Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6131 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes
| Message 17 of 33 09 February 2008 at 11:45pm | IP Logged |
Professor, where did you obtain those 19th/early 20th century textbooks in Latin that you spoke of? I can find a few on archive.org, including an Ethiopic textbook in Latin and a Latin translation of the Homerica, but there seems to be little in the way of actual textbooks on say, mathematics or science.
Also, would reading through the sometimes inaccurate Latin of Mediaeval and Renaissance authors affect your Latin ability in any way?
Edited by amphises on 11 February 2008 at 1:14am
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ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7239 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes
| Message 18 of 33 10 February 2008 at 5:44pm | IP Logged |
If you do not mind reading texts page by page as they have been scanned onto the computer, there are whole libraries available, e.g., at: http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/index.html
However, if you want the pleasure of holding an actual older tome, you will simply have to haunt used bookstores and, better yet, seek out library purges at seminaries.
If you aspire to write Latin yourself, then you might want to steer clear of sometimes inaccurate Neo-Latin models, but if your aim is to increase your reading ability, then you would be wise to head towards them, as they are generally more immediately comprehensible than classical texts.
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Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6131 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes
| Message 19 of 33 13 February 2008 at 11:50pm | IP Logged |
This question will probably not be answered for another 2 weeks, but here it is.
Professor, would you also happen to know of any good audio resources for reconstructed Ancient Greek? The best I've heard so far online is a recording on YouTube. Most of the others I heard are quite strongly accented or do not feature the pitch element. I have also heard of the Assimil "Le Grec Ancien" course, would you happen to have heard it? And if so, any comments on the pronunciation?
Also, as for katharevousa in Modern Greek, would you happen to know of any katharevousa works that emulate the classics in Grammar? Would the works of Alexandrow Papadiamantis be considered part of the above?
Following what you have typed above, I would like to obtain some audio resources on Ancient Greek before embarking on its study, failing that I would like to have some katharevousa audio, which I understand is an artificial literary dialect of recent Greek seeking to emulate the classics.
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ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6299 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French
| Message 20 of 33 14 February 2008 at 1:10am | IP Logged |
From what I remember, one particular comment on Amazon.fr said the pronunciation was artificial and ridiculous, plus with a French accent. Just one person's opinion on a phonology that nobody knows for sure, though...
In any case, it might have to do when I begin my Ancient Greek endeavour in a few years time. I think I would prefer some sort of a reconstruction that uses the tones, however, rather than going for Modern Greek.
Edited by Fränzi on 16 February 2008 at 12:46am
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Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6648 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil
| Message 21 of 33 14 February 2008 at 5:17am | IP Logged |
Fränzi wrote:
From what I remember, one particular comment on Amazon.fr said the pronunciation was artificial and ridiculous, plus with a French accent. Just one person's opinion on a phonology that nobody knows for sure, though... |
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I have the latest version of the Assimil "Le Grec ancien" course and I didn't notice anything particularly French in the accents (Maybe the comment was on the older edition). IIRC there are four different voices. One accent sounds a bit German, another might be from a native (modern) Greek speaker. I thought the accents were pretty good overall. Of course, you can't avoid a small degree of artificiality because there are no native speakers of Ancient Greek anymore, but the recordings are still very helpful.
Edited by Marc Frisch on 14 February 2008 at 5:17am
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Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6751 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek
| Message 22 of 33 15 February 2008 at 7:24am | IP Logged |
amphises wrote:
Professor, where did you obtain those 19th/early 20th century textbooks in Latin that you spoke of? |
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Someone recently posted several hundred megabytes worth of Latin literature to the newsgroup alt.binaries.world-languages. I haven't downloaded them myself, so I don't know whether it's text or scanned book pages, nor what works are included.
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Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6131 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes
| Message 23 of 33 15 February 2008 at 11:02am | IP Logged |
Unfortunately, some of us don't have Usenet.:(
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ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7239 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes
| Message 24 of 33 17 February 2008 at 8:57pm | IP Logged |
I also read that review of the Assimil recordings and, reflecting upon how truly absurd the recordings for their Latin and Esperanto courses are, I decided to save my money. Now that I Mr. Frisch reports that they are not that ridiculous after all, I wish I had them, as I am curious…
For understanding Katharevousa’s emulation of ancient Greek, I recommend you work through a copy of Anne Farmakides Advanced Modern Greek (Yale University Press, 1983), which treats this subject in detail and has you translate back and forth between them.
For many samples of reconstructed ancient Greek, go the to
SOCIETY FOR THE ORAL READING OF GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE (SORGLL) http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/Greek.htm
Most of these are by Professor Steven Daitz, who is quite a respected authority, but with all due respect, I find them to be very much in the spirit of the Assimil courses mentioned above. Ladislaus Doldion’s performance was much more listenable. However, for my sensibilities, the most acceptably natural sounding reconstructions of ancient Greek I have ever heard are by Stefan Hagel, a musicologist with the Austrian Academy of Sciences. You can listen to samples at The Sound of Ancient Greek - Classical Pronunciation http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/agp/. Unlike all the others I have ever heard—which sound forced and artificial—his readings sound as they could be a perfectly natural living language.
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