Greek Language and Linguistics
Ancient Greek, mostly Hellenistic
Finally! I have overcome the crazy lack of standards for cell phone browsers. Lessons 1 to 18 are now HTML5 compliant and displaying correctly on Safari for iPhone and Chrome and Firefox for Android.
If you are accessing the grammar on a cell phone with a different browser, please let me know, and I’ll test the grammar for your special circumstances.
I’m working on Greek lessons in Miraflores, Lima, Perú. Lessons 1 to 15 are now HTML5 compliant.
I would like to thank those of you who have submitted suggestions and corrections. As I convert the files to HTML5, problems inevitably arise, and it’s wonderful to have dedicated readers who have the confidence to point them out.
The climate here in Miraflores is amazing. It’s winter. The picture above was taken yesterday. It shows the patio at my wife’s aunt Chabuca’s house. All of metropolitan Lima sits on a desert, so such gardens need careful attention.
Here’s the one at her parent’s house where I’m working these days. It’s a nice place to work on Greek grammar. If things go well, I’ll be able to complete the revision of the rest of the lessons before returning to the U.S. in August.
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.
The lessons here at Greek-Language.com can now be reached at HellenisticGreek.com. That domain name now redirects to Greek-Language.com/grammar.
I have corrected a typographical error in exercise 2 for lesson 22 (“third person” for “second person”). I’m sorry for any confusion the mistake may have caused.
You can see the exercise at
http://greek-language.com/grammar/22_Resources/Exercise_2_MI_Conjugation.htm
Lesson 22: The Present Middle and Passive is now up and running. It has exercises for recognizing both Ω conjugation and ΜΙ conjugation verbs as well as several vocabulary exercises.
I have added lesson 21 (Aorist Middle/Passive) to the online grammar. Because I am working late at night—rushing to get it up and running before I go back to work tomorrow—I’m sure there will be a few typographical errors that I will need to correct over the next few days. Still, I thought it would be best to get the text “out there” so you can have a look at it and give my any feedback you would like.
As I have done with other lessons recently, I have uploaded it without the automated practice exercises. I will get to those soon (I hope!).
I spent some very good time this morning at a coffee shop working on lesson 21. I’m writing the Reading and Translation section now. I’m working against the clock since I have to go back to work on Monday, and I’ll be out of town a good part of the weekend. As soon as I finish the lesson I’ll post a notice here.
I’ve uploaded a slightly revised version of Lesson 19: Semantic Roles and Voice: the Aorist Passive.
The changes are designed to make it clear that what has traditionally been called the Aorist Passive is a set of forms that, while they often suggest a passive interpretation, are not exclusively (or even primarily) passive.
The middle voice will be introduced later, and at that point I will have more to say about Greek voice, and I’ll introduce the notion of transitivity. My goals for this lesson are simply to introduce the notion of the semantic roles AGENT and PATIENT—establishing their independence from specific morphological Case forms—and to introduce the forms traditionally called aorist passive.
I would love to hear from readers about how well you think I have accomplished these goals and about how clearly (or unclearly) I have handled the issue of insuring that students do not equate these forms exclusively with passive voice interpretations.