χαίρετε φίλοι!
My name is Christopher McGarvey. I’m a Greek-learning reprobate who has studied Greek privately and in official academic settings on and off for enough years to regret the sad shape my Greek has fallen into. I first strove to teach myself from Mounce, then took several years of Greek in an Orthodox seminary, including a summer intensive in Attic Greek at the University of Chicago under Helma Dik using Mastronarde’s Introduction to Attic Greek. I acquired a pretty good reading proficiency at that time, or at least the fledgling wings to step out and attempt to fly, with some practice. But after leaving academia and struggling to make ends meet for five years in the real world, my Greek skills sadly fell into disrepair.
However, I’ve just moved to Atlanta and am at a transitional phase in life. And I’ve decided that Greek is a lifelong enrichment that I greatly desire to engage through all my years, and thus I am attempting to reclaim lost ground and this time pay my daily dues to keep it progressing and vibrant (if not entirely mastered all at once, as I’d like…). I’m currently recovering quickly by participating in a work-through of Hansen and Quinn’s Greek: An Intensive Course online with Jason and co. at The Hebrew Cafe (I think he posts here too…?).
But what has really captured my imagination and inspired me to really dig in is the brand new Greek as living language/immersive approach that I’ve just learned about, as advocated by the likes of Buth, Michael Halcomb, Christophe Rico, et al. I’ve been gathering as many of these resources as possible, and am seeking all available resources for audio, video, speaking, and writing immersion in Attic/Koine Greek. What specifically brings me to textkit is hunting after audio recordings of the Greek Ollendorff book. I’d be deeply grateful to anyone who can point me in the direction of further resources along these lines, that help one to begin to think/listen/speak in ancient Greek and to learn it just like a living language. In fact, it’s my dream to one day acquire enough proficiency in this that I could teach a class using such a method.
I’m very excited to participate in this forum, and I hope you’ll all help to steer me in the right direction. I’d eventually love to learn Latin as well, so I’m hoping to pick up some pointers for how to study that in a more immersive way as well. But for the time being, I’m just hoping to cement Greek to a level that I can make use of for the present and future. Again, I especially welcome pointers in the direction of Greek and Latin as living languages and related tools, as I hope to build up a personal library of these things for my edification. Please feel free to post helps to steer me towards these things, and say hello! I’m eager to meet and interact with you here.