Hello.
I am a new member and recently retired psychiatric nurse. I have been interested in Classic Greek for some 20 yr. I have not been able to advance much with this due to a lack of time and focus from job/life demands. Greek philosophy and 19th century books on the history of philosophy exposed me to Greek.
Now I have the time and am making progress.
I am gaining and fortifying my knowledge via Greek Prose Composition exercises and the resources of the many books I have on the subject.
I picked my user name because I live in the country and like to take long walks. On these walks I read and recite aloud Greek or Shakespeare. I find this is a great way to catch mispronunciations, spelling and to gain understanding in many aspects. I love ancient Greek and am grateful this site exists.
…Dave
Welcome to Textkit, Dave!
Welcome to textkit, Dave! I’m in a situation similar to yours – newly retired (from a job teaching physics) and with time available to reactivate my Greek (in my case, now working on Homer).
What composition book are you using? I’ve worked some of the exercises from Lewis and Styler recently, but it’s difficult sometimes to adapt them from Attic to the Homeric dialect that is presently my sole focus.
Hi Ben.
Thank you for the welcome.
Congratulations on your retirement.
I am using North and Hillard’s Greek Prose Composition - GPC.
Now, if I had not previously used other books in order to learn Greek I would be lost with GPC. I mean by this that I have several “Learn Ancient Greek” books and have used prior to have a a very modest understanding of the grammar and vocabulary.
What I like about GPC is the following:
1- Lots of practice navigating the verbs and participles.
2- Subject matter associated with Anabasis, or so it seems.
I find when doing sentence composition from this book that I am actually understanding and identifying what is going on in a sentence. So far. I am learning and get great joy when I am successful. My previous study is just enough to guide me as to where to look when I am not understanding a given sentence. I figure it out and move on.
I can do this for hours and have complete, continuous interest.
My goal is to get through the exercises in GPC and then read Anabasis-with commentary- to the point of reading and reciting much without any aid.
Then, I plan to dive into Homer. I have several books on learning Homer and the Teaching Company video which uses Homer to learn Greek by.
Then Sophocles, and of course, Aristotle’s ethics.
Which books are you using to learn Homer?
Reading on the blend of religion and philosophy associated with Homer in From Religion to Philosophy by Cornford got me interested in Greek language. Homer is very interesting.
Impressive gentleman you are, I see, publishing books on physics!
I started into the Homeric dialect using Pharr. It was OK-ish. I found it helpful to have what was at least in theory a ground-up presentation of Greek using that dialect. The practice sentences were a little silly, but they served their educational purpose. Pharr does a good job of introducing a lot of the vocabulary that occurs early on in the Iliad, so that by the time you start it, you have the advantage of familiarity with those words. A certain amount of the grammatical material in Pharr seemed pedantic or needlessly obscure to me.
The book described in my signature below is what I’m currently using to work my way through the Iliad.