I’m studying Attic Greek and am making pretty good progress, if I do say so myself. But I wonder if perhaps it would be better to study modern Greek instead.
With the ancient you have of course Plato, Xenophon, the plays ect, but how does modern greek literature compare?
It’s totally different 
Does it compare? Depends on how you look at it. It most definitely is not so widely known as the ancient Greek literature. Is it as good? Well, yes, as all nations worldwide, Greek literature has wonderful works of literature to show in modern times too. No philosophical works of that magnitude though. In fact, if you ask me, none, of whatever “magnitude” whatsoever. Poetry and novels and such yes.
Some of them, written in Puristic Greek (Katharevousa) are more or less accesible by those who have studied ancient Greek (unless their studies have stopped at Homeric Greek) especially if they have read a bit of Koine.
Should that be a reason to switch from one to the other? Nah! While there are many and good reasons to learn a modern language, and even more for someone who studies ancient Greek to learn modern Greek, I wouldn’t recommend switching.
If you are doing well at your studies of ancient Greek (and you are the best judge of it so I believe you ) it would be better, if you ask me, to finish your studying (or at least continue it till you arrive at a level you are happy with) and then learn some modern Greek.
P.S. My English has been malfunctioning for ever. Sorry for any horrible mistakes I’ve made.
You don’t make any more mistakes than a native English speaker.
i agree with irene, but on a slightely different note; i found that by knowing modern greek, ancient greek became alot easier to comprehend. its kind of hard to explain what im trying to explain… hmm… when i started ancient greek i didnt look at a sentance and see alien words and syntax etc… (as i did when i started latin! 
) instead i just saw what i would call normal greek with a bunch of vocab i needed to look up, and some endings i didnt know. I could picture everything i was reading in my head very quickly in greek and never needed to ‘translate’ into english when i read.
At the time i took that for granted until i started latin; when reading latin i first had to keep translating what i was reading into greek or english before i was getting the hang of it…
so basically what im saying is… from the point of view of people who want to ‘think’ and fully ‘understand’ ancient greek wouldnt completely understanding modern greek (at any stage) be crutial?.. or maybe its just me?
do speakers of Romance languages feel the same about latin?
John 
Bert that’s a compliment (I think ) I don’t deserve. Thanks!
Yannakare allow me to disagree. If gigas had been studying modern Greek I would have said the same: Don’t switch to ancient Greek before reaching a good level at modern Greek.
The way I see it, knowing one helps you get the other. Since modern Greek is, in many ways, a simplified version of ancient Greek, I think that, since he’s already started with the latter, it’s best that he should go on with it. Anyway, I don’t think anyone needs modern Greek to fully understand ancient Greek. For someone who’s a native speaker of Greek (the modern variety obviously) I agree that a deep understanding of AG comes easier . I don’t think however that you need to know the descendant to understand the forefather, especially since there are so many things written in AG (I tried to make the lame metaphor work but I just couldn’t).
mmm yea thats true… as i guess one wouldnt need to know italian to fully understand latin for example… although it would help if you knew it already, but to go out of one’s way to learn the modern language first isnt worth it yea on second thoughts i agree…
Why does language simplify anyway? comparing MG to AG and modern romance languages to latin… it seems that everything is just getting simpler… is there any major reason behind this?
i could never tell if MG was harder than AG, or i just thought that because of the more work one needs to put into learning a language not spoken anymore…
John
I don’t think it’s so much an issue of simplicity as familiarity. A Latin speaker would necessarily think Italian is an easy language, for example. What many European languages find easy, stable word order, would be foreign and require study for speakers of a highly inflected language. Having less declensions and case endings to memorize is the result of the stabilization of syntax, which is another way of determining meaning.
On that note, I’ve always wondered if Slavic language speakers (lots of cases) have an easier time with Latin and Ancient Greek than English or Romance speakers. I’m definitely going to give Modern Greek a shot, too, once I’ve tackled Ancient!