@joel: Schliemann was one of the biggest liars of the 19th century, but yes, I don’t think he’s very wrong.
You can download his diaries here: http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/heinrich-schliemann-finding-aid#Series_A:_Diaries
I’m looking at one now. It’s almost all ancient Greek, not modern or katharevousa, with short sections of other languages.
I am big fan of rereading for increasing reading fluency. For Greek, I reread everything the next day that I read for the first time the day before. For Spanish, I reread anything that trips me up–but often, for pleasure as much as language learning, I will reread the same poems multiple days in a row.
Rereading a graded reader would be a chore. This is why I transition as early as possible to reading “worthwhile” works (in Spanish, some simple yet respectable prose like Platero y Yo by Nobel Prize Winner Juan Ramon Jiminez). I am not yet prepared to read Steadman’s Plato or Lysias, but once I finish an Attic textbook, I plan on moving to these rather than a graded reader.
Yes, for the first book I used Pamela Draper’s commentary. It’s very similar to Steadman
http://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Book-1-Bk/dp/0472067923/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437108344&sr=1-1&keywords=Pamela+draper+iliad
After the first book I switched to Ameis-Hentze-Cauer, a German schooledition of the Iliad dating from the second part of the 19th century. It’s doesn’t have as much glosses as Draper or Steadman, but it contains lots of invaluable help for the intermediate student. https://archive.org/details/h1h4homersiliasfrd02home
Well, before starting on Homer I went through the first part of Schroeder & Horrigan’s Reading Course in Homer. Its vocabulary of course is geared towards reading Homer
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Course-Homeric-Greek-revised/dp/1585101753/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437108911&sr=1-1&keywords=Reading+course+in+homeric+greek
Yes, I do the same.
One more thing: Daivid writes somewhere about struggling for hours with one particular sentence. I never do that. Of course I make an honest attempt, but then, if I do not understand it I turn to a translation. Then I return to the sentence in Greek and make sure I’ve understood everything. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not, but it sure speeds things up.
I started on Reading Greek - hated it. The exercises had far too varied vocab for me to handle them. The grammatical explanations were confused and long winded and worst of all seemed at times to be talking over my head to the a class teacher. The readings had little relation to the grammar lessons not even avoiding grammar that had not yet been taught.
Then moved on to Taylor Greek to GCSE. Loved it. If only all text books were like part 1. The exercises are very focused on grammar there are plenty of them. The readings are its weakest point as they don’t really relate to the grammar being taught but do at least avoid grammar not yet taught.
In part 2 he begins to skimp on the exercises but I still found it very useful.
I hit a wall with his “beyond GCSE”. He has a section on μι verbs - all of them - and the exercise is a mere 15 lines. I don’t see why μι verbs require less practice than ω verbs.
The readings also at this point are so lightly adapted that they are as hard as the texts they are based on - harder in fact as you don’t have the help of a commentary or translation.
However, the grammatical explanations in this volume are as excellent as those in his other books hence it is a book I often refer to.
I have also been thru Athenaze. Loved the story. It doesn’t really prepare you for real Greek, however, even though it throw some real Greek at you right at the end.
I have Pollis which I love but there really isn’t enough of it for the ground it covers (the extended English edition is on order).
I have tried Waite and Pragnell’s book but it was too easy - it stops before getting onto the stuff I find difficult.
I then went to the other extreme and got part 2 Keller and Russell’s book but that was far too hard. It does have really extensive exercises even on advanced topics which for some reason other textbooks skimp on so probably should shell out the fifty quid for volume 1 but there are things that make me uneasy about it such as phobia about made up Greek so I continue to dither on that.
There are several other textbooks that I have tried but which I didn’t get on with at all.
As for Homer, I shall put aside an hour tomorrow with Steadman in front of me and I shall see how far I get.
I too use a translation when I encounter a sentence I can’t otherwise make out. I could never have made it through Thucydides without resorting to a translation from time to time. You should always try your best to understand a passage before turning to a translation, and after you see the translation you should try to understand how the Greek fits together.
Many modern editions offer a facing-page translation instead of providing extensive grammatical help, and make use of end-notes largely to supply necessary background information. The Aris & Phillips series adopts this approach, and it works well. Daivid, you might be well advised to try one or more volumes of that series to find your way into reading real Greek. Start with something at a relatively low level of difficulty: Plato’s Apology, Xenophon or Lysias for prose.
I pretty much do exactly what you do - it just takes me a lot lot longer than you.
I have tried one Aris & Phillips book Menander: The Shield and The Arbitration . While it does have a nice translation it has little if any help on the grammar as far as I recall. Do they have a special series directed towards intermediate learners?
Do they have a special series directed towards intermediate learners?
I don’t think so. The notes (with English lemmata) are at a fairly high level and very useful, and the translations tend to be literal enough to help intermediate students.
But sooner or later you need to take the plunge and engage with real Greek. The sooner you do that, and the more you read, the sooner you’ll be reading Greek with fluency–not perfect fluency: you’ll always have to rely to some extent on annotations and translations, but a reasonable level of fluency that will allow you to read with satisfaction.
Without intending to be condescending or patronizing, I get the impression that you are floundering a bit–readers aren’t satisfying you because they’re too easy, but real Greek texts are too hard. I think you have to bite the bullet and take the plunge into reading real Greek (to mix metaphors, or rather cliches)–using a translation as a resource of last resort. It’s hard going at first–that’s to be expected–but once you get going it will become easier and easier. You’ll learn more grammar that way than by doing exercises–you’ll really assimilate the grammar and it will become second nature to you.
One of the things that helped me so much with getting through the Gospels the first time was that I already knew the stories decently in English. It gave me a sort of a mental Rosetta stone in my head.
So I’d go farther than Qimmik: Read through the translation in large chunks, internalize them, and keep the meaning in your head while reading (or listening to!) the Greek. Language learning isn’t about applying rules and vocabulary glosses to problem solve. It’s about associating meaning in your head with strings of words, until your brain decides to make the connection.
One of my best exercises was to take a (Greek) audio recording of a text that I knew in English. I’d listen slowly, referring back to my translation as necessary. When I hit something that I didn’t understand, I would rewind 15 seconds. I re-listened until I found that I could listen or read that text straight through without any aid.
What do you mean by take the plunge? I read more real Greek than readers. I think that’s my problem and I need to reverse that proportion.
Only an impression? I know I’m floundering so you are not being condescending or patronizing.
I never said that readers are too easy. If fact I often find them too hard. When you get stuck with a reader you don’t usually have the help of a commentary and you don’t have the help of a translation. It is at that point I go back to real Greek. Though I do wonder if that’s a false impression. That is to say I expect readers to be easy so when I hit a hard bit I then feel that they are harder than they are.
I am unable to read real Greek fast enough for that to work. To learn a language element you need repetition. If I meet a form once, it doesn’t stick because the time before I meet it again is so long that it will have faded from my brain.
Bart and daivid-thank you for your replies.
daivid, I am interested if you find yourself reading anything in Steadman editions at a more satisfying pace, not just the Homer. The Homer just serves as a nice comparison for the 30 lines/hr–but by all means, if the Plato or Lysias interests you more, try those. I’d like to know if you think any of these would help increase the quantity of Greek you’re reading.
Also, not to be patronizing either, but I encourage you to spend a bit of time rereading–especially anything that’s difficult. I wouldn’t encourage you to memorize the Greek or the translation (though others surely would). But rereading is so vastly important to my own study I would be remiss not to encourage it. That’s why I think it is so important to find readings at one’s level that continue to be exciting after multiple reads on consecutive days.
(For -mi verbs, I just had to invent more drills for myself. Using the textbook’s practice sentences, I’d change single to plural, present to aorist, active to passive, indicative to subj.–that sort of thing. It is the worst type of language learning for me, but it was a chore I had to create to make up for how quickly the forms were introduced in the textbook)
Well I did the experiment. Eight lines took an hour and a half. That is pretty much what I expected from how fast I read Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch and Chariton.
I do do re-reading but sporadically. After laboring many hours over one author I overdose and have to switch to another. However that usually takes a few weeks so I will make it part of my routine and every day re-read something I read the day before.
I have composed a short text using μι-verbs alone. It requires a lot of effort so I do that sort of thing very often. I have set up my computer to quiz me with verb forms and seems to work well.
Knowing the gist doesn’t seem to help me a great deal.
I certainly think I need to do more audio stuff. I think though I shall set myself the task of simply setting aside some time every day to do at least some of Polis and actually do it. What you propose sounds effective but I’m not so sure I’d keep it up.
What about going through something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0HwxPK7Zjc&feature=youtu.be
Ok, my throat is sore forcing me to be quite nasally which eats my vowels but it’s reasonably clear. I think it’s a failed experiment a) lack of planning means I didn’t explain things like bekker numbers b) started on gen absolutes than went onto kata ton platona without going back (lot’s of jumping around) c) can’t point/highlight/manipulate oh and d) definitely messed up putting it together (phone rec + picture inserts).
I think the text is gone through at a very slow pace though.
Wonderful, Scribo! I made a version myself, since I think that there’s so much potential here. The main thing I wanted to try was to keep the Greek and the meaning in the listener’s mind at the same time.
I liked both video commentaries. Scribo’s point about how the left side does the “semantic heavy lifting” is helpful. I suppose there is some term for this. I think I’ve heard what is going on in the right side described elsewhere as “gapping.”
My favorite part of Joel’s was his L2 rephrasing.
There are some other examples of this sort of thing floating around on You Tube, but I agree with both of you that this format has potential for further development, so I would encourge you both to continue. I would look forward to see how you guys would break down more difficult sentences.
Nice. Yeah trying to keep focus on the Greek is why I put the text up and constantly re-read smaller sections. I’m not sure it quite works though. I might try to fully expand/re-write sentences or something.
Yeah that’s the problem. I realise in person I can constantly interact and question students, can physically point to which part of the texts I’m currently talking about but here…not so much. I might try a screen capture programme and use my cursor or something.
I’d be curious to know if it helped anybody read through the text if they thought they otherwise couldn’t and whether the next segment needs more explication. I also need to append a correction or two.
I think you’ve put your finger on the main difficulty—how to compensate for the absence of interaction. What you did was more or less what I do in class, the crucial difference being that in a class there are students, who can ask questions, have questions asked of them, etc. etc. Not to be a wet blanket, but for something like this to stand a chance of being successful on youtube I think more forethought would be needed, more clarity of exposition, a more sophisticated presentation, and avoidance of mistakes.
I complained below about there being no recently written readers, I had forgotten about John Taylor’s books.
Greek Stories: A GCSE Reader ( with Kristian Waite) I was able to go thru with ease right after going thru Taylor’s text book.
Greek Unseen Translation (with Stephen Anderson). The first section was nice and easy. After that there is a huge jump in difficulty. To me they were harder than real Greek (as when you are reading a real Greek text you have access to both translations and commentaries).
Both are almost entirely adapted Greek rather than made up Greek. The exceptions are some to fhe stories in Greek Stories which are based on Ovid so must be translations from the Latin. I have no idea as to how free those translations are.
I am nonetheless a little surprised that when so many excellent intermediate level commentaries being produced that these are the only two recent publications of easy Greek.
I think this points to the fact that Grammar-Translation is indifferent to comprehensible input, an indifference not felt in the 19th century, when Greek was seen more as a living language with which it was okay to tamper.
Note also that many of the intermediate commentaries that you refer to (Steadman, Hayes-Nimis, S. McDonald) have been produced by amateurs, free on line, or via print on demand, outside traditional academic publishing Before that, such resources were disparaged as crutches, but when the need was felt for these, they were produced, and are now being widley used.
Such might (or might not) occur down the road with easy Greek.
Are there Greek readers based on Ilya Frank’s method for those speaking English? Here’s a descrition of the method: http://english.franklang.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=13
In Russian, they have published only Aesop’s fables. What do you think about it?
No, I don’t think so. His method is not something I have really seen before. It’s not quite an interlinear, not quite a diglot, not quite a reader’s edition with glosses at the bottom of the page.
My French is pretty rusty, and his excerpt seemed to work okay.
I think it’s worth a try for Greek.