My journey through the exercises of Athenaze

Textbooks Greek Textbooks and Study Groups
1

So, uh…this is the first time I would be answering the exercises in an Attic Greek textbook. And well, I’m asking other folks to check if I’m correct or not because I don’t trust myself not to cheat were I to know where the book of answers to a text book is reachable for me.

So…without further ado…here are my answers to the exercises from Chapter 1a of Athenaze, volume 1! I also hope to continue using this thread until I am completely finished with both volumes 1 and 2 of Athenaze!

CHAPTER 1A

Is my handwriting clear?

Should translations of exercises be word for word exactly like those in the answer keys of textbooks?
Athenaze books - request for advice
2

Malo,
Check this site-it has instructions for downloading the teacher’s guide to Athenaze Book I, 3rd edition.

https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/062389/Athenaze-Introduction-to-Ancient-Greek-Book-I-Third-Edition-Revised.html
The section you need is toward the bottom of the item description.

I wouldn’t worry so much about “cheating”. Just don’t go to the teacher’s guide for the solution to a particular problem or to look up answers in the course of completing the exercise; in other words, don’t use it as a crutch. Exercises in general are based on material you’ve covered, so when you find yourself stumped, go back into the lesson - the answer’s in there! Once you’ve completed your exercise, then go to the teacher’s guide and use it to check your work. Then once you know what your mistakes are, you can determine why you made them and review the appropriate sections. If you still can’t understand a particular concept or construction featured in a particular lesson, then by all means, come to Textkit.

3

My answers to the exercises in Chapter 1B




Ok? Err, can I still report on my progress here?

4

Malo,

Of course you can! I just think (and of course it’s just my opinion) that you’ll make much faster progress making proper use of an answer key rather than waiting for somebody to correct your work.

5

I’ve only looked at your final three sentences. Some important points before you go any further:

(1) You write “auton” for “he.” (Forgive absence of Greek font.) That’s doubly wrong:
(i) Greek would use nothing for “he.” The verb ending and the context are enough. (Compare the Gk.-Eng. sentences.)
(ii) since it’s the subject of the sentence (English “he” not “him”), it could not be accusative.

(2) “oun” (in #3) and “gar” (in ##3 and 4) are never the first word. They’re “postpositive”—they need something in front of them. (So in #3 the word order should be “o gar ponos …” or “o ponos gar…”.)

(3) In #3, “he is tired” is just “kamnei” (no auton, no estin), so the Greek should be “pollakis oun kamnei.”. You must get out of the habit of translating each word as it comes. Greek does not work like English!

Keep it up!

6

Ok. So my translations of the Vocabulary parts are not word for word correct as the answers from the Teacher’s Handbook. Does it still count as right or do I mark it as wrong? Like say:

“Dicaeopolis lives not in Athens but in the country, for he is a farmer” means the same as “But Dikaiopolis lives in the fields as a farmer; not in Athens” right?

Or how about the other lines I feel dissatisfied about, like:

“And so he cultivates the farm and works in the country” = “working in the fields by farming the farm”

“But life is hard; for the farm is small, but the work is long.” = “And the life is hard; for the farm is small, but the works large.”

“And so Dicaeopolis is always working, and often he groans and says” = “Dikaiopolis then works always and groans often and says”

“O Zeus, life is hard; for the work is endless, and the farm is small and does not provide much food” = “O Zeus, life is hard; The work is endless, and the farm is little and provides not much grain.”

The difference is only word arrangement and well…different levels of translation competence between a professional and an amateur, right? I still got the same sense, right?

Or is there only one correct way to translate things, and I have to memorize that?

7

Your answers may not need to be exactly the same as the teacher’s handbook, but you do need to show that you understand the grammatical construction as well as the sense.

I suggest you (1 ) follow Aetos’ advice and (2) reread my previous post and avoid such mistakes from now on. If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask, but do not go on the way you have been doing.

8

I know you have posted some scans of your answers but its jolly hard to relate what you have written in your last post with what is printed in the book. I dont have the third edition and if that’s what you are using that may account for part of the difficulty. In any event you need to post the Greek and then your translation and any other other translation you want to query. Few of us have time to look through several posts to work out what you are asking.

A few things.

"“Dicaeopolis lives not in Athens but in the country, for he is a farmer” means the same as "But Dikaiopolis lives in the fields as a farmer; " Do these really mean the same? If you were to translate them as they stand back into Greek would you get the same result? “as a farmer” implies that maybe he is not a farmer but just assuming the role? Without the Greek its difficult to know whether these “mean” the same.

When translating into English aim for something that reads well and does not have stilted word order. Word order in English and Greek are very different. Word order in Greek is much more flexible than English. You dont need to reflect Greek word order in your translation.

The difference between the translations you offer is I suspect largely one of style. But you should be very careful about translating nouns as either singular or plural and not to mix them.

Keep posting but try to have some thought for how easy it is for us to answer your posts. You may find that if you write along the lines of “The greek is this my translation is x and the book says y” you may be able to see for yourself what if anything is wrong. if you can’t then post it here and get help.

Its best to have a single thread on a particular exercise rather than a long thread on everything. Try to make the task of answering your questions easier by focusing them.

9

Also, if instead of posting scans of your exercises, you wrote the answers in Unicode characters, it would attract more volunteers to correct them. Personally, I like http://www.typegreek.com/ but your favorite word processor has a polytonic Greek keyboard.

10

Uh. It says here on this here copy, Second Edition. And the answer key…no edition, but the copyright is 1990 so probably the first edition?

So, I type the entire question and the entire paragraph to be translated, and then type the answer below it? Like…

ὁ Δικαιοπολις Ἀθεναιός ἐστιν· οἰκει δὲ ὁ Δικαιόπολις οὐκ ἐν ταις Ἀθεναις ἀλλὰ ἐν τοις ἀγροις· αὐτουργὸς γάρ ἐστιν.
-The Dikaopolis Athenian is; lives/dwells and/but in the fields; farmer for is
–Dikaiopolis is an Athenian; but Dikaiopolis lives not in Athenais but in the fields; for he is a farmer.

…that’s…huh. I feel something lost by not writing it down with paper and pencil.

11

Yes that’s it. You can write by hand for your own use but when you post here its best to present it as you have although the same font size and a bit of spacing would make it easier to read.

ὁ Δικαιοπολις Ἀθεναιός ἐστιν· οἰκει δὲ ὁ Δικαιόπολις οὐκ ἐν ταις Ἀθεναις ἀλλὰ ἐν τοις ἀγροις· αὐτουργὸς γάρ ἐστιν.

-The Dikaopolis Athenian is; lives/dwells and/but in the fields; farmer for is

–Dikaiopolis is an Athenian; but Dikaiopolis lives not in Athenais but in the fields; for he is a farmer.

Why did you write “The Dikaopolis”? First its Dikaiopolis or “Dicaeopolis”. You must be more careful in your spelling of transliterated Greek words. Secondly why did you use the definite article? If you look on page 6 4. “Use of the definite article” you can see that the definite article is sometimes written in Greek where it is not used in English. Your aim is not to translate literally every word in Greek into English. Your whole sentence is not in idiomatic English. Try to resist the temptation to imitate Yoda. Greek may put the verb at the end of the sentence English prose rarely does. :smiley:

Next you write “lives/dwells” but οἰκει is a third person verb “he lives” and the subject of the verb is Δικαιόπολις so its “Dikaiopolis lives”.

I won’t carry on correcting what you have written but I would stress that you must translate in English sentences that reflect English word order and write using correct English grammar. Its fine when you are working out something to make abbreviated notes and put alternative meanings but eventually have to make a decision and present your final version if you want help.

Postscript: Look through the Greek you have typed out as you have made some accent errors. Ἀθεναιός ..οἰκει should be Ἀθηναῖός … οἱκεῖ. I haven’t check the rest.

12

Wait. Disregarding that the underlined sentence was supposed to be the final answer, you mean I’m not supposed to show the step by step of how I came to the final answer, like in a math problem’s solution?

Wherein first I try to translate every single word and article first, then after that I look between the Attic Greek and the extremly rough translation feeling for the sense of what the sentence is supposed to mean, and finally write down my final translation?

You mean that ‘enye’ sign is the same as the rainbow like line that was present in the textbooks? I thought it’s not the same accent mark and just didn’t bother to put anything over the i’s.

Huh, now I know.

13

Ok let us take a step back. reading from the beginning of this thread I thought your problem was that you were unhappy that what you had written did not match the answer given in the book. So I suggested you post including the Greek text your version and then the book’s version so that we could discuss the differences.

You now say that what you posted was your rough version and then your final version.

Ok. You can post what you like but you have to make it clear what is.

From your rough version I can tell that you have not learned the specific use of the definite article as mentioned in my post. When you look at a sentence and you see a name with a definite article you should think do I translate the article or not then just write down the name because of course you don’t. If you write it down literally you simply reinforce the incorrect literal version.

When you come to οἰκει the mental process is “ok its a verb what person is the verb and who is the subject?” Your first thought should not be what is the meaning of the word and we will sort out its grammatical function later. The process is the other way round. its a present active third person singular verb meaning to be determined later if you dont already know it. And then you work through the sentence that way.

The accent you missed out was the circumflex which is placed either on a long vowel or on a diphthong as in the examples we had. Most Greek word processing programs use a tilde instead. You should re-read the section on accents on page xv. When I first learned Greek I was taught by someone that didnt understand accents and we were encouraged to ignore them. This was disastrous and I still have difficulty with them. If only I had been told to learn the accent with the word I would have a stronger handle on accentuation than I do.

Finally when you post questions just try to be as clear as you can about what you are asking. That way you will be more likely to get a helpful response.

14

Ok. So this is my second try at Athenaze, starting from the start. I’m now going to show my progress.

For the Vocabulary, my final answer are the sentences with an asterisk in front of the first word while the words above are just my very rough translation, and the Attic sentences above are what I’m supposed to translate from Athenaze.

For the Word Study and the Exercises, I finally wrote the instructions too alongside the question and my answer because…because I am done. Nada, nope, I’m finished torturing myself over these particular conglomeration of words.

I realized, after hours and some disturbed nights thinking on how to equate the instructions and the answers in the teacher’s handbook I have, that it’s simply not my fault if the instructions on the textbook are in conflict with the answers the teacher’s handbook gives. And that to absolve myself of self-pitying guilt on how to even explain it to you folks that its Athenaze at fault, not me, I’m also writing down the instructions too so you folks can see what I’m being clearly instructed to do that is either missing or in conflict with something in the Teacher’s handbook.

With no further ado, here is my second run at Athenaze.

The exercises from Chapter 1A.

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Malo, have you considered that the instructions in the teacher’s handbook might be for classroom work (as opposed to home work)? I don’t have a copy of it, so I can only guess.
Aside from labelling the sentence parts, do your translations match fairly closely the answers in the teacher’s handbook? Looking at your answers in exercise 1a (the bottom-most scan), I see that you’ve translated the Greek sentences.
In my edition (which I’ve indicated may be the one prior to yours), there are sentence pairs, each pair consisting of a Greek sentence and an English sentence, each to be translated into the other language. I only see your Greek to English translations, which appear to be correct.

In the labelling exercise, I notice that you didn’t label the complements (I believe that’s what the C stands for.)Understanding and identifying complements is going to become very important in Greek, because Greek has a lot of different ways of expressing complements aside from just adjectives and adverbs. I also noticed that in sentence 5, you labelled πονεῖ as a transitive verb and ἐν τοῖς ἀγροῖς as the direct object. ἐν τοῖς ἀγροῖς is a prepositional phrase serving as an adverbial adjunct to πονεῖ (in other words it modifies the verb - he’s working. where’s he working? in the fields.) Because you labelled “in the fields” as a DO, you probably thought “works” was transitive. In normal usage, it’s intransitive. Time to brush up on basic grammatical concepts! Here’s a link to get you started:
http://www.english-language-grammar-guide.com/english-grammar.html

16

But if the teacher’s handbook isn’t used for answering the questions in the textbook, then what is the answer key to Athenaze’s exercises? Or…or is Athenaze never meant to be used by a student without a teacher in the same room teaching the student?

I’m only following what is printed in the second edition’s exercises. Some are exactly like you said, a pair of sentences, one Attic and one English, to be translated into the other and to label the parts of the Attic sentences. Other’s aren’t.

I see. Labelling the complements now and…are all the other labels right? I’m always hit and miss when it comes to this part of my language tests ever since elementary. Labelling, that is.

Also…what if I think that a single word serves two different purposes at the same time, like say a word is both a direct object and a complement at the same time? Should I write both labels under the Attic word or should I only choose the best fitting one?

17

Ok. Trying this whole actually typing out the entire thing.

Chapter 1B

Vocabulary

ὁ Δικαιόπολις ἐν τῳ αγρῷ πονεῖ· τὸν γὰρ ἀγρὸν σκάπτει.

Rough translation: Dikaiopolis in the field he works; the for field he is digging.

Final translation: Dikaiopolis is working in his field; by digging in his field.

μακρός ἐστιν ὁ πόνος καὶ χαλεπός· τοὺς γὰρ λίθους ἐκ τοῦ ἀγροῦ φέρει.

Rough translation: long/large he is the work and hard; the for stones out of the field he carries.

Final translation: His work is long and hard; for he carries the stones out of the field.

μέγαv λίθον αἴρει καὶ φέρει πρὸς τὸ ἕρμα.

Rough translation: big stones he lifts and he carries to/towards the stone heap.

Final translation: He lifts and carries big stones towards the stone heap.

ἰσχῦρός ἐστιν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἀλλὰ πολὺν χρόνον πονεῖ καὶ μάλα κὰμνει.

Rough translation: strong he is the man but much/many time he works and he is very tired.

Final translation: The man is strong but he works too long and is very tired.

φλέγει γὰρ ὁ ἥλιος καὶ κατατρῖ´βει αὐτόν.

Rough translation: is blazing for the sun and wears out him.

Final translation: For the sun is blazing and wears him out.

καθίζει οὖν ὑπό τῷ δενδρῳ καὶ ἡσυχάζει οὐ πολὺν χρόνον.

Rough translation: he sits so/then under the tree and he rests not much/many time.

Final translation: So he sits under the tree and he rests not too long.

δι ὀλίγου γὰρ ἐπαίρει ἑαυτὸν καὶ πονεῖ.

Rough translation: soon for he lifts himself/gets up and he works.

Final translation: He gets up soon and works.

τέλος δὲ καταδῦ´νει ὁ ἕλιος.

Rough translation: finally and/but the sun sets.

Final translation: And finally the sun sets.

οὐκέτι οὖν πονεῖ ὁ Δικαιόπολις ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν οἶκον βαδίζει.

Rough translation: no longer so/then he works Dikaiopolis but towards the home he walks/goes

Final translation: So Dikaiopolis no longer works but walks towards his home.

Word Building

What is the relationship between the words in the following sets? You have not yet met two of these words (φίλος and γεοωργός). Try to deduce their meanings (they both refer to people) from studying the relationship between the words in each set:

  1. οἰκεῖ ὁ οἶκος
    verb noun
    he lives/dwells the house/dwelling
  2. πονεῖ ὁ πόνος
    verb noun
    he works the work
  3. γεωργεῖ ὁ γεοργός
    verb noun
    he farms/cultivates
  4. φιλεῖ ὁ φίλος
    verb noun
    he loves
    All the earlier mentioned words are verbs that refer to the activity related to the latter mentioned words, which are nouns. That means ho philos would mean the lover and ho georgos would mean the cultivator/farmer.


    …this typing is confusing. Did I get anything wrong here?
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Not having seen the teacher’s handbook, I don’t know exactly what’s in there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it contains more than just answers to the textbook exercises. There’s probably some supplementary material that can be used in classroom sessions as well as suggested classroom activities for teaching the material. Some teacher’s handbooks even offer lesson plans tailored to the textbook in use. Having read the introduction, it appears to me that the book was designed primarily for classrooms. That doesn’t make it useless for self-learners, however; If the answers to the exercises are available in the teacher’s handbook, then the book can be used effectively by self-learners. What you won’t get is a live teacher who can answer questions on the spot or sort misunderstandings. There are a number of people on Textkit that to all accounts have used Athenaze successfully (although they prefer the reading selections in the Italian version. That comes much later on I think, so don’t worry about missing out on something). Perhaps you could take a picture of appropriate pages in the teacher’s handbook and send them to me in a PM. It’s possible that the teacher’s handbook doesn’t contain an answer key; let’s hope that’s not the case.

From what I can see, it’s only exercise 1a that has sentence pairs. After that the exercises are “one-way”. I’m curious, though, as to why you didn’t do the English-Greek translations.

Aside from not labelling the complements, the other labels in sentences 1 through 4 are correct. Sentence 5 we’ve talked about, but I think we need to talk a little more about it- so let’s look at your next question:

Sometimes a single word can serve more than one purpose in a sentence (and really I wouldn’t dwell on this right now), but can a word be a direct object and complement at the same time? Short answer-no. Direct objects and complements have very different functions in the sentence. Direct objects directly receive the action of a transitive verb. Complements are used to modify or restrict in some way the meanings of other parts of the sentence. That’s why they’re called complements. They complement other parts of the sentence. They can be used with the subject, the verb or the object (direct or indirect). As I suggested before, I would spend a little time reviewing basic grammatical terminology. I’m not saying you need to become a grammarian, but you’re going to see these terms a lot, no matter what language you’re studying and in order to frame good questions, you’ll need to use the appropriate terminology and of course, it’ll help you understand the material you’re reading.
In this first exercise, we’ve talked about:
Subjects and Predicates (OK, predicates not mentioned yet, but will be!)
Verbs - transitive and intransitive and linking
Objects - direct and indirect
Prepositional phrases
Modifiers (Complements)- Adjectives, Adverbs, Abverbial phrases
Malo, these are all terms you need to get comfortable with and I don’t think it’s going to take very long for you to get up to speed. Now if I’d put a definite article (which you’ll be seeing shortly), let’s say, “the” in between “all” and “terms”, that would radically change the meaning of that sentence, wouldn’t it? Even the smallest word in a sentence can have huge impact on the meaning, so it’s important to understand what each word does.

Hang in there, my friend- you’re working very hard and if I were a language teacher (my field was aviation), I’d definitely give you an “A” for effort!

P.S. I’m afraid that’s all I have time for today. If no one else comments on your sentences, I’ll try to look at them tomorrow. Glancing briefly at them though, I’d say you’re pretty close.

19

This is my answers to Exercise 1B, Athenaze 2nd Edition

Exercise 1B

Copy the following Greek sentences and label the function of each noun and verb by writing S, C, DO, LV, TV and IV above the appropriate words (do not label the words in prepositional phrases). Then translate the pairs of sentences. When translating from English to Greek, keep the same word order as in the model Greek sentence. Pay particular attention to accents, following the rules given above. Do not forget to add the movable n where necessary (see Grammar 1, page 4)

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Exercise 1b-

  1. Labelling- οὐκ is a negative particle, making the verb οἰκεῖ negative. What kind of verb is οἰκεῖ (TV, IV, or LV) ? What kind of phrase is ‘ἐν ταῖς Ἀθήναις’ and what is its function?
    Translation is good-more idiomatic English would be “Dikaiopolis does not live in Athens”. Ἀθῆναι is translated as Athens in English.
    The English to Greek is almost perfect! The only thing you missed was the acute accent in ἀγρόν. The accent is acute here because ἀγρόν is followed by a punctuation mark.
  2. Looks good!
  3. I think you just missed this one- how would you label ἰσχῡρός ?
    In the English-Greek translation, remember αὐτουργός should take the acute, because it’s the last word in the sentence. As to the translation, I don’t think there’s anything technically wrong, but I think you’ll see normally see a different order, so:
    “ὁ Δικαιόπολις αὐτουργός ἐστιν.” (Normally ἐστιν is enclitic, except under a few conditions-check your Reference Grammar in the back)
  4. Labelling-Perfect! I think you know what σῖτον means.
    Everything else looks good!
  5. Remember the definite article needs to be translated. Without the definite article, how would you translate μῑκρὸν λίθον?

All in all, nice job! Just remember to check your work carefully afterwards. Also, I’d revise (review) Section 1 in the Reference Grammar on Syllables and Accents.

P.S. Are there really green cats in Malolos?