I’d be interested in starting a new group to study White’s First Greek Book and excerpts of Xenophon’s Anabasis, with a slightly novel approach. I’d like to supplement the translation exercises in White with other exercises, and place more emphasis on reading and understanding Greek than on translation. The online exercises for Athenaze (http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/greek/) at the University of Victoria using the software “Hot Potatoes” from the same University(http://hotpot.uvic.ca/) gave me the idea of creating our own exercises to help master the material with less tedious memorization of paradigms and vocabulary lists and avoiding the translation mentality. I also use Athenaze and Reading Greek (and I’d welcome study partners for those texts, as well.) But the fact that the White and Xenophon texts are in the public domain means we could use passages of Xenophon (either from the original, or from White’s simplified version) for sentence gap exercises, matching, finding or highlighting or copying words or examples of grammatical forms under study, answering comprehension assessment questions, etc. Of course, we could also do other things: link to other sites (for instance, the imperfect and aorist tenses are introduced very briefly in White, with far too little practice with them), record audio files, and bring in excerpts from other texts (for example, the Septuagint) to illustrate usage.
I’m willing to put in the work to organize the group and to try to get some online exercises using Hot Potoates up and running. Not having an advanced level of expertise in Greek (I’m at about Lesson 30 in White and I’m just reaching the point now of being able to read and understand Xenophon), myself, we would greatly benefit from more advanced students of Greek here on Textkit.
What do others think? Is this much more difficult than I imagine? Or is there too little interest in an old book like White to get a study group started?
There was a White group a number of years back and it was quite enjoyable.
I am not able to participate this time but what you are proposing sounds like a very good way to do it.
I hope you can get enough interested people.
Hi. I think creating the exercises yourself via Hot Potatoes is the better way to go.
I’ve just checked one of their early exercises of Athenaze and it has accentuation problems:
The farmer is not speaking: ὁ … οὐ λέγει. the answer is αὐτουργὸς with grave
but they marked it as wrong and upon clicking the ‘hint’, I got it with an acute!
also in the 2nd sentence, after οἶκος there’s ἐστι but it didn’t throw its accent on the u. of οἶκος
as it should have: οἶκός ἐστι…
I realize that’s neat-peaking but hey, I’m just saying.
I’d be happy to share with you some passages I write with the new vocabulary of each chapter (I’m only in chapter 2 but I’ll get to the end soon enough ). It gives me the ability to review new vocabularies, pay close attention to grammar, and actually come up with a story on my own, however simple and uninteresting it may be.
I discovered an error in one of the online Athenaze exercises myself a few months back. I suppose that’s the downside of language learners composing their own Greek sentences. But I agree that it’s a useful exercise, since, for one thing, I would like as much reading practice as possible with the White’s vocabulary and constructions (I recently heard the figure of 16 times tossed around as the number of repetitions needed to learn something–I don’t know where the figure comes from), and since Xenophon and White are no longer accepting writing gigs.
So please do share your compositions (and glad to have you in the now-emerging group!).
Prometheus, are you trying to lure my new study partner away?!
No, but seriously, I’d be interested in an informal group (my time table is generally full full full lately) that works its way through White’s text. I don’t know what I could do as far as the Xenophon reading, but I’d give it a stab and see if I didn’t completely suck at it. This will be my first time working through such a text, since I haven’t studied Greek steadily since 2001. Lately I’ve devoted a lot more thought and energy to it, since I received my copy of Athenaze in the mail. Until now all I’ve had is three years of κοινή in college and almost nothing since. I started up with the Homeric group, but the pace soon found me floundering.
We can definitely not do more than one lesson per week!
I think a good starting point would be the reading passage from White’s First Greek Book on p. 31, Lesson 13, #25, under the heading “The Parentage, Race, and Power of Cyrus the Younger”. (I was disappointed that I couldn’t copy and paste the text into here–can anyone advise?)
The text can be approached at several levels:
For an absolute beginner: find and highlight upper case letters, then vowel letters, listed in Lesson 1. Try to guess the proper names mentioned.
For beginners already familiar with the Greek aphabet: look for, highlight, and read aloud words listed in the vocabularies up to, and including Lesson 13.
For more advanced beginners: identify phrases or whole sentences that you can understand, or guess the meaning of (highlight them).
Answer in English (easier) or in Greek (more advanced) the following questions:
a. Who was Cyrus?
b. What territories was Cyrus made satrap over?
c. What military resources did Cyrus have at his disposal, on land and sea? Did they include Greek hoplites, or only Persian soldiers?
d. Who was Tissaphernes? Why did he fear Cyrus?
Unless and until someone suggests an easy way to enter text from White’s book, let’s start with a bit of the “real thing”. Here are the opening lines of Xenophon’s Anabasis Kyrou (‘The Ascent of Cyrus’):
Try to identify the following capitalized names: Xenophon, Cyrus, Darius, Parysatis, Artaxerxes, Tissaphernes, Anabasis, Xenia Parrasion, Kastolou,
Find, highlight, and read aloud according to the instructions in the first lesson of White the following words of one, two, or three letters: O, H,TON, MEN, KAI, TOY, OYN, δὲ, τὼ, ἐς, ἢν, δύο, ἐπὶ, ἀπὸ, εἰς, τὴν, ἔτι.
Some important relationship words are listed below (in the forms in which they appear in the text). Read them aloud and highlight them in the text.
mother μήτηρ
children παῖδες, παῖδε
brother ἀδελφὸν, ἀδελφῷ
friend φίλον
Can you guess which words mean satrap, hoplites, Hellenes?
Which word in the first sentence is likely to mean “life” (cf. “biology”)? Which “two” (“duo”), which “younger” (“new”, “neo-”)? Which word in the second sentence is likely to mean “general” (“strategist”)?
(More advanced)
7. Put in the correct case forms of the masculine noun Κῦρος (Cyrus):
Just FYI - NateD26 and I are working First Greek Book from the earlier parts on my forum here: http://www.jhronline.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=17. You’re welcome to come and join us, too. We’ve got an Athenaze group going now. We’re in the second chapter of Athenaze (going into the third this week) and around section 50 of FGB, about where the present tense begins.
Your posts and questions are fantastic (WOW!), but I think they’re over my head right now. I need to work into things by review and practice. I’ll take a look at all your amazing work, but I don’t know what I can and cannot answer at this point.
Jason
P.S. I’m a quick typist. I can type up the text from FGB for passage discussion, if you want.
I beg your pardon here. I’ve never composed in Greek before. My college work was only in translation, so this will be something nice.
a. Who was Cyrus?
ὁ Κῦρος ἦν ὁ τοῦ Δαρείου υἱὸς καὶ σατράπης χώρας μεγάλης.
b. What territories was Cyrus made satrap over?
ὁ Κῦρος σατράπης ἦν τῆς Λυδίας καὶ τῆς Φρυγίας καὶ τῆς Καππαδοκίας.
c. What military resources did Cyrus have at his disposal, on land and sea? Did they include Greek hoplites, or only Persian soldiers?
τῷ Κύρῳ πλοῖα μακρὰ ἦν ἐν τῇ θαλάττᾳ, καὶ χωρία ἰσχυρά, καὶ στρατιῶται ἀγαθοί. οἱ στρατιῶται τοῦ Κύρου ἦσαν ὁπλῖται Ἑλληνικοὶ καὶ πελτασταὶ καὶ τοξόται Περσικοί.
d. Who was Tissaphernes? Why did he fear Cyrus?
ὁ Τισσαφέρνης πολέμιος ἦν τῷ Κύρῳ. φόβον εἶχεν πρὸς τὸν Κῦρον διότι ὁ Κῦρος υἱὸς τοῦ Δαρείου ἦν καὶ στρατηγὸς δεινός.
I’ve answered the questions below to the best of my ability. One strange thing, though, is that you listed γίγνονται as “to beget, have (children).” This isn’t active (transitive) but passive. The phrase Δαρείου καὶ Παρυσάτιδος γίγνονται παῖδες δύο would mean “Of Darius and Parysatis were born two boys.” Γίγνονται is third-person plural present passive/middle indicative. In this case, it is written in the present tense, but it obviously refers to the past.
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Put in the correct case forms of the masculine noun Κῦρος (Cyrus):
Match the following verbs with their translations:
γίγνονται - be born, come into being
ἐ-βούλετο - wanted
παρ-εῖναι - to be present
ἐποίησε - made
ἀνα-βαίνει - goes up
ἀπο-πέμπει - sends away
πείθεται - convinces
βασιλεύσει - to be king
ἀπ-ῆλθε - went away
φιλοῦσα - loved
δύνηται - was possible
Jason,
Thanks for your corrections and contributions. More of each are welcome. In particular, what aspects of grammar or vocabulary would you like to concentrate on? (I think most people here are already fairly comfortable with the Greek script, so I’ll leave out that part.) This is our course and we get to make up the homework and the tests!
Exercise in Verb Tenses. Change all verbs in the first reading passage in White FGB (Lesson 13) from past (Imperfect or Aorist) to present. e.g. Κῦρος, ὁ τοῦ Δαρείου υἱός, Πέρσης ἦν → Κῦρος, ὁ τοῦ Δαρείου υἱός, Πέρσης ESTIN.
[quote=“jaihare”] One strange thing, though, is that you listed γίγνονται as “to beget, have (children).” This isn’t active (transitive) but passive. The phrase Δαρείου καὶ Παρυσάτιδος γίγνονται παῖδες δύο would mean “Of Darius and Parysatis were born two boys.” Γίγνονται is third-person plural present passive/middle indicative. In this case, it is written in the present tense, but it obviously refers to the past.
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γίγνομαι doesn’t have an active form in the present tense. It is middle. The fact that it is present in Greek (but past in English) is a matter of translation. In English we don’t usually narrate in the present tense. (Some exceptions: This guy walks into a bar and says…)
