I am starting this thread. It is my thread and I set the rules. If you don’t like it, you can post in the other thread on Dickey, or you can start your own thread.
Rule One: The only people who are allowed to post in this thread are people who own the book and are using it or seriously intend to use the book.
That’s the only rule.
I posted my review of the book on Amazon.
As you can see, I bought the soft cover.
I’m not so sure about this. Won’t better internalization result from typing Greek rather than printing it? After all, the texts we want to read and understand are typed, not printed. Let me try it out and see. I’ve already done the exercises on p. 29 by hand. Let me try to type them out. See how that feels.
ὁ σοφὸς τὸν ξένον ἐδίωξεν.
ὁ σοφὸς ὑπὸ τοῦ ξένου ἀπέθανεν.
διώκειν.
ὁ ξένος ἐδιώκετο ὑπὸ τοῦ σοφοῦ.
ὁ σοφὸς τὸν ξένον οὐκ ἐδίωκεν ὅτι ἀπέθνῃσκεν.
I bought the soft cover, too. I’m working through it, and I’ve almost completed it. It has forced me to review both syntax and morphology and learn for active use many vocabulary items that I knew passively (including accents), as well as many idiomatic expressions and individual verb complements. I would have liked to have seen more exercises involving extended passages and especially the use of particles. But overall I’m very pleased with this book.
Many of the sentences for translation involve women–more so than are found in older textbooks. This is good because it forces you to learn feminine forms that are sometimes overlooked. As I noted elsewhere, Dickey seems to take delight in concocting bizarre sentences out of limited syntax and vocabulary. This is amusing, but occasionally the weirdness gets in the way of writing intelligible Greek.
Great minds think alike, I guess. 
Hi, Hylander. Welcome to the group. I’ve enjoyed reading your posts over the years. Glad you’re here.
I seem to recall reading a cool story from you about your dog, did I get that right? Share it here, if you want to. I’m not really a dog person myself, but my sisters are in to them big time.
It seems to be a very good book, though I haven’t got far yet. I find it very beneficial but somewhat depressing though; someone said that the exercises are easy but not for me at least. Even in the first chapters I made mistakes in almost every sentence, so I’ve been doing them over and over again until I get close to zero mistakes – which is one reason why I haven’t got far. It’s surprisingly difficult to get for instance the word order right, and even with the key I’m often left wondering whether I made a mistake or whether my version is ok but just different. And then I make lots of stupid mistakes with concord, accents etc. So if others would like to start a thread with me for cross-checking exercises, I’d be willing to join, although I’m won’t probably have the time to advance very quickly.
I’ve had the same grim, depressing experiences–lots of stupid mistakes of the sort you describe. I don’t worry too much about word order, though. And she insists that you must memorize all the vocabulary–only grudgingly, at the end, giving you the English words with a reference to the lesson where the Greek words are found, so that when you don’t remember the Greek word (or even just don’t remember whether it was oxytone or paroxytone) you have to go through a cumbersome process to find it–I find myself going through this process all too often, even though I usually know the Greek word passively.
Here’s how I coded #2 on page 32:
τὰ θηρία πολλάκις κακὰ πάσχει ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων.
You’ll notice that I differed from Dickey’s inter-language only by dropping the parentheses.
Hi, Paul,
I’m really happy that you enjoyed this group. I love your posts. Even your digressions are always lots of fun and I love your sense of humor. Feel free to use this group in any way you want. Remember, we are here to help each other.
I’m using the book in the same way. I’m on page 32.
That’s how I feel about life. Or maybe it’s the other way around. 
hello all,
i am one of the voters above. i’ve just now finished the suggested smyth readings for chapter one (have been ill recently and that has slowed me down). tomorrow morning i will start the chapter proper. going through the smyth passages has already been quite helpful (i now fully understand the anaphoric use of the article, for only one of many examples).
don’t feel bad, mr. derouda. i know i will be crawling, too. composition is hard. everytime i’ve done some i’ve been shocked at how many errors i make (and pretty bone-headed ones, too, that leave me slapping my forehead, like, how did i get that wrong?).
i hope to post my attempts at some of the sentences without answer key as i go, but it will be slow. i work full time and dickey is only a part of my daily study routine. if nothing else, i can tell already that i will learn a lot just from the smyth reading. have been reading xenophon lately and he is (understandably) one of smyth’s favorite references, which is a nice coincidence for me. best wishes to all!
Thanks for your comforting replies!
Life. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it! But thanks for your nice words!
How should we proceed? Start a new thread for each chapter? I suppose we could sort of make our own “answer key” as we go?
χαῖρε καὶ σύγε, φίλε αἴλουρος. I take it you are a cat person?
Remember that you can change your vote at any time. Hopefully, you will change yours and I won’t change mine.
I’d be inclined not to start new threads unless or until this one becomes too cumbersome to follow.
hi markos! i do particularly love cats, but all critters really. much more than some people.
good questions on how to proceed. most sentences are not covered by the answer key (25 of 35 in chapter 1), plus preliminary exercises are also only partially answered. that’s a lot of material.
as everyone seems to be at different places in the book, and as some are more advanced than others (and then there’s, well, life), it might tough to coordinate. i thought to throw out only a limited number of sentences per chapter (like 3 or 4), ones i find particularly tricky or ones i want make sure i’m getting what dickey wants me to get. but i suspect there will be far more than 3 or 4 per that will give me pause, especially in later chapters. how i’m going to handle those i don’t know.
coming up with any kind of key may be tough, since it seems that many variant but still correct versions will be possible. i guess we will see how it goes and maybe we’ll hit on something that works out. tomorrow’s friday!
Let’s say you wanted not to code this sentence but to write it. How would you do that? I think you would want to internalize the meaning of the sentence. Some people say that hearing Greek spoken out loud helps to internalize it. Does anyone want to take a crack at recording this sentence?
can’t speak for others, but i don’t read aloud or record. sorry.
Markos, you must realize that your post is founded on a very dodgy and arguably nonsensical dichotomy (“coding” vs. “writing”), one that Dickey herself would reject. Do you really want to pervert the purpose of her book? It seems you do.
I have broken your rule 1 (for I don’t yet own the book), for which I apologize, but posters should be warned.
Here’s my attempt at #15 on p. 32:
σχεδὸν ἀδύνατον τὸ τὰς ἀναξίας ἀνδρείους ἀποκτείνειν.
I’d appreciate any corrections/feedback/comments. I’d like to see what others came up.
I think ἀνδρείους requires the article as well (see page 10), and I think it would be better with an aorist infinitive ἀποκτεῖναι, killing being a single action.
σχεδὸν ἀδύνατον τὸ τὰς ἀναξίας τοὺς ἀνδρείους ἀποκτεῖναι.
thanks, Paul. Your version sounds better to me.
Here’s my attempt at a few sentences on the same page (32). I’d be very grateful for any corrections and suggestions, even and especially on “minor” issues like word order.