Just wondering if anyone has any experience or thoughts about using this book (and the second volume) for learning Ancient Greek? I am currently using Athenaze (Italian version) and finding it quite tough going.
Hello,
I am using the English 3rd edition of Athenaze after struggling through JACT Reading Greek for 18 months and I find it to be simpler and better laid out. Have you tried the English one at all?
Cheers.
I got the Italian version because I read it had a lot more reading material than the English version, but I guess my Italian is not as good as I thought! I will try the English version soon.
I wouldn’t get your hopes up about the English version if you’ve already got the Italian, to be honest. Athenaze is a good book but it is designed for class rather than individual study - when I first used it we were in a small group with a teacher who could give explanations and examples and, maybe most importantly, error correction. I’d recommend using this forum to post any questions or doubts, and your answers to the exercises (not necessarily all, maybe just the first one or two questions of each exercise) so you can learn from others.
And don’t get discouraged!
I have the English and was thinking of working my way through it when the semester ends.
I also use an Ancient Greek app on my phone which is a very convenient way to quiz oneself, it is called LP Ancient Greek.
Thanks, Matt, that is very useful to know!
Greek to GCSE is a useful book but its aims are rather more limited than either JACT or Athenaze. Most textbooks are best studied with a teacher. If you cannot find one post your questions here as has been suggested.
No single textbook explains everything perfectly. Learning Greek on your own is hard so don’t be surprised if it’s “tough going”. I found it hard even though I was in a class. Don’t make the mistake of blaming the textbook. In fact don’t blame anyone at all - least of all yourself! Learning Greek is fun and enjoyable and thats why we do it.
I try to encourage students to think in terms of things being “unfamiliar” rather than “hard”. If you don’t know an inflected language before starting Greek it is going to seem very strange. If you know Latin you have a head start but the differences can trip you up.
It is important to learn the paradigms by heart as you go. This can be boring but it’s necessary. A bit like practising scales for a musician.
The Eton CollegeGreek Software Project offers lots of practice in testing paradigms:
https://www.etoncollege.com/eton-outwards/digital-learning-hub/eton-greek-software-project/
If anyone has any games or web sites they can recommend please post some links.
Thanks, that is very useful and helpfully uplifting.
I have learned a couple of inflected languages before (Latin and Russian) so the concepts are pretty familiar.
The hardest thing at the moment is probably learning the vocabulary, as Latin doesn’t seem to be a massive help.
The Greek vocabulary, especially Attic, isn’t as bad as it might look. The roots and prepositions and suffixes are all fantastically productive and tend to carry a primitive fundamental meaning, though you can really feel that decay as you move into Hellenistic Greek.
Memorizing paradigms and vocabulary memorization was never as useful to me as reading, using a translation for a help for the first couple of years, and getting myself to the point on each sentence where I could read the Greek aloud in an expressive way, combined with memorization and back translation. This double-book thing I’ve been doing lately was a famous technique recommended to Latin beginners (in the 16th century) and has been helpful to me lately.
It has worked pretty well for getting to the point where I can pick up most authors and just read okay enough. It’s taken ten years though and plenty of stuff is still plenty hard.
OK, very helpful. I am just starting to recognise the usefulness of prefixes.
So, I can look forward to being able to read stuff fluently in about to years 
I know what you mean about lots of reading, having recently finished part 1 of LLPSI and enjoyed it a great deal.
ElderGeek,
Let me recommend both the textbook and reader that I talked about here.
I personally learn with through a mix of reading and doing grammar/translation, so the combination of Croy’s textbook and Mark Jeong’s Greek Reader have been perfect for me learning on my own.
If you want to stay focused on reading, Jeong’s Greek Reader would still be useful to you, since I believe it repeats vocabulary more time than Athenaze does.
Here are two iPhone apps I find very helpful.
-
Attikos: You get a selection of Greek classics. Touch a word, and see a parsing, with lemma displayed. Touch the lemma and get your choice of Greek-English lexicon entries on the lemma.
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LP Ancient Greek: This a grammar quiz program on the forms.
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/lp-ancient-greek/id523634848 (also available for android)
Spotted this while struggling with JACT 5 C-D Revision. An absolute godsend. Thanks for sharing. Juggling present, imperfect and future is tough. I shudder to think what Section 6 has in store.
ElderGreek,
I’m working my way through it now–happy to work together. Have you started? I haven’t reached a point where I need to start a thread for help but I’m sure it will come. I love the layout so far, especially the excercises, since I now have sentences I can actually translate with accuracy. It is a little weird in that they don’t just give the full declension paradigms–it starts with nominative and accusative and sentences using those, for example.
Hi everyone! ElderGreek, njmolinari, if you are going through Athenaze, I will be also happy to join in and study together. And many thanks to Seneca for the link to Eton CollegeGreek Software Project. It is a very helpful tool.
I’m not doing Athenaze but Taylor’s Greek to GCSE 1, which is what I thought this thread started with (I may be mistaken). I also have Lusching but do not care for it.
Of course, it is! I’ve got confused. 
I’m very sorry.
I’m probably too desperate to find some company to read easy greek texts together. That’s why when I came across this thread and saw Athenaze mentioned in the first post, I interpreted it all wrong, to the extent of disregarding the topic. Let me apologize.
That could be very useful. I started a little while ago, and am currently working through chapter 2.