Greek reader reviews

Greek Learning Greek
21

I think readers -the real thing with vocab/syntax notes as defined by Bartholomew- are a great idea, based on my own experience and the huge increase in reading speed I noticed since I started using them. The “made up Greek” is the way to learn the language as long as a progressive method is used (what else is Athenaze, Reading Greek, etc…). The alternative is a Grammar book and the unadapted text!

LuciansTrue Story (1) was the first one I read from first to last page (I advice to skip the introduction in first reading as the author’s style is deliberately complicated there). In my opinion it fulfills the conditions above mentioned: Real Greek, interesting author, driving story, easy syntax, quite easy vocab but for some weird words the author himself invented and are well explained at the side page, incredibly funny once you get their meaning!. At this forum (2) Rouse’s notes to Lucians Dialogues have already been mentioned and there has been a recent increase in Lucian’s readers offered by Edgar E Hayes (3) which I have not tried but might be a good idea with Rouse’s notes.

I tried to get something similar to these English-commented readers written in modern Greek -as here already said a brilliant way to learn the ancient tongue- and I could not find any. But almost in every bookshop in Athens you have the classical authors with a “translation” side by side to modern Greek, in fact what I was looking for without knowing!: A whole-text paraphrasis. Very useful in this sense is a great webside with a small selection of authors free for everybody to share(4). I cannot resist the temptation to include a small fragment showing Herodotos’ similarities with modern tongue (25 centuries later!):

Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε, ὡς μήτε τὰ γενόμενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων τῷ χρόνῳ ἐξίτηλα γένηται, μήτε ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά, τὰ μὲν Ἕλλησι, τὰ δὲ βαρβάροισι ἀποδεχθέντα, ἀκλέα γένηται, τά τε ἄλλα καὶ δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι.

Ο Ηρόδοτος από την Αλικαρνασσό εκθέτει εδώ τις έρευνές του, για να μη ξεθωριάσει με τα χρόνια ό,τι έγινε από τους ανθρώπους, μήτε έργα μεγάλα και θαυμαστά, πραγματοποιημένα άλλα από τους Έλληνες και άλλα από τους βαρβάρους, να σβήσουν άδοξα· ιδιαίτερα γίνεται λόγος για την αιτία που αυτοί πολέμησαν μεταξύ τους.

…did I convince anybody of the goodness of modern as a bridge to ancient Greek? :stuck_out_tongue:

(1) http://www.amazon.com/Lucians-True-Story-Intermediate-Vocabulary/dp/0983222800/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1436911692&sr=8-1&keywords=a+true+story+greek

(2) http://discourse.textkit.com/t/bridging-beginner-courses-and-real-greek/13069/3

(3) http://www.amazon.com/Edgar-Evan-Hayes/e/B00FJOX4C8/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1436912256&sr=8-1

(4) http://www.greek-language.gr/Resources/ancient_greek/library/browse.html?text_id=30&page=1

22

I find that only textbooks that use completely made up Greek like Athenaze have readings that relate to the grammar being taught.

23

Thanks Markos, I apologize about that thread and it seems that it is “self-resurrecting” now without input from anyone else, like a zombie or something. :laughing:

I think there is an interesting question that we can ask about graded readers of Ancient Greek and Latin: Is it possible to design a series of graded readers that gradually increase the vocabulary, complexity of syntax, and idiom so that by the time one has finished the series they could jump into an ancient Greek author and read it with comprehension at the first pass without vocab/grammar helps and at normal reading speed?

To me that would be the ultimate goal of a series of graded readers: to get the learner at a level of fluency in the language so that the very first time he reads one of Cicero’s speeches in Latin he understands it the way a native speaker would; he reads it just like a speech by MLK. Of course historical background and context would still be needed for deep understanding, but I am confident that a well-designed series of graded readers could take a learner to a level where no linguistic (vocab/syntax) help would be needed. It would be difficult, but not impossible.

24

Thank you jeidsath. The Patristic Greek a la Steadman is extremely productive for my level of reading. Just read the first 18 lines of Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas with some confidence. Very much appreciated!

Though not extended readings–and thus unable to demonstrate many aspects of the language–I am of the opinion that proverbs and maxims are a good way to begin improving fluency, in Latin and Greek (the same goal of ‘graded readers’). Fragments attributed to Menander are commonplace throughout introductory Greek textbooks. ~2 pages of selected monostichoi are found as an appendix in Fobes’ Philosophical Greek, which someone put online:
http://www.letsreadgreek.com/menander/resources/fobes_menander_monostichoi.pdf

25

Just to prolong this discussion a bit (I’m in that kind of mood): instead of reading rubbish and listen to audio files why not turn to Homer? It’s not that difficult to reach the stage where you can read him without too much fuzz. With the time allowance you mention you should be able to go through the Iliad in six months, possibly less. That’s 15000 lines of very real and very beautiful Greek. After that you can complete the Odyssey in half the time. That’s 13000 verses more.
Now you’ve not only read lots and lots of Greek but you’ve been spending time in doing the one thing you’ve (presumably) taken up this hobby for in the first place. That seems much more satisfying than reading crap Greek and listening to audio files.

Wise words indeed, Markos.

26

Okay I have not attempted to do more than sample Homer. However, I really can’t take seriously the idea that I personally will be able to complete the Iliad in 6 months. If you are able to do this then your language learning ability is vastly greater than mine and it is hardly surprising if you should be puzzled as why others resort to easy Greek.

27

ναὶ δὴ ταῦτά γε πάντα ἄνερ κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπες :slight_smile:

28

By all means read the Iliad. Here is Gaza’s Attic paraphrase in a parallel text: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/iliad-with-attic-parallel-text/11430/1

And Aesop’s fables too – luckily Colson has Atticized a number of those. And Plutarch, also Atticized by Colson. And Herodotus, Atticized by Farnell.

I doubt anything needs to be done for simple readers in the Koine, since there is already so much simple literature there. But with all the above, I think you’ve got plenty of material that can be read swiftly at the 10/pages a day level.

Someone mentioned dropping the audio because you are reading the Iliad. I have no idea why that would be the case. Record yourself reading it (or use recordings of others) and then listen. An hour a day of audio is 3x the input of 10 pages of text. I’d almost drop reading before dropping audio, from an input standpoint.

Of course, all that is still useless if you can’t yet consume Greek at the above rate, either aurally or visually. Use simpler texts until you can.

29

A reader of made up Greek focused on giving you practice with the syntax and idioms favored by a specific author is exactly what I would love to get my hands on .

The weakness of adapted text is that it is entirely negative - it cuts out the difficult stuff but that is what you need to tackle a specific author.

Everything is difficult the first time you meet it. Everything is easy if you encounter it the first time. Made up Greek can take an idiom that a specific author uses now and them and use so frequently that when you come to read the author it gives you no trouble.

30

Daivid, honestly, you’re probably underestimating your own ability in languages and most certainly overestimating mine. Just sampling Homer isn’t enough. I remember how I went through the first pages of the first book of the Iliad, very slowly, reading 20 or 30 lines in an hour and telling myself that it would take me an eternity to get to the final page. But somehow after reading 1000 verses, or maybe 1500, things get easier, a lot. You 're able to process more and more text in the same amount of time and better still, you begin to read stretches of text -first a few lines, then 10 or 20- without turning to a commentary or dictionnary at all. That’s a wonderful feeling, a bit like cycling for the first time without support.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had this experience; in fact I know I’m not, for I’ve read several testimonies on this site to the same effect.

Ah, I just knew you would like my Homer based approach to reading Greek :slight_smile:

31

20 or 30 lines in an hour! And you think that is poor!!! :astonished:
I do not over estimate my ability and sure don’t overestimate yours. If I could read 30 lines of real Greek in an hour, trust me, I would not bother with readers, but I can’t so I do.

32

@david I’ve got some questions for you, hopefully to be followed by advice. 1) How much time + effort have you put into Greek? 2) How do you read? ie., Do you write anything down as you read? If so, what? 3) How do you re-read?

33

It depends.
The first thing I do every day is test myself with the vocab I have recently read. That test also may include tests on forms of aorists, congregations and idiomatic forms but it is the vocab I do without fail.
Then without fail I write something on the weather before I go to bed.
These two things are a habit so I even if it isn’t the most effective I will keep them going because even when I feel so discouraged that I have given up Greek I still do those two things - they have become so ingrained that not merely do they not require effort but I would have to make an effort to give them up. I don’t intend to make that effort because I suspect that rather than doing something else Greek, if I were to give those two things up, rather than doing something else Greek (possibly more effective) I would give up Greek completely.

Beyond that it is very variable. Sometimes I spend the whole day on Greek sometimes nothing at all or very little and those down periods can last quite a bit.

I read a mixture of readers and real Greek + commentary. The thing about readers is that they are still quite hard for me and if I get stumped there is no way to get beyond it (beyond asking here as I did this morning). Today I took several hours wrestling with a single sentence from Plutarch but at least at the end, with the help of two commentaries and the translation I ended up understanding it.

I find it really hard to reread text. Curiously actually memorizing a sentence is less daunting and does have the advantage that most of the memorizing can be done when I am doing the housework or going to the shops (I have lines printed out on slips of paper).

I always mean to read aloud more but find it hard to get round to it and when I do it is hard for me to do more than short spurts. I have never managed an hour.

34

So Whitesell has an article titled “Learning to Read a Foreign Language” which you can get here. I’d give has method a try to see if it speeds you up a bit. There is a great deal of insight there about how mechanical work can distract from the text so that you “never have more than two or three words on the surface of the mind at one time.”

35

Thanks, Joel, I’m going to read that later. I’ve gradually settled into a routine that I think is helping me a lot (only time will tell), but a little background first. I started in Koine about 10 years ago and then started Latin about a year later. I used Mounce for Greek and Wheelock for Latin initially. I burned out after reaching a level where I could read the NT pretty comfortably. I put it aside for the most part for about 5 years during which time I merely dabbled here and there.

Then, a couple years ago I decided it was time to start teaching my daughter Latin and I got back into it. I found Lingua Latina and decided I wanted to really learn both languages as well as possible and get out of the “parsing” mode. I’m sold on intensive reading. Right now I’m working through Thrasymachus and I’m just finishing chapter 21. This is the way I tackle it: I go through one sentence/clause at time and initially I parse and make sure I know what form every verb/nominal is, why it’s that form, e.g. dative of means/subjunctive purpose clause, etc. and I look up any words I don’t know. That is sometimes slow and arduous, but then, once I’ve gotten all that, I want to cement it as much as possible and so I read through that sentence 8-10 times out loud until I can read it smoothly with meaning. The “scaffolding” from parsing the first time through gradually fades until I start to understand the Greek as Greek. Once I get to the end of the chapter I start back at the beginning and now I read each sentence 4-5 times. Sometimes I have to look up a word again, but that is rare. I make it all the way to the end of the chapter and then I go back to the beginning and read through it one last time, but now I read it straight through without re-reading anything and it’s very motivating to get the experience of reading those 35 or so lines with understanding and at the rate I read English. After that I record that chapter so I can listen to it later.

My underlying idea is this: once I take some ground I don’t want to lose it. It’s tempting to keep charging on ahead, but then you may have to retake that ground again later. If I stop and fortify it once I have it, hopefully it will stay, i.e. once I come across an idiom, grammar form, construction, vocabulary item, etc. I won’t forget it. I’ve been doing this with Latin for almost a year and my reading fluency has skyrocketed. I’ve been doing it for a couple months now with Greek and it’s having the same effect. It’s basically overlearning, and it’s working well for me. I take the same approach when reading authentic Latin/Greek and because of that I can recite the 1st chapter of John in Greek from memory.

36

I had some formal teaching but it didn’t engage me at all. In retrospect I realize that the teaching I got, however dull and soul-destroying it seemed to my youthful arrogance, was probably better than I thought at the time. But the only thing that did me any good—this is why I’m writing—was intensive reading on my own. It began to take hold, I read everything I could, first in Latin and then more excitingly in Greek (to which I came relatively late), and the grammar just sank in by a kind of osmosis. Even today, when something is wrong or odd in some way, I know it before I can say why.

Only when I got a teaching job did I have to master the grammar formally. In the first Greek class I taught in the US I was asked whether something was an articular infinitive. I had never heard of an articular infinitive (though I was perfectly familiar with the construction) and asked what an articular infinitive was. (I knew what an articulated lorry was, but an articular infinitive?) Of course the news got about among students and my new colleagues that the new prof didn’t know what an articular infinitive was. It was not a good start.

Anyway, intensive and varied reading of genuine Greek and Latin is what I found most helpful in learning the languages. My real interest was in the literature, and the language came along with it—more than just grammar and vocab: style too, so much more intriguing. I dare say that wouldn’t work for everyone. (It doesn’t accord with what are now known to be efficient memorization techniques: calvinist’s methods are much superior there.) I’m only saying it worked for me.

Sorry I can’t say anything about Greek readers, apart from myself that is. :stuck_out_tongue:

37

That was how I learnt Serbo-Croat but it is failing for me completely with Greek. However, when I was in Croatia it was children’s books I read initially. Greek readers are the nearest equivalent for ancient Greek. It is rather depressing that none of the readers in the list below have been recently written and indeed many (most?) are from the 19th century.

I am looking at the way I learn vocab in the light of that piece but it is not my key problem. I read slowly because I get tripped up by idioms and because I keep getting thrown by the word order. I have this problem because I don’t read enough. I don’t read enough because I read slowly. etc.

38

@mwh, since you’re not being chary with your wisdom today, I’d like to draw you out a bit more on your early reading.

  1. What did you read at the very beginning?

  2. How did you read? Did you use a commentary and a dictionary? Did you use a translation? Did you skim, or were you thorough?

  3. Did you re-read?

I collect stories like this, btw. Here’s Francis Adams (1796-1861):

As far as I can think, my classical bent was owing to a friendship which I formed, when about fifteen years old, with a young man a few years older than myself, who had enjoyed the benefits of an excellent education at Montrose, which gave him a superiority over myself that roused me to emulation.

In my early years I had been shamefully mistaught. I began by devoting seventeen hours a day to the study of Virgil and Horace, and it will be readily believed that such intense application soon made up for any early deficiencies.

I read each of these six or seven times in succession. Having mastered the difficulties of Latin literature, I naturally turned my attention to Greek as being the prototype of the other.

It was the late Dr. Kerr of Aberdeen who drew my attention to the Greek literature of medicine, and at his death I purchased a pretty fair collection of the Greek medical authors which he had made. However, I have also read almost every Greek work which has come down to us from antiquity, with the exception of the ecclesiastical writers; all the poets, historians, philosophers, orators, writers of science, novelists, and so forth. My ambition always was to combine extensive knowledge of my profession with extensive erudition.

Steven J. Willett:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.classics/60311

Re: I wonder . . .

On Thu, 23 Jan 2014 22:39:32 +0900, Jim O’Donnell <cassiodorus gmail.com>
wrote:

I wonder how many people in the world in the year 2014:

  1. Will read all or most of Thucydides in any language at all?
  2. Will read some of Thucydides in Greek?
  3. Will read all or most of Thucydides in Greek?

No one can answer JOD’s questions, but here is the experience of one
reader.

Three years ago I had been reading so much Latin that my Greek was getting
rusty. So I decided to make a grand tour of the canon and visit old
friends or meet new ones. Here in approximate chronological order is what
I’ve read or reread. Let me add, these are complete texts.

Homer: Iliad and Odyssey with the OUP and CUP commentaries. I particularly
enjoyed Kirk’s and Janko’s volumes.

Plato: Republic 1~2.368c4, Apology, Crito, Symposium and Phaedo (each more
than once in the past). When I finish with my Hellenika project, it’s back
to the Republic.

Herodotus (second traversal).

Bacchylides.

Aristophanes (third time through thanks to a great grad school teacher).

Sophocles: Medea (third time), Electra, Ajax, OT.

Pindar: Pythians and Isthmians in Gentili’s editions.

Philodemus On Poems 1 and 3-4.

Pindar: Pythian 4 in Bruce Karl Braswell’s well thumbed, annotated and
marked commentary (every scholar should own it whatever the price).

Euripides: Bacchae, IiT and both A&P volumes of fragments.

Plutarch: Aristeides & Cato, Malice of Herodotus.

Aeschylus: Oresteia (fourth or fifth time, with Fraenkel, Page & even
Verrrall).

The fragments of Old Comedy in the three-vol. Loeb.

Xenophon: Anabasis, Memorabilia, Symposium, Apology and Hellenika (this
last with G. E. Underhill’s old OUP commentary). I’m about to do the
Cyropaedia and Agesilaus.

Thucydides (with as I mentioned the HCT and Hornblower plus several other
editions of specific volumes. Second traversal, the first being long ago.
I tried to cover 5 to 10+ pages of the OCT edition at every sitting. It
got faster as I accustomed myself to the vocabulary and style. The
narrative sections are not difficult and often wonderful, especially the
plague, the Pylus-Sphakteria campaign and the whole of the Sicilian
Expedition. The speeches can be pretty gruesome.

I usually try to devote the morning from about 10:00 to 2:00 or 3:00 for
Greek. In the case of prose, I found that reading whole works without a
break led me to internalize the syntax and vocabulary so well I no longer
translated. I simply read Greek. I even started to mumble and dream in
Greek. I also don’t need to consult a lexicon except for particularly
unusual words. That is, total immersion really does work to produced
fluency. Peter Green’s famous seminar at Austin where they read all of
Herodotus in 15 weeks is the kind of thing that should be done more if any
students could find the courage and discipline. And a teacher.

There’s a lot more on my list: Plato, another rereading of Thucydides and
Polybius with the three-vol. Walbank commentary sitting in my library.
Then more tragedy, Plutarch, Euripides and Theocritus. I haven’t reread
him in years, so he may go higher on the things-to-read list. Oh and
probably more Plotinus. I read him a lot in the past and have a couple of
specialized commentaries.

It helps to be gainfully retired and watch no television. Putting in an
hour or more of hard cardio exercise refreshes body and brain. At our
house in Oregon I usually rise around 8:00, make a cappuccino and then hit
the road for Nordic Walking. On return I work out with the weight set in
the second floor and then have breakfast. Keeping the body fit is crucial
if one is going to make maximum use of the mind.

I might add that I’ve also been doing a lot of other reading besides
Greek: Thomas Bernhard, Primo Levi, W. G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, Witold
Gombrowicz (essential, especially Ferdydurke, Cosmos and the Diary) plus a
lot of poetry, notably Rilke and Celan.

Schliemann:

https://archive.org/stream/ilioscityandcou02schlgoog#page/n33/mode/2up
https://archive.org/stream/ilioscityandcou02schlgoog#page/n37/mode/2up

I then occupied myself for two years exclusively with the literature of ancient Greece; and during this time I read almost all of the classical authors cursorily, and the Iliad and Odyssey several times. Of the Greek grammar, I learned only the declensions and the verbs, and never lost my precious time in studying its rules; for I saw that boys, after being troubled and tormented for eight years and more in schools with the tedious rules of grammar, can nevertheless none of them write a letter in ancient Greek without making hundreds of atrocious blunders. I thought the method pursued by the schoolmasters must be altogether wrong, and that a thorough knowledge of the Greek grammar could only be obtained by practice,—that is to say, by the attentive reading of the prose classics; and by committing choice pieces of them to memory. Following this very simple method, I learnt ancient Greek as I would have learnt a living language. I can write in it with the greatest fluency on any subject I am acquainted with, and can never forget it. I am perfectly acquainted with all the grammatical rules without even knowing whether or not they are contained in the grammars; and whenever a man finds errors in my Greek, I can immediately prove that I am right, by merely reciting passages from the classics where the sentences employed by me occur.

39

I usually try to devote the morning from about 10:00 to 2:00 or 3:00 for
Greek.

I would love to have 4-5 hours a day to read Greek and Latin. I don’t think most people who are not retired or professional classicists can muster that amount of time. Maybe if I stopped taking the time to write nonsense on this site, I might have a little more time.

But a real Greek author–any author writing ancient Greek–is the best reader.

40

But the only thing that did me any good—this is why I’m writing—was intensive reading on my own.

This is very similar to my experience. Not that I can claim any fluency in Greek, but at least as far as my English goes. I have studied English 8 or 9 years at school, but the only thing that did me any good was—intensive reading on my own. Come to think about it, I’m not aware of anyone anywhere who ever attained fluency in any language solely through formal teaching. Intense exposure to real language is, in my opinion, quintessential—just reading, if oral skills are not an aim (as I think it is the case with dead languages) or an actual communicative necessity, like living in a foreign country. I went to Franco-Finnish school myself (i.e. a school with lots and lots of French teaching, many of the teachers being natives); in the end, after 12 or 13 years, maybe half of my (native Finnish) classmates were still incapable of making anything but a very shallow conversation in French or avoiding the most obvious mistakes. The lesson being that it’s not enough that your parents would like you to learn a language, you need to really want it yourself.

Now, the way I see it, for learning even a dead language only little grammar is really necessary. Grammar is needed to discuss different the phenomena of a language, to read commentaries etc.—the importance of which I’m not denying, but too much grammar can distract you. Maybe we should try to see grammar not as something unnecessary, but as an advanced skill, something we should try to internalize only after we are quite far in our studies?

@joel: Schliemann was one of the biggest liars of the 19th century, but yes, I don’t think he’s very wrong.