I have been following this thread with a mixture fascination and despair, the latter because I too am currently working my way through Pharr. I started learning Greek many decades ago but only sporadically because of family and work commitments. I now have more free time to devote to my studies. I began with New Testament Greek by Eric G. Jay (London, 1958, S.P.C.K. - a textbook which, incidentally, I have never seen mentioned on Textkit). I later worked my way through some of the texts available on this site (White’s First Book, etc.). More recently I covered the Assimil le Grec ancien before turning to Pharr. All this as un autodidacte. Early on I decided against the G/T approach and I try to read the Greek as Greek. My goal is to be able to read Homer. I am more than familiar with the story of the Odyssey, having taught it in English for many years at the I.B. level in Canadian high schools. Concurrently, I am reading my way through the excellent Steadman series of Lucien, notably the Dialogues.
What prompts me to write this post is that several of the comments from forum members, whose opinions I respect, have seeded doubt in what I am attempting. My apologies if the following extracts referring to Pharr distort their contexts, but I was troubled by:
More confusing than instructive
Not a good way to learn Greek
Pharr’s Greek is unrecognisable as Greek or Homer
Text based on a misunderstanding
It’s worse than I thought
Briefly, my method is in each lesson in Pharr (I am up to Lesson XXI) I study and note the vocabulary (flashcards) then do the Greek to English exercises, working out the words and forms I don’t know to ‘get the picture’ of what is being said, but not attempting a full translation. Having completed these exercises, I find the meaning of the actual Iliad pretty much resolves itself. I don’t touch the English to Greek exercises.
My question (questions, rather) is: am I wasting my time? By not attempting an English translation, am I destined, forever, to get just the general meaning of the original but not the subtle nuances that come with being rather hazy on the exact grammar employed? If not Pharr, what? I take the same approach with Lucian and feel I have a good grasp of his stories. I will never forget in The Ass the horrific picture of when the bandits threaten to sew the female protagonist inside the carcass of the donkey, or in Dialogues of the Dead, the ludicrous haggling that goes on before Hermes allows the dead warrior to board the ferry.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Michael
No, you’re not wasting your time. You’re getting something out of Pharr, despite my and others’ criticism. And your approach is generally right, I think: the aim is to read and understand Homer without translating. But you do need to have a grasp of the grammar in order to do so. This is especially true in Homer, where there are so many different forms from various stages of the Greek language. You need to be able to recognize the forms and understand how they’re used to get at the meaning. And understanding the archaeology of the Homeric language – how it evolved in the context of oral poetry composed in performance over the prehistory of Greek – can be one of the pleasures of reading Homer. Translations can help you when you’re stumped and can confirm your understanding when you aren’t sure.
But it sounds like you, like the OP, already have enough Greek to dive into Homer directly. I think that if you jump right in with an edition of o book of Homer with commentary aimed at beginners, and work through that carefully, you’ll develop a reading fluency faster than you might expect. The more you read, the faster you’ll pick up the subtleties, but a good commentary, I think, is necessary to help you along.
I’ve posted a number of texts that can get you started. I think Steadman has a book or two of Homer. Others like his editions, but in a number of threads on this site, he has turned out to be inaccurate. The Pulleyn text of Iliad 1 and the text of Odyssey 9 look very promising. Odyssey 9 seems like a good place for you to start, given your background.
Be sure to read metrically, either aloud or silently – mastering the hexameter isn’t as hard as it seems and it’s an important part of engaging with the text.
Good luck with your efforts, and don’t hesitate to ask for help here! As far as I’m concerned (and I haven’t read everything), the Iliad and the Odyssey are the best of all of ancient Greek.
Don’t despair!! Speaking as one who completed all 77 lessons in Pharr, I don’t feel that I’ve come out any worse for wear. Right now, I think the debate centers on the value of the exercises in Pharr, with the almost crushingly overwhelming opinion being that they’re useless. With respect to the English-Greek exercises, perhaps they are. With respect to the Greek-English exercises, I think we must not expect too much. We can use them to identify forms and simple relationships within the sentence and that’s about it. If you compare Pharr’s Greek sentences to Crosby & Schaeffer’s, you’ll see the difference immediately. TBH, I never wrote out the translations to the G/E sentences-I just made sure I understood the vocabulary and the grammatical relationships. I did do all the E/G sentences, which in retrospect was probably a waste of time.
I chose to begin with Homer and make the transition to Attic later, knowing all the while that there would a steeper learning curve going epic to attic versus the other way round, but I don’t regret that decision; if anything, it’s perhaps thanks to Pharr that I became aware of Textkit in the first place! This was my first post: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/pharr-lesson-xxxii/15815/1 It’s thanks to Hylander that I learnt there was much more to reading Homer than enjoying a good story. As Sean Jones has indicated in his posts, Pharr enabled me also to read Homer. Textkit taught me how to appreciate his poetry.
I’m actually having fun with Pharr. The sheer dorkiness of the examples is now a running joke in my household. My wife has been watching tennis today, and she asked me to utter something suitably Homeric. I was able to say that Tsitsipas pleases the gods in their souls, and also that Tsitsipas makes Djokovic into booty for the vultures.
Thanks, Hylander and Aetos, for your encouragement and advice. Most helpful. And good luck to you, Ben. It’s comforting to know that there is someone else on the same path..
Michael