Greek, Örberg and Others

Greek Learning Greek
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My Italian Athénaze (the ‘Örberg version’) has finally arrived! It really is an enhancement. But there’s competition. Chapter 1 of ‘Thrasýmachus’ by Peckett and Munday had me in stitches on Page 1. Moi, a beginner, READING GREEK and LAUGHING (!???!). After all those scarey lists and charts and tables and paradigms. :cry: I can only compare it to the kick I got reading some simple ‘Ecce Romani’ passages in Latin some years ago (“Wow! I can actually READ this stuff!”).

I especially like the description of the Thrasýmachus course I found at http://www.temple.edu/classics/greek51.html : “Think of this as Orberg meets Monty Python”. :laughing:

Cheers,
Interax

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That sounds great, Interaxe! Do you recommend it over Athenaze? I’d be very interested to know if it is better.

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Luce: I can’t make any recommendations as yet. Chances are I’ll switch between the two anyway. Meanwhile, Amadeus has made some very perceptive comments. :exclamation:

Amadeus (vocative?): It took me some time, too, to discover the existence of the chapter-by-chapter wordlist, but now it’s bookmarked for easy access. As you point out, the authors succeed in keeping the reading material uncluttered by other matter, which is a big plus! Athénâze is weak in this respect, though the Italian make-over is more elegant. (As for the Italian text, I treat it as a secondary language course, totally separate from the Greek…).

Yes, there are ‘un-deduceable words’. But once you’ve looked up ‘lightning’ and ‘thunder’ (and are beginning to understand the joke), you immediately encounter ‘lightning BLÉPO’ and ‘thunder AKOÚO’. Aren’t BLÉPO and AKOÚO deducible? I can only say that I found myself instinctively interpreting lots of words (not all of them!) in that first text - which served to enhance my confidence and my enjoyment.

I think Peckett & Munday aimed at keeping ‘ancient’ (1960s) schoolboys amused. (Incidentally, aren’t Monty Python just a bunch of overgrown schoolboys?) Athénâze aims at a somewhat maturer audience and thus chooses a hard-working, ruggedly independent farmer as its hero. However, there are excellent supplementary ‘Athénâze’ materials on the Web that offer lighter relief – involving Socrátes, his much-maligned wife Xanthíppe, Alcibiádes and Alcibiádes’s dog. Choose the Reading Exercises from this menu:
http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/greek/

Mustn’t forget this excellent Thrasymachus site either: http://www.vroma.org/~abarker/thrascontents.html

By the way, Peckett & Munday also wrote two funny Latin books in the same vein (‘Principia’ and ‘Pseudolus Noster’). Here too, the text is kept in a separate section, and there’s a strong oral emphasis. Small informal line-drawings are inserted to satisfy Amadeus, and there is a short section called ‘Carmina Latina’ (some poems by Catullus) where all the notes are in Latin, à la Örberg, [“favent tibi? significat “amant te.?].

Back to Greek. As a beginner, I find myself also learning a lot about Greek from the introductory hints given by those ancient 19th-century textbook authors. For example, check out the first 12 Introductory Remarks here: http://books.google.com/books?id=WqsBAAAAYAAJ&dq=Colson+%2B+Greek

You might need a proxy to read or download.

Cheers,
Int

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Interaxe, φίλε, thank you for the information. I find first impressions are the most telling, and yours clearly caught my attention. Could you possibly scan or transcribe some pages of the first chapter, in order that I might glean a similar impression for myself? Ignore this request if it is too much to ask.

Χά?ιν σοι ἔχω.

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Luce: Hope you got the scans. I await your verdict on Thrasymachus.

Amadeus: If you’re reading A Greek Boy at Home, you’ve no doubt seen Gonzalo’s post in Outside Links of Interest - http://www.johnpiazza.net/ancientgreek . You might also check out this one: http://jeltzz.com/lingualatinaetgraeca.html . There you can download recordings. Makes you wonder. How many geniuses has the Internet released?

I wonder if anyone has spotted (or created) a Thrasymachus recording yet?

But it would’ve been even better if 100% of the text could be read without the aid of translation.

I too prefer the ‘in sensu’ to the ‘in intellectu’ approach. But maybe I’m less of a purist than you, due to being so old - getting old is having more time but less time, so that any shortcuts are welcome. I love cribs and keys and translations (I even have the Teacher’s Handbook for Athenaze). Shortcuts do not necessarily mean corner-cutting (impossible, anyway, in language learning). But getting there as fast as possible is surely one of the universal pedagogical goals.

I wonder if anyone has spotted (or created) a ‘key’ to Thrasymachus yet?

I must say, the early stages of this new ‘journey’ (into ancient Greek) are so enjoyable that I’m scarcely bothered about destinations of any kind. :smiley:

Cheers,
Int

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hmmm can i see the scans too? :blush:

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Seemingly the scans didn’t get through as email attachments to Lucus Eques so I’m at a loss as to how to send them to you, Tertius. I thought I could upload them to some free upload site. I’ve done it before but when I tried just now I failed miserably. Can someone walk me through what I must do? :cry:

Cheers,
Int

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Interaxe, I did not receive any message. Try my other email address: LukeAmadeusRanieri@gmail.com

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Tertius: I think I finally succeeded in sending the samples to Lucus. At least I haven’t had the hated ‘undeliverable’ :imp: message this time. Let me have your email address and I’ll try sending them to you too, if you like.

Cheers,
Int

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check your pm :smiley:

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plurimas tibi, interaxe, grates ago. you can uncross your fingers now. :wink:

i have read the this 1st chapter, very funny… and very effective as an exposition, for the words and the construction remains strongly on memory. the combinations of related words, like the κωπαις ε?εττει , compensates the lack of figures et al, do they continue to be so in the next chapters?

to how far does the guides the student? i mean, what one will be able to read, after having finished to read it? is there an specific author as a goal?(the favorites for beggining books seem to be plato apologia and xenophon)

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Tertius: Well, remember that I’m just a beginner so I’ve yet to explore the rest of the book, but I’m sure it’ll stay funny (based on my knowledge of Peckett and Munday’s Latin readers).

As for which ancient author they are ‘rooting for’, Peckett and Munday state in their Preface: “The vocabulary, accidence and syntax used is that of the best Attic authors”, but they add that they “have not hesitated to quote substantial portions of Homer’s original Greek whenever we have felt this to be within the pupil’s power to comprehend without excessive difficulty. This has inevitably added to the vocabulary used in this book, but we feel that this is all to the good, as the next step after completing Thrasymachus ought to be the reading of one or more books of Homer”. Though in the very next sentence they point out that they have added extracts from other Greek authors “from the earliest right down to the New Testament”.

Cheers,
Int

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Wonderous! I like it very much. I think I’ll consider it as a supplement after I finish Athenaze.

Thanks again, Interaxe.

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the next step after completing Thrasymachus ought to be the reading of one or more books of Homer

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thanks for the reply :smiley: i fell very much compelled to buy it :smiley:

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Would you consider Athenaze a good first approach for a Greek student, or would it be worth reading after having completed an introductory grammar (Mastronarde, namely)?

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If you already know Latin, you’ll be fine.

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Even without latin, Athenaze is relatively easy to go through, book 1 at least. Book 2 is more difficult…