greek, as much of it as possible, with the help of a good commentary for when the rules stated so clearly in the beginning books fall flat on their faces.
So I don’t think the English speaking world needs a new Greek textbook right now.
Now, having said that, I have often fantasized about taking one or two of the Textkit beginning textbooks and turning them into regular web pages, in particular Pharr. This would be a massive data entry project, requiring people to type pages as well as people to check the work. Once that was done we could go in and add extra comments, fix up obsolete or incorrect philology, etc.
I agree it would be a massive project, but once it was finished it would be a great resource. I would be willing to participate in such a project, if there were sufficient interest.
So would I. Never afraid of typing!
Regards,
Adelheid
I also.
I’m certainly on board with this idea. If the entries are broken up by paragraphs numbers it would be easier to manage.
Some could key in the text while others could proof.
We’d have to decide what format the final book should take. Do we want to create a text file, a “word” document (please, no) or a full html version with links, etc? I would vote for the full html, but I think it would probably be best to do it step-wise – that is, create a text file first, and then have just one person (or a few) convert that to html so that there is uniformity in how it is done.
Another thing to think about right away is what font to use for Greek. I’m assuming we’d use spionic, but that can cause some problems if you are searching text (because the accents/breathing marks are treated as letters) and I’d hate to burn any bridges right from the start. I really don’t know what is the best way to handle this problem; I’ve been trying to deal with it a little in some personal stuff on which I’ve been working, but I don’t have a good solution yet. It’s probably most important that it’s all done the same way throughout.
I’m creating an ebook at the moment (slowly 
) for my Palm, based on Pharr. I am typing all the paradigms in betacode (but I have a tool that can convert betacode to unicode).
Regards,
Adelheid
I would say betacode. There are already good software tools to convert that format into anything else. I think the Perseus software that handles that might even be open source.
I would be willing to enter some text as well. Count me in.
Well, in my opinion the world needs a Greek equivalent to Lingua latina per se illustrata (http://www.lingua-latina.dk).
Best,
Clemens
initially i didn’t think typing up pharr would be useful. it’s already been edited and made available here as a .pdf.
but i realised that it would be a good structure for adding on all the comments which the pharr-a and pharr-b guides email out each week on particular words/lessons. we all have these in our inboxes and it would be useful to consolidate them somehow to make them accessible tofuture pharr-c -d -e people and people generally. also you could link out to paul’s online answers and the notes section could be cumulative over time.
basically i think if someone has web editing skills and a bit of time (i don’t have either at the moment) they could volunteer to structure the guide comments - to make it easy people could put them in text files from the emails in their inbox, with the file name convention [section number].txt and email them to that person. or someone who knows html could set up a shell .html file and people could paste the comments into that and email them off to make it easier for the central person.
so 1st work on consolidating the most useful and inaccessible comments (from the guides in our inboxes) and then, 2nd, if the motivation is still there, type up the actual pharr text. the only use of that would be to make it searchable i think. it would be a lot of work for someone to take on though.
I must have missed that one? I only know of the scanned version. Could you point me to that edited pdf?
I will be typing away for my Palm edition Pharr (grammar only) anyway, for exactly the reason that Chad mentions (being able to look up things more quickly). The raw material may be fit for re-use here.
I hope to finish in June.
Regards,
Adelheid
Well I dream of a TeX’ified version of Pharr with all the sections managed in separate files by many participants and compiled with LaTeX to produce a ever reproducible clean print copies. All the flaws corected continually and the commentaries ever increasing and being corrected. Each section version controlled with CVS and updated with `make’ utility. That’s how I managed Euclid’s Elements.
I have no experience with LaTeX, I am just typing a single file, to be edited later with all the chaptering, links and footnotes that Palmreader offers. Ofcourse I will always retain a version of the pure text separate from the edited-for-Palm text. But that’s far from CVS version control .
Adelheid
Oh in this scheme the participants need not all know what TeX or CVS is like. Only one person handle these things. The participants only need to type in the English and beta code greek texts of one’s part and submit one’s work. And the manager updates the database with those texts and then do tests and finally compile the work into a single volume when all the part is done.
I must have missed that one? I only know of the scanned version. Could you point me to that edited pdf?
yes that’s the one i’m talking about, the scanned one. pharr is already a book edited by the publishers. there’s far more value in initially making accessible the guide comments than typing up a book which we all can read fine now i think.
I disagree , I personally find it difficult to get to the right grammar pages quickly in the PDF (or in the book for that matter). Digitalizing it, and then applying stuff like links and footnotes to it, IS a lot of work, but it is worthwhile to me.
I must stress that I am NOT typing up the complete book, exercises and all, just the grammar part.
Regards,
Adelheid