Greek Language and Linguistics
Ancient Greek, mostly Hellenistic
Posts discussing issues relevant to language acquisition and Hellenistic Greek. What is necessary to become competent in reading Ancient Greek? What is the difference between learning and acquiring Greek? These and related questions appear in the category “Acquisition” and its daughter categories “Learn Greek” and “Learning Greek.”
I have not added this one to lesson two yet, but I’m considering it. It is not necessary to understand the text in order to complete the exercise. It’s only necessary to recognize the capital letters and know that the first word in a paragraph is capitalized even if it is not a proper name.
The text in this exercise is Luke 1:5-7. I selected that passage because it has a good concentration of proper names.
A few minutes ago I uploaded lesson 27 of my online grammar. There are a couple of reasons this particular lesson is a little unusual.
First, I have not yet uploaded lessons 24-26, so this one is coming out of sequence. I’m doing that simply because this one is much closer to completion than the others, and except for a couple of words that will be unfamiliar, it is quite understandable without having read the three preceding lessons. I have still not added the interactive practice exercises, but I’ll get to that as soon as I can.
Second, those of you who have been using the grammar will notice some clear formatting changes. These are due to the increasing need to make the grammar readable on a smartphone! It’s a bit amazing to me how many people use it that way, but it looks like that’s the wave of the future.
In fact, the entirety of Greek-Language.com is getting a major face-lift this summer, and it’s not just because of smartphones. The basic coding behind much of what’s on the web is quickly becoming obsolete. The net is moving full steam ahead to HTML5 and some serious upgrades to CSS. (If those acronyms are meaningless to you, don’t worry, they are to most people.) Since I wrote the code behind much of what is on the site without the help of any automated web page software, I have serious rewriting to do as HTML4 becomes obsolete. It’s a steep learning curve, but I really enjoy it.
If you notice any mistakes in lesson 27, or if any part of it seems unclear to you, don’t hesitate to point that out as comments below. Challenges from my readers make the grammar better for everyone.
Do you want to learn to say “Merry Christmas” in Greek? View this post from 2010 to hear the phrase and read a little explanation.
I wish all of you a beautiful and joyous Christmas.
A couple of days ago I posted a note about the reprint of Robert Funk’s Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek. At the time I was confident that most of you already knew that almost all of the content of that book is available online a no charge, so I didn’t mention it. Some of you may not know, though, so I’m including a link to the online materials below.
You can see my earlier post about the reprinted edition here:
A reprinted edition of Robert Funk’s A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek was published in July of 2013. While a lot has happened in Linguistics and the study of Ancient Greek since this grammar was originally published in 1973, I welcome this reprint. In 1973 this book (at that time in three volumes) was revolutionary, and it is still very useful. The book focusses on sentence types, and the bulk of linguistic theory has moved beyond that discussion now, but for students learning the language, Funk’s approach works very will.
UPDATE July 9, 2014:
Most of the content of Funk’s Beginning-Intermediate Grammar is available online at no charge via ibiblio.org. You can access it here:
I am happy to announce a new domain name pointing to my online grammar. LearnNTGrk.com has just become the third domain name that can be used to reach the grammar (the other two being HellenisticGreek.com and Greek-Language.com/LearnGreek.html).
Once you have accessed the grammar through this new domain name, you can also reach the rest of Greek-Language.com there as well.
Michael W. Halcomb is offering an online spoken koine Greek class starting in late January. The price is $30. That makes is very affordable.
Given the recent growth of interest in learning to actually speak Hellenistic Greek, I’m not surprised to see another class offering that goal. What I do find surprising is that it’s online, and that it only costs $30. Once I recovered from the surprise, though, I realized that Michael is exactly the person to do this. He is very proficient at both blogging and video production and has already produced a string of youtube videos on speaking Koine Greek.
I wish the class success.
Here’s the add:
Paul D. Nitz introduced me this week to a new Google Group entitled Ancient Greek Best Practices. The group is intended for discussion of “the Communicative Approach.” Here’s the way their welcome page explains it:
The Ancient Greek Best Practices Group exists to discuss communicative approaches to learning/teaching Greek. This approach views Greek as communication, not code. This discussion board is rather disinterested in debating whether the Grammar/Translation method is superior. We are all convinced (or deeply interested) in a Communicative Approach to teaching Ancient Greek.
The Communicative Approach can include such methods as Total Physical Response (TPR – James Asher) and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS – Blaine Ray), picture books and audio (Living Koine), “shadowing,” or other methods we will invent here on this discussion board.
You can join the group by here.
You can see Paul demonstrate the method with his students in Malawi on Youtube. He has posted videos of several lessons there.
I would like to thank Paul for sharing his work with me and invite him to tell us all more about it.
I added a page today giving a brief history of the pronunciation of Α/α.
This is the first in a set of pages I intend to write on issues of pronunciation. These pages will not be linked from the main page of this blog, but will form part of the materials supporting my online grammar. You can find the one on ἄλφα here. It is not intended to be an authoritative source, but a simple explanation for the curious.
Every year at this time I post a Christmas greeting including the Greek phrase καλά χριστούγεννα. I wish all of you a beautiful and joyous holiday.
To hear the pronunciation of καλά χριστούγεννα, click the triangle below.
| New audio added November 25, 2016 |
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