Learning Ancient Greek as a Greek

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hello!

I am from Greece, and know to speak and write Modern Greek and English, fluently.
I find myself more and more interested on Ancient Greek, as I read more and more Ancient Greek books, but find it a shame I read a bilingual book (ancient greek on the left page, greek on the right page), 2 languages which are so close, even though so many ages afar, and cannot read the original, even though I literally have it on my hands…
Reading the original is always the best, seeing the localisations of every work, definitions are butchered, even if the author did have mastery of the original language and the translated, simply because languages have undeniable differences.

I looked into learning languages, and what I noticed, is that the old (like, ~100 years old) books are the best. I did find some guides/suggestions, for english-speaking folks, and for those who know latin, but I think it is a tragedy to try to bridge english and ancient greek, instead of modern greek and ancient greek.
I do not trust greek graduates/teachers of “φιλολογικων” (no idea how it’s called in english, I hope you can translate it), because they are raised with modern books of grammar/vocabulary/whatever, and are biased against the old, especially because they are not familiar with them. Sure, they know ancient greek, but it was literally half their university degree (4 years…), and most went there not for their love for the ancient greek language. Not to mention that knowing a language well, doesn’t mean one can teach it well.
I have also seen how all of them teach at schools, I have had many “teachers”, even in private lessons paying money. It’s a tragedy. It makes you hate the language.

This is why I turn here, in a foreign-speaking forum, which speaks the language of my ancestors better than me, and I wish to - if not to speak it, at least be able to read it fluently without misunderstandings.

I see that for english-speakers, Latin has books like: Collar & Daniell’s Beginner’s Latin Book, or Lingua Latina per se Illustrata “The Latin Language Illustrated by Itself”, which I have heard are great for english-speaking people.
Is there something similar for ModernGreek-Speakers for Ancient Greek? A book which if you truly invest time and effort, you will understand it, instead of simply memorizing it or “brute-forcing” it and taking much more time than needed?

2

Your experience is certainly interesting for us English speakers, for whom the discussion sometimes arises as to how well modern Greek speakers can understand Ancient Greek without learning it as a second language. I’m sorry that I know of no resources such as you describe for MG. You seem very negative about Ancient Greek instruction in Greece, but surely they have textbooks which teach Ancient? Otherwise it would seem that you need to start at the beginning and work through it systematically, just like learning any language. And there is nothing wrong with memorization of paradigms and vocabulary, as long as it’s combined with plenty of time actually reading and working with the language at every level.

3

Some time ago, there was a thread mentioning Kontopoulos’ To Prôton Bêma, a demotic translation of Kendrick’s Greek Ollendorff published in 1859.
I know some members here have found Kendrick’s book very useful (together with the recordings made by bedwere). Maybe Kontopoulos’ translation could have a place too in your learning.

Here is the thread about Kontopoulos: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/s-tr-n-kontopoulos/15632/1

4

Καλωσορίσατε στο Textkit!

You may be interested in some of the older books on this site-they’re basically old editions and some very old editions of textbooks used at mostly the secondary level. (γυμνάσιο-λύκειο). They’re free to download:
http://e-library.iep.edu.gr/iep/collection/browse/index.html?start=10

If you want to have a look at the current publications, here is the URL for course materials provided by ΥΠΕΘ :
http://ebooks.edu.gr/ebooks/v2/allcourses.jsp

Hope this helps. Καλή συνέχεια!

5

Dear friend, there are some matters which make it hard for living Greeks to approach the ancient version of the language.
I’d begin with the pronunciation, which is fun and so crucial. As a modern-GR speaker you’ll have to literally feel the huge change the long syllables shall have on your whole approach, not only for speaking, but also understanding the basis of the syntactical part of the language. It’s a physical necessity that solves the “mystery” of the syntactic constructions in Ancient Greek. (At that point you’ll also feel why many consonants have to be short and plosive, apart from the grammatical & other evidence).
If you just can read in a metrically correct manner you’ll be on the train for the rest of the journey.

Next stop? Learn the core meanings of the prepositions and watch how they affect the meaning of composite words (There are some verbs which combine with all prepositions, most typical: βάλλω). Take a good lexicon and study all these variations, not so much for the verb, but for getting a deeper and hand-on understanding of what the prepositions really do.

Next stop? find a list of the most common words in ancient texts. Most of them are known in their modern Greek version, but also sometimes have different meanings. Find the differences.

Next: look up the particles. There’s the classic of Dennistone and the recent work of Graziosi c.s. You’ll find these little words everywhere and are important especially for expressing emphasis and attitude, so you’ll get much of the emotion and often structure in a text.

The rest later. Good luck!

6

Thank you so much for your replies!!

Your experience is certainly interesting for us English speakers, for whom the discussion sometimes arises as to how well modern Greek speakers can understand Ancient Greek without learning it as a second language.

The vocabulary is weirdly similar, as long one knows the roots/origins of the most common daily words
So, looking at an ancient greek phrase (not on a scroll where there are no spacings, but on a book), some words are vaguely recognizable, so some vague meaning can be gained just by speaking modern greek. But it’s really vague. Like, one can miss the word ουκ and of course the perceived vague meaning can be outright false

The grammar is at the core the same from what I’ve studied (tenses etc etc), but it’s impossible to understand at first glance. Vocabulary as said above, can be vaguely interpreted, but for grammar it is impossible if not taught, without exaggeration. Also, modern greek has simplified τόνους, so a word can be spoken exactly as it is read, and going in ancient greek, τόνοι are more than just where there is a vowel focus, and is the bane of every modern greek xaxaxa

As for your original quote, look into καθαρεύουσα greek, because I think those who knew that language (pre-1970 greeks), could read ancient greek.
It was a “modernization” of ancient greek, and was mandatory learning at school and goverment positions. Much of it survived (vocabulary) and merged into Demotic greek, aka modern greek. Very few words are foreign in καθαρεύουσα, mostly some turkish words, but I got to admit, nowadays, it is far worse, as the greek culture is dilluted by foreign, and more and more english words and phrases enter the language, to the point my generation speaks “greeklish” at times, and even types in greek daily but with latin/english characters (greek keyboards are horrible, cant blame them)

Some time ago, there was a thread mentioning Kontopoulos’ To Prôton Bêma, a demotic translation of Kendrick’s Greek Ollendorff published in 1859.
I know some members here have found Kendrick’s book very useful (together with the recordings made by bedwere). Maybe Kontopoulos’ translation could have a place too in your learning.

Here is the thread about Kontopoulos: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=68104&p=196043&hili … ck#p196043

Seems like a smooth introduction for me.
I have downloaded it, I will print it in a month or so when I take learning ancient greek seriously as I am occupied by many projects at the moment (because learning a language needs actual investment to not half-ass it or give up), I will give it a try

I see he has made some other books that may be of help for me as well

P.S. I tried to download the book from libgen.is (it’s in greek don’t worry), but realized the greek goverment has banned libgen.is (redirects you to blacklist by gambling commision wtf), but with Tor or VPN, it works

Καλωσορίσατε στο Textkit!

You may be interested in some of the older books on this site-they’re basically old editions and some very old editions of textbooks used at mostly the secondary level. (γυμνάσιο-λύκειο). They’re free to download:
http://e-library.iep.edu.gr/iep/collect > … l?start=10

If you want to have a look at the current publications, here is the URL for course materials provided by ΥΠΕΘ :
http://ebooks.edu.gr/ebooks/v2/allcourses.jsp

Hope this helps. Καλή συνέχεια!

You dropped gold. I tried briefly searching for greek databases but the only thing I found is the greek modern school books (which are horrible)

With this post and the above, I did good to post here, you literally provided me with the resources I needed, you dropped me in front of the gold mine, I just need to do a bit of digging myself instead of being spoonfed xaxaxa

Dear friend, there are some matters which make it hard for living Greeks to approach the ancient version of the language.
I’d begin with the pronunciation, which is fun and so crucial. As a modern-GR speaker you’ll have to literally feel the huge change the long syllables shall have on your whole approach, not only for speaking, but also understanding the basis of the syntactical part of the language. It’s a physical necessity that solves the “mystery” of the syntactic constructions in Ancient Greek. (At that point you’ll also feel why many consonants have to be short and plosive, apart from the grammatical & other evidence).
If you just can read in a metrically correct manner you’ll be on the train for the rest of the journey.

I agree with this, the beginning is the hardest part, because you just cannot understand anything and don’t even know where to start. It snowballs after, at least that’s what I noticed with english, and makes sense for most languages

Next stop? find a list of the most common words in ancient texts. Most of them are known in their modern Greek version, but also sometimes have different meanings. Find the differences.

This is the only thing I am doing sometimes, out of curiosity because some roots do have some pretty fascinating meaning, hidden in plain sight. The common greek names are a good example (νίκος, πέτρος, λάμπρος, φωτεινή, αλέξανδρος etc etc)

I should do the first thing before going for the next stops, I will keep them all in mind, your path sounds good, now all I got to do is find some time, probably summer sounds good :slight_smile:

====

Ευχαριστώ για τις συμβουλές σας, και τα βιβλία που μου βρήκατε :mrgreen:
Να’στε καλά!

7

There is a documentary which is actually playing its last episode this week on Cosmote titled ‘Αλφάβητος -Κοινός Κώδικας’, consisting of 24 episodes of 40-45 min. duration focusing on each letter of the Greek alphabet. As usually happens with Cosmote, the series will most likely be rerun several times. Each episode details the history of the letter itself, starting with its Phoenician form and its evolution to the modern character, then presents the story of words that have made their way via Latin into Spanish, French, English and sometimes back again into Modern Greek as neologisms (many scientific words coined from Ancient Greek roots do this, e.g. ωκεανογραφία, μετεωρολογία, πανσπερμία, κτλ.). The programme features philologists and scholars from Spain, France, the U.S., and of course Greece. (υπάρχουν και καλοί φιλόλογοι!)