Hi, I’m self-learning Attic Greek and working my way through Mastronarde. On the English → Greek translation exercises, I find that I often have (mostly) the same words as the answer key does, but in a different order. I know that Greek is a flexible language with respect to word order, and I know when certain orders are prohibited (e.g., enclitics can’t come first in a sentence) and others mean different things (e.g., αὐτός between article-noun or outside), but other than that I tend to use a very English subject-verb-object order. So while my translations might not be technically incorrect, I suspect that many of them would read weirdly to an ancient Greek, or to someone who has read widely in the classics.
How can I improve this? Or will a feel for Greek-ish work order naturally come as I read more in Greek? Thanks!
There is a chapter on word order in the upcoming Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek that looks like it might be a more accessible discussion than I’ve seen anywhere else. Here are the pages available through the Amazon preview:
https://imgur.com/a/VKCyJpY
I have found that with Mastronarde, Subject, object, indirect object, verb usually produces similar results to the answer book, and I beleive that earlier in the text book they mention this structure is being generally the most common.
If I remember correctly, it is also mentioned that there are always going to be many ways to translate a sentence into Greek, especially as you get further into the book, so I find it can become quite hard to know if I am marking myself too generously (σὺν ἢ μεθά for example, can both mean ‘with’, but the answer book will only use one to save space).
You could always go back to your own answers a couple of weeks later and translate them back into Greek, which might show up any mistakes, or translate the English answers from the text book back into Greek as a way of getting more practice.