χαιρετε!
The time has come for me to do as the Romans did, and learn Greek. It was only a month or so ago that I stumbled upon this website:
In it, Prof. William C. Dowling describes the best means of apprehending Latin: memorizing all the noun declensions, then all the adjective declensions, then all the verb conjugations. He pans Wheelock, the popular Latin for beginners book, and now I tend to agree with his sentiments; though he refers to the Summary of Forms section in the back with all the declensions and conjugations (it is very comprehensive) as the most useful part of the book. And after this “brute memorization” all the grammar, one proceeds to Lingua Latina, a tremendous book, all in Latin, that teaches Latin via the “direct method,” like a children’s book, comprehensible and self-instructive from the very first sentence. It is a wondrous novel, actually, a novella in its own right with a beautiful little story that follows the day-to-day routine of a Roman family.
I am now more than two thirds of the way through the first volume, and I am simply astounded at how my Latin skills have improved. Every few chapters I’ve been looking back at random parts of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, rejoicing how each time my intuitive grasp of random selections of the text has leapt forward by fantastic strides — to say nothing of how entertaining the story is. I wonder, is there a book like this available for Greek?
More important for now, though, is the ingraining memorization of Greek grammar. I’ve been looking for a website or the like comparable to that of the ForumRomanum.org page of Latin inflections, which was superior even to Wheelock, but that part of the website has since disappeared in a recent remodelling, most unfortunately, so I cannot provide a link. In any case, I am looking to assimilate the great corpus of Greek nouns, adjectives, and verbs, memorize them all by rote. It worked unbelievably well for Latin, and now it shall work for Greek. Of the resources available at Textkit, which would you all recommend as best for my task at hand?
Last semester I studied abroad in Florence, Italy, in order to become fluent in Italian, and having achieved that end, I will be studying at Florence University this fall, and there I will be taking Latin, Ancient Greek, and possibly continuing my German as well. So I am obsessed with getting as good as possible in Greek beforehand, and therefore committing all the basic grammar to memory seems like a good start.
I am very anxious to hear what suggestions you all would have for me.
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