My idea in creating this blog is to chronicle some of the things that I discover in my study of Attic Greek. I'm currently using three textbooks in my study:
Complete Ancient Greek: Teach Yourself by Gavin Betts and Alan Henry.
Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek (book 1) by Maurice Balme and Gilbert Lawall.
Greek to GCSE (book 1) by John Taylor.
In this blog I just want to put my comments about various things that I encounter during this study, and perhaps put up some lines in Greek that I think are memorable. No matter what, I hope to keep track of what I'm going through.
Just by way of background information, I studied κοινή (Hellenistic) Greek in undergrad school for three years. My desire to push into Attic is for the purpose of eventually reading Plato and other ancient writers with some level of confidence.
Along with the three textbooks above, I have a friend with whom I exchange online who challenges me to read the text of Plato's Apology (Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους) with at least a little regularity. Thanks to Nate for all of your encouragement and aid in my struggle to get back into a mindset of Greek!
The phrase τέκνον μακάριον means "blessed/happy child". I feel that I've been blessed to have taken the paths that I've been on in life, and I hope not to take for granted the gifts that have been given me along the way.
Complete Ancient Greek: Teach Yourself by Gavin Betts and Alan Henry.
Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek (book 1) by Maurice Balme and Gilbert Lawall.
Greek to GCSE (book 1) by John Taylor.
In this blog I just want to put my comments about various things that I encounter during this study, and perhaps put up some lines in Greek that I think are memorable. No matter what, I hope to keep track of what I'm going through.
Just by way of background information, I studied κοινή (Hellenistic) Greek in undergrad school for three years. My desire to push into Attic is for the purpose of eventually reading Plato and other ancient writers with some level of confidence.
Along with the three textbooks above, I have a friend with whom I exchange online who challenges me to read the text of Plato's Apology (Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους) with at least a little regularity. Thanks to Nate for all of your encouragement and aid in my struggle to get back into a mindset of Greek!
The phrase τέκνον μακάριον means "blessed/happy child". I feel that I've been blessed to have taken the paths that I've been on in life, and I hope not to take for granted the gifts that have been given me along the way.
Jason I have two questions about the Betts and Henry text. 1. How did you get a copy when Amazon says it's not released yet. I know this is some kind of revision of the earlier text. How different is it? I recall that there was something unusual about the orthography of that text. No accents or final sigma. What's the new book like?
ReplyDeleteThe older text from Teach Yourself that was published by Betts was gruesome in my opinion. I bought that book almost 10 years ago, and I never studied it. I thought it was a mistake to have bought it. It had the lunate sigma in all positions (ϲ) in all positions (ϲόϲ for σός), but it did have accents. I don't know what led to the decision to use the lunate sigma, but I thought it was atrocious.
ReplyDeleteThis book is a complete rewrite. It isn't the same book at all but a completely new publication. I purchased it on July 20, but the release date in the UK was August 3. So, as soon as it was released by Amazon.co.uk, it was shipped to my place.
I've got to say that I have already become addicted to this book. I stayed up all night (until 6:00am) on Friday night with it, slept until the afternoon on Saturday (Shabbat), read portions of it throughout the day when I wasn't busy, then stayed up *all night* with it on Saturday night and went to work a 12-hour shift with no sleep! I was up after my 12-hour shift yesterday until 12:30am reviewing the vocab and just reading the passages on grammar and some of the readings. Finally I got to sleep last night around 1:00am and had to be back up at 7:30 to get to work by 9:00 for another 12-hour shift. I'm in my afternoon break right now, and I've taken the book with me. I fell asleep with it in bed last night. Needless to say, this is nothing like the previous "edition" of the Teach Yourself series that dealt with Ancient Greek. I'm completely addicted to this textbook, and I feel that my Greek is going to grow by leaps just dealing witht his book everyday. I highly recommend it -- though not for beginners!
Quite an endorsement. I'm tempted to get it myself. As one of the newest books out there, it will be interesting to see if it catches on. It's still not out yet on US Amazon.
ReplyDelete