Tag: Learn Greek

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Acquire Hellenistic Greek: Alpha with Angela



Today I added FreeGreek.online to the Learn Ancient Greek page. The series of videos entitled Alpha with Angela, freely available through YouTube, provides a very competent example of teaching the language using a communicative approach. Of course, as with any video based course, it is not completely communicative given that the user cannot respond in real time, but the viewer is able to see and hear the language being taught to an online “student”.

This provides great support for developing receptive language (listening, reading), which is the focus of most Biblical Greek classes. Other resources will be needed to practice expressive language (speaking, writing).

The pronunciation system is the one used at the Polis Institute. While it does not accurately represent the Greek pronunciation of the hellenist period, it can be argued that it allows easy access to the spelling conventions of the time. Personally, I prefer the reconstructed pronunciation of the period used by Randall Buth and others, but this resource is free and very high quality.


With over 40 videos already posted, there’s plenty here to either get started on the path to acquire Hellenistic Greek or brush up on what you already know.

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Another exercise for lesson two

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.

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Happy Thanksgiving in Ancient Greek

In case you want to say “Happy Thanksgiving” in Ancient Greek to any of your friends, here’s the way to do it.

Εὐτυχής ἡμέρα τῶν εὐχαριστιῶν

Εὐτυχής  does not mean “happy,” but the expression εὐτυχής ἡμέρα τῶν εὐχαριστίων would be the equivalent phrase to “Happy Thanksgiving.”  The adjective, εὐτυχής has an implication of success or good fortune.

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A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek II

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.

Funk’s Grammar Online

You can see my earlier post about the reprinted edition here:

Earlier Post

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A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek

Image of book

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:

Funk’s Online Grammar

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Καλὰ Χριστούγεννα (Merry Christmas in Greek)

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas.

The folks over at Omniglot.com provided a recording of the phrase in the title of this post that was used here from 2010 to 2015. My link to that recording ceased to function this year, so I replaced it with a recording of my own. Click the triangle below if you want to learn to say “Merry Christmas” in Hellenistic Greek.

New audio added November 25, 2016
m4a

AAC

mp3

Thanks to Omniglot.com for providing the audio that was used in this post from 2010 to 2015!

A note on pronunciation added in 2014:
The pronunciation from Ominiglot.com was done using Modern Greek pronunciation. While there are several important differences between Modern Greek and the way the language was spoken in the Hellenistic Period (Koine), none of those differences impact the pronunciation of καλὰ Χριστούγεννα. Of course at the time of Jesus and Paul no one would have said καλὰ Χριστούγεννα since Christmas was not yet celebrated. When it did come to be celebrated, though, early Christians would have pronounced this phrase the same as it is pronounced today in Greece.

 

A note on spelling (Added 12/15/2015)
There is one small difference in spelling of the Christmas greeting between 300 CE and the present: the system of written accents has been simplified. Contrast the following spellings. Can you see the difference?
Modern: Καλά Χριστούγεννα
Hellenistic: Καλὰ Χριστούγεννα