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L-R Method with Ancient Greek | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Icosahedron Newbie United States Joined 5708 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Studies: Latin, Ancient Greek, French | Message 1 of 7 10 February 2009 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would like to employ the Listening-Reading method as a means of significantly bolstering my knowledge of ancient Greek, and gaining a sense of it as a real language, not some hodgepodge of intellectual esoterica. I have a reasonable, if spotty, knowledge of the language already. Ultimately, I would like to know, and perhaps speak, the reconstructed pronunciation. (This is now what I use, badly, to speak it to myself, after having been taught the Erasmian.) The proper pronunciation is ultimately somewhat important as I may one day be more concerned with poetry than I am now. In one sense, the listening-reading method seems perfectly suited to ancient Greek, as the focus is on the texts themselves, and this is ultimately why I am studying the language. However, I am uncertain precisely how to proceed and am curious if anyone has attempted this or has advice.
There seem three potentially viable options: Option 1: Employ the recordings of Stephen Daitz, available at http://www.greekclassicpoetry.com/ On the plus side, Daitz employs the reconstructed pronunciation. Indeed he seems to be the only person who has recorded a significant body of complete texts. The only other recordings using the reconstructed style seem to be snippets of this or that, and are frankly useless for the L-R method (even if some sound much better than Daitz). Another obvious plus is that Daitz is reading texts that I want to read anyway, texts I want to gain a thorough knowledge of. On the down side, I really don't particularly like the Daitz recordings and find them highly unnatural. And it's not just the foreignness that's odd - I've listened to professional recordings in other languages (French, German and Italian, none of which I really know) and liked them. I have a strong sense that ancient Greeks did NOT sound like Daitz, at least in many respects. I might be able to overcome my dislike, as I think it is really necessary for me to succeed here. But the unnaturalness may pose a problem: I wonder if the L-R method simply won't work if the recording doesn't have the sound of a natural language. Option 2: Employ John Simon's recordings of the New Testament, available at greeklatinaudio.com. Simon has recorded the whole New Testament, reading the koine Greek but pronouncing it using what he describes as the modern Greek pronunciation. On the plus side, I like the sound of Simon's reading, much more than that of Daitz. It sounds more natural. On the down side, he is using a pronunciation that I do not wish to use for classical texts. Now I understand that the koine pronunciation was much more similar to the modern pronunciation than was that of Homer or Plato, so perhaps it is not a travesty that he uses the modern for the koine. I don't know enough to judge the issue. Also, although Simon sounds better than Daitz, I still can't judge if his reading sounds like "real language". I would ultimately like to read the NT in Greek, but it is not my main goal right now. Option 3: Learn modern Greek first via the L-R method, then use Daitz to relearn ancient pronunciation and internalize ancient grammar, etc. On the plus side, learning modern greek via the L-R method would, in principle, be an achievable task. And this would give me a sense of "Greek" as a real language. This is a very big plus, sufficient, perhaps, to justify this roundabout strategy.(I don't currently SPEAK any languages other than English.) On the down side, it IS a roundabout strategy. But I'm guessing that once I knew modern greek, the effort to go back to listening to the ancient would be akin to the task of me today trying to internalize Chaucer - and that seems achievable, if not trivial. But another serious problem is the apparent lack of materials available in modern Greek. There seem to be few audiobooks available in modern greek, and fewer of any texts that are translated and that I want to go through multiple times. If so, then this method would not work. Am I wrong? Are there actually Greek audiobooks? Option 4: Is there an option 4 that I am missing? That is to say, an option 4 that employs ONLY the L-R method, using audiobooks and parallel texts? I've made up my mind to follow one of these paths. The question is: which? Does anyone have any advice? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6090 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes  | Message 2 of 7 11 February 2009 at 2:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I think options 2 or 3 would be the best, although of the two, I'd prefer option 2 myself since you can immediately generate parallel texts of the bible online for LR while for modern Greek literature in general, I think parallel texts are pretty hard to find. Also, using Daitz's recordings to relearn ancient pronunciation doesn't sound like a very good idea since you might as well have started using him directly; his recordings are moreover, as you yourself have noted, quite unnatural, I think if you choose to gho through option 3, you might be better served by listening to shorter recordings of better quality online and reading descriptions of the reconstructed pronunciation as in Vox Graeca.
The only site I've been able to find online which sells modern Greek audiobooks is Bibliagora. The audiobooks all seem quite short, around one disc each, and most of these are from the early 20th century, so they probably all have varying katharevousa use. That might be of aid in learning ancient grammar, but it might just be more confusing since the authors mixed dhimotiki in varying degrees. I'm afraid this might not be a legitimate "option 4", but consider using the Assimil Ancient Greek course as well, available in French and Italian. The recordings aren't perfect and the speakers (all scholars in Greek) have somewhat different interpretations of the pitch accents but they are certainly more natural than Daitz . 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6186 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 7 11 February 2009 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Forget Daitz, if ancient Greek had sounded his way, influential Romans would never have sent their sons to Athens to be educated in "the most beautifully flowing language on earth". Daitz' performances are anything but, they remind me of a mixture of Beijing opera and Mickey Mouse. God, do I hate his "Birds". I'm not very fond of anything else I've found on the net either and I've spent hours, days, months looking. Modern Greek is definitely no good, because there are no long vowels in modern Greek, so reading Greek meter is impossible. And a lot of ancient Greek spelling and rules (contract verbs e.g.) just don't make any sense if modern pronunciation is used.
As I have told Roncy, the Assimil tapes are not very convincing but they are the only means to making ancient Greek a little easier to acquire. Try this link to see whether you can put up with their reconstituted (like milk or eggs) pronunciation. I made the mistake of forking out 80 euros for the book and the CDs, I like the book but at first refused to have anything to do with the tapes. I've now changed my mind, if I want to improve my active knowledge of and feel for Greek I've realised that the only way is to use audio; even bad is better than none. There is another quite good method called "Reading Greek" (Cambridge University Press, the JACT series). They are supposed to have brought out a set of cassettes to accompany the texts, but I am not going to buy yet another cat in the bag. As I have no access to decent books-stores or libraries I nowadays use Uz-Translations to try things out first. Unfortunately they don't have the CDs to go with "Reading Greek" and I haven't been able to hear a sample of their new presentation anywhere. There are some audio files available on-line for most of the texts, but they are very amateurish. I have doctored them a bit because they were also practically inaudible. Even so I find them rather unconvincing. And I will certainly not buy the new set, especially since it sounds like the first cassette at least is all by someone explaining, in English, all about ancient Greek pronunciation. I've read more than enough about the subject and certainly don't want to waste any more time and money on some more make-belief theories. Try the above mentioned Assimil and see what you think. You will unfortunately not find anything better. Even the Homer readings I've found on the Net were either read without the slightest attention to meaning, or sounded very, very German, which ancient Greek certainly did not. The Assimil version is easy to imitate, it's so silly and therefore memorable, but it's also easy to adapt to your personal preferences later on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6090 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 4 of 7 11 February 2009 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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The JACT recordings have a very British accent, I've heard, it's still primarily Erasmian rather than modern reconstructed.
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| Icosahedron Newbie United States Joined 5708 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Studies: Latin, Ancient Greek, French | Message 5 of 7 11 February 2009 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree that Daitz sounds ludicrous. I can't quite fathom why it so bad though - he seems to be a knowledgeable and dedicated guy. In the past I've shelled out $80 or so for his cassettes, which have mostly gone unused. I certainly don't want to sound like him, but I still wonder whether listening to him for extended periods of time might not serve to give me a solid grasp of the language. I wonder if there is anyone who has actually tried this.
I certainly don't wish to actually use modern Greek pronunciation in reading ancient texts, but I wondered whether learning the modern language might be a useful step in construing ancient Greek as a living language. I'd forgotten about the katharevousa/demotic distinction. I suppose for what I was thinking, learning the demotic would be the first step, even though it differs more from the ancient. But this may be a pointless issue, as I checked the texts available via the link given by Alkeides above, and it seems that none of the available audiobooks even have English translations. In my own searches for modern Greek audiobooks, I've only come across the same series. It seems an English speaker can't learn modern Greek via the L-R method. Assimil might be a viable option. There are really two distinct issues for me, which was perhaps not evident in my original post. First, I am convinced I need to be able to understand ancient Greek that I hear, and perhaps need to speak it. So I need SOME oral method of learning. (In the long term, I hope this becomes the norm in teaching classical languages.) In principle, going through Assimil might do the job. I originally asked about the L-R method, however, as I've spent a chunk of time listening to Pimsleur and Michel Thomas in various languages and haven't ever persisted. By contrast, when I've tried to do listening-reading in modern languages, I feel engaged, and feel that I'm not simply trying to learn languages, but am actually focused on the text itself. It is enjoyable, and I can see myself persisting at this, and may well do so. I haven't had any practical need to learn modern languages however, whereas (absurd as it sounds) I do have a practical need to learn (or dramatically improve) my ancient Greek, since I do research. So I may have an impetus to stick with the Assimil. Of course, it seems the Assimil is only available for French speakers, but I suppose I could translate the Greek into English if this hasn't already been done by someone. Has it been done? I do believe that I need many many hours of listening. Maybe I'll just have to try out the various options for several hours each to see how they feel. I still wonder if there's anyone who's done this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| VityaCo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7023 days ago 79 posts - 86 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, English Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 6 of 7 20 March 2009 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
It is an interesting question for me. How one in the world can know how Homer sounded? I want to learn Ancient Greek and as I read a lot on the pronunciation of it I decided to start with the Modern Greek first. If nobody knows anyway how to read the Ancient I think it is more beneficial to read it in the Modern format. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rmss Triglot Senior Member Spain spanish-only.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6506 days ago 234 posts - 248 votes 3 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, English, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 7 of 7 30 March 2009 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, a wealth of links here. For now I'm sticking to John Simon's recording (he's not saying he used modern pronunciation, but a pronunciation BASED UPON Modern Greek phonetic values). It's by all means better than the avarage recordings available, plus: no one really know how ancient greek sounded (also, I'm only learning Koine Greek for reading the New Testament, which is already closer to Modern Greek than older dialects).
Again: thanks for the links and good luck learning Ancient Greek! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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