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Ancient Greek and Latin: study strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| spanakopita Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4916 days ago 5 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English*, Greek, Ancient Greek Studies: Portuguese | Message 33 of 48 01 June 2011 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just thought I'd add my two cents to this discussion - I learned both Ancient Greek and Latin, starting with Greek. I took them both at university, however, with daily intensive classes, so not sure about self-study methods.
With Greek I started on the JACT course, 'Reading Greek'. If you want to read texts quickly this is a great course - but remember to get the exercise book to go with it! There's also a vocab booklet available. I'd recommend starting with Attic and then diversifying into Homeric - it's much easier to get your head round the changes. Plato's dialogues are great texts when you feel able to read 'real' material, as they are fairly simple in language terms with a lot of repeated vocab. Bear in mind that you will probably never be able to read Homer straight off the page without a dictionary in hand...he has a lot of hapax legomena (words which only appear once in the text and often once in the whole of Greek literature...). eta: and further to the 'read aloud'/speak discussion, that's a completely different kettle of fish to speaking a 'living' language. You have to take into account the meter of the work as well as the pronunciation and tones (which are debated amongst academics anyway). I'm of the opinion that to learn Ancient Greek is quite a different discipline from learning a modern language - but your view may differ, of course. Edited by spanakopita on 01 June 2011 at 6:50pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AriD2385 Groupie United States Joined 4841 days ago 44 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 34 of 48 23 August 2011 at 12:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Latin is not a difficult language to learn. When I was 15 I attended a summer program where we learned Latin for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, over a 3 week period. By the end we were reading portions of the great works. And this was in the span of a couple of weeks, not months. However, we were also at it 6 hours per day in the classroom and an additional hour or two in the evening on our own. I'm sure that if you put in the same kind of time over the span of 3 months that you could make rather rapid progress. And if you are particularly gifted, your progress may be even more rapid. I would just be careful not to underestimate the level of focus and number of hours required.
I wish I could find or even remember the book we used. It had cartoons and made everything fairly easy. So long as you're not opposed to endless rote memorization, it can be done. I can't say anything about learning Greek, though. Edited by AriD2385 on 23 August 2011 at 12:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4894 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 35 of 48 26 August 2011 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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For Latin use Evan Der Milner's vast resources, anything but Wheelock if you want to understand Latin as is rather than understand Latin for translation. You're not continuing the great conversation by thinking about conjugations and declensions constantly.
LOL @ your less than a year goal, not that i don't respect your audacity, you just lack literally any grounding in real life to base these estimations from. I've been studying German for 1 1/2 years in an academic environment and it took til now that I could freely express myself without having to think. And that's a living language. I'm using Wheelock for grammar, Cambridge for reading, and Evan Der Milner's Latinum for a synthesis of it all. It's been about a month. Latinum simplicum non est, sed tibi bona fortuna do! Also, it's good manners to not pat yourself on the back about how smart you are on a forum where i'm sure many individuals are probably orders of magnitude more intelligent yet wisened enough to not have to flaunt it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6841 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 36 of 48 29 August 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kid's a troll, obviously. Let's look again at the goals:
1. Mastery of Ancient Greek and Latin within a year. Mastery, of course, to a scholarly level. Never mind that it takes academics years and years or study, reading, and research to reach such levels. Sofi here thinks it will take 5 months. 2. Ability to reconstruct the pronunciation of Greek and be able to speak it "authentically." As if that is possible. The best reconstructions are only speculations based on what evidence we have anyway. However, sofi will do this starting from no knowledge of linguistics whatsoever. And again, in 5 months. 3. Sofi will also be "systematizing the language into axioms and models" in order to learn more efficiently. Starting from zero knowledge of linguistics, or indeed of the language itself. Presumably, all this will also take place within the 5 months. Now, notice that sofi hasn't posted in a few months. Either s/he got bored with the troll and left, or s/he was serious and then later realized how stupid s/he was being. I mean, if someone could reach a scholarly knowledge of any language in under half a year starting from scratch, then why the hell are all these PhD students spending 10 years in grad school? Because it's fun being at the bottom of the totem pole? The way I see it, they should be able to finish their dissertations by the end of the first semester. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4972 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 37 of 48 19 September 2011 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Indeed, itself a PhD does not write =) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6263 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 38 of 48 20 September 2011 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
I would say Latin is a difficult language to learn, but if you were going at it hammer and tongs in the way described, I think you would make progress. The same with any language, however difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6263 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 39 of 48 23 September 2011 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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A good source for Latin is Wiktionary in English. It has a lot of Latin vocabulary entered, with full declensions. A useful source for would-be Latinists.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4861 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 40 of 48 28 September 2011 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Eh, don't be so fast to dismiss. 1. I managed to go from near zero to a complete read of Herodotus's History book 1 in three months. (This however was not my first charge at Greek, just my first really serious effort. I also speak Latin fairly decently.) Is five months doable? Probably not to a deep, scholarly understanding, but I wouldn't write it off as impossible. I should note that I have two small children in my care as well as a 2/3 full-time self-employment situation. What a motivated student with much free time could accomplish makes me shudder. 2. Stephen Daitz has done a decent job, from what I can tell. I also don't think Sydney Allen was wildly off base either. (But I also don't claim to have done enough work to have anything other than a layman's opinion.) Can we be 100% certain what Ancient Greek sounded like? No, but I think the best reconstructed pronunciations are probably pretty close to the mark. So, really, there's no need to reconstruct--but I doubt the original poster knows about either of those two. I'd also like to second the poster who recommended JACT's Reading Greek. I'd also like to put in a word for Athenaze. Ancient Greek Alive is also not bad as far as connected reading goes. Crosby and Shaeffer isn't worth the time. Ambitious? Yes. Impossible? No. Scholarly-level of understanding? Probably not. Rough and ready? I don't see why not. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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