https://ancientgreek.pressbooks.com
Is anyone familiar with this? I’ve just spot checked here and there, but it looks like it might be quite useful.
just read the first pages.. it teaches the -μι verbs as introductions.. curious to read the rest..
I wonder if the same site gives Latin textbook also
Is there any verdict now for how good this book is?
Anyone?
It looks fairly decent for a free textbook. I’m not fond of the optative not being addressed until the final chapter, though.
I will give it a somewhat tentative thumbs up.
Order of presentation leaves something to be desired. First several lessons dive into stuff that could be eliminated entirely, e.g., accents, phonology, enclitics. Greek geek trivia. The Greek article appears to be buried in the chapter on pronouns. Perhaps I missed it somewhere else.
The articles appear to be introduced in the chapter “The Greek Noun: Masculine.” The lack of an index isn’t appealing, and though there is a search feature I think many people will find it to be inadequate. I would say this book might be a good place for an absolute beginner to start, but that truly learning the language will require reading the more established textbooks. Speaking from experience, reading both books of Athenaze, which is considered a user-friendly textbook, didn’t adequately teach me Greek. I didn’t truly learn to read the language until completing Hansen & Quinn front to back and reading a full-length Greek text without the assistance of a beginner reader.
I pulled up Crosby and Schaeffer in Google books and immediately noticed some very striking similarities. Obviously the medium is different but the underlying pedagogy? I’m not sure. Somewhat like walking through a Victorian house that was remodeled in 2015.
Yes, it has grammatical explanations, examples and exercises designed specifically to emphasize the grammar and syntax of the particular section. That’s a lot like C&S and any other more traditional primer. I would like to see more extensive exercises and connected readings. It’s not perfect, but I could easily see it as one of the texts being used by self learners. I thought the various explanations were very clear and helpful.
I’m writing as an autodidact, who has no face-to-face authority to consult on ancient Greek.
Ancient Greek for Everyone often turns up when I do google searches for some grammatical term.
For example, just now I googled “ancient Greek grammar defective verb” and turned up a helpful explanation. This has happened often enough that I bookmarked it. Morwood, Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek, is my desktop paper grammar, especially for paradigms, but Ancient Greek for Everyone is my preferred online grammar. I have a paper copy of Smyth, but at my stage of knowledge, Smyth is too detailed.
I have also a much used paper copy of of Mastronarde. Mastronarde is good for the exercises, and the answer key is available, but I find it unhelpful as a grammar reference. If I could remember everything I studied in Mastronarde, it would be great, but when I forget, it’s hard to find it again in the book.
Ancient Greek for Everyone is intended, I judge, for American college students studying ancient Greek for the first time. This makes it about right for me. Here you will see the table of contents, which will help you explore the book for your own evaluation.
https://ancientgreek.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction/
Well, it is free, and it has its good points, but I’m not sure it makes ancient Greek any less hard to learn for English-speakers. I kind of admire them for treating -μι verbs before -ω verbs, but it seems a mean trick to make absolutely no mention of either the subjunctive or the optative until almost the end of the book.