Hello people, this is my first post and it’s 10:30 just before I go to bed because i’m really tired, so please be gentle if I have broken some arcane etiquette rule.
I’ve been learning greek now for about 6 months. I have read Greek to GCSE parts 1, 2 and ‘beyond GCSE’ several times each, but now i’m stuck… I have tried reading the Loeb version of Anabasis and it’s impossibly difficult. I’ve also tried other texts with facing commentary, grammar and vocab. The problems I have are the breadth of the vocabulary, the weird grammar which is nothing like the textbook expositions and finally the excessive use of particles and idioms. Frankly, I feel like giving up. Does anyone know of anything that is more difficult than toy textbook phrases, but not crazy difficult? thank you for reading about my woes.
See the Greek Readers thread below, but Lucian is a great author, and there are a number of extremely good intermediate readers that should give you all the help that you need:
Here is Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods at Faenum Publishing. It’s very well done, and the PDF version is free to download. Here is the Bryn Mawr review.
Tell me about it! There is a huge gulf between textbooks and actual Greek.
My suspicion is that the problem is that the people who get to write textbooks are all so able at learning languages that they make the transition from textbook to actual Greek with ease. Hence they see no need to produce books that ease the transition. This means that those who not so able at language learning fail to master Greek - hence they never get to write the textbooks that suit those who are not super able.
Having said that John Taylor’s Greek to GCSE is excellent. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that he works in a school rather than a university and so encounters pupils who are not especially able. However, his Greek Beyond GCSE really rushes through things. His section on correlatives fails to bring out how correlatives correlate and as an exercise he only provides 10 Greek to English sentences and 5 English to Greek. I wonder if the problem is that his advance class (which in Britain would be studying A-levels) consist of only those pupils who are so able to be sure of getting the high grade needed for university entry.
Six months is, however, too early to give up. First you should try Polis by Christophe Rico. The stress on audio along with the written text may suit you better. He also treats grammar in a different order so it is helpful in getting practice that other textbooks skimp on.
I’m going through the Anabasis and using Mather & Hewitt’s student edition (available in a handsome recent reprint); I mention this because it has a generous vocabulary in the back without which I may have been overwhelmed having to look up every few words in a separate lexicon. I’m supplementing M&H with Goodwin’s version, and some reprints also have a vocabulary in back (some also with etymological information), though my (print-on-demand) copy I got on AbeBooks doesn’t have them – your mileage may vary.
Be aware that Mather & Hewitt use line numbers (on a page) instead of the traditional section numbers (in a chapter) so you’ll have to write them in yourself in the margin if you want to post or otherwise communicate about them.
I have some other student editions but I haven’t gotten to them yet and can’t comment
If it’s the Anabasis you want, you may want a look at Harper’s Inductive Greek Primer, which was aimed at absolute beginners but has you read through the Anabasis starting from the 1st lesson. Also, take a look at James Turney Allen’s First Year of Greek, which uses extracts from real Greek from the first lesson to teach Greek.
Dialog in short snips is sometimes easier than narrative. Long speeches are best avoided. They can be horrifically difficult. Don’t despise beginner books that teach you phrases, they are building blocks for clauses. I spent a whole year or longer with E.V.N. Geotchius (New Testament) learning the components of clauses and sentences before tackling very simple gospel narrative in John. Your experience of difficulty is one that is shared by many of us who do not pickup languages with ease.
I have tried reading the Loeb version of Anabasis and it’s impossibly difficult. I’ve also tried other texts with facing commentary, grammar and vocab. The problems I have are the breadth of the vocabulary, the weird grammar which is nothing like the textbook expositions and finally the excessive use of particles and idioms. Frankly, I feel like giving up. Does anyone know of anything that is more difficult than toy textbook phrases, but not crazy difficult? thank you for reading about my woes.