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Amount of time to spend on Ancient Greek

  Tags: Ancient Greek | Greek
 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery Post Reply
17 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>
Lykeio
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4003 days ago

120 posts - 357 votes 

 
 Message 9 of 17
09 October 2013 at 12:52pm | IP Logged 
Hi, thanks for this. I agree that a pronunciation debate is obviously unwarranted,
especially because it's never one informed by evidence when it happens online. I feel
like I ought to clarify a few things though.

Obviously Erasmian doesn't = modern pronunciation, I meant the modern restored
classical. They're not at all the same and using Erasmian would be really pointless...

As for students learning about that stuff, it depends. Very few students seem to. One
of my professors was taught those things, yes, but I have always heard it dogmatically
asserted that Greek has never changed, or all changes happened early and magically it
hasn't changed since, or, my favourite, modern linguistics is western propaganda. My
partner had it likewise.

No, there are serious problems with philology as practiced in Greece now and its
currently surrounded in pretty serious discussion so brushing aside the difficulties
won't help matters. But this is, frankly, a debate for classicists and only classicists
really.

For those outside academic routes, I'm not particularly fussed what they use, so long
as they don't mistake their preference and practice for actual scholarly decisions.
That's fine. I'm sure my Plato sounds like a souvlajis anyway.

I, personally, move between pronunciation schemes depending on context. As we said,
this is moving away from the topic at hand. The additional relevant thing I would say
to the OP is to use free resources. As in public domain books available on textkit etc
as a supplement, they're not at all bad and many love them.
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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4117 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 10 of 17
09 October 2013 at 1:05pm | IP Logged 
Lykeio wrote:
   One of my professors was taught those things, yes, but I have always heard it dogmatically
asserted that Greek has never changed, or all changes happened early and magically it
hasn't changed since, or, my favourite, modern linguistics is western propaganda. My
partner had it likewise.


I am genuinly shoked to hear that.

Lykeio wrote:
No, there are serious problems with philology as practiced in Greece now and its
currently surrounded in pretty serious discussion so brushing aside the difficulties
won't help matters. But this is, frankly, a debate for classicists and only classicists
really.




I won't argue about the problems (don't get me started on those), but please note that I don't believe it's just a discussion for classicists and only classicists. Language and education is a very serious thing for any society, and I wish someone had asked both philologues and parents/students before they abolished the polytonic (for example). Pronounciation as well is not a difficulty to be brushed aside, if that's what you mean.

Anyway, I can tell that you love the language and you feel strongly about some things, but have in mind that, just like most people, we really love our language too.

I'm sure your Plato sounds fine :)

Edited by renaissancemedi on 09 October 2013 at 1:10pm

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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4117 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 11 of 17
09 October 2013 at 1:20pm | IP Logged 
Thematic selection online

This is a site for high school students, so it's all in greek. But is is a truly great resource, with many texts, notes and everything. No English makes it difficult, but just for the texts it provides it may have some value to a beginner.








Edited by renaissancemedi on 09 October 2013 at 1:23pm

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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4117 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 12 of 17
09 October 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged 
Another link

if you don't already know about it.
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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4117 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 13 of 17
11 October 2013 at 7:58am | IP Logged 
A link on erasmian pronounciation from the fisrt site I gave you before. It's for highschool, as I said, good, with other links in the end. In greek, but you can find your way easily to hear the pronounciation, if that's what you want to do.



This is a good site for greek learnrers altogether, so I think I'll post it in the links subforum.



Pronounciation
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kanewai
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/kanewai
Joined 4648 days ago

1386 posts - 3054 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese
Studies: Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 14 of 17
11 October 2013 at 7:36pm | IP Logged 
At least for Homeric, I get the sense that the meter is far more important than the
details of pronunciation. I've read that Homer pulled words from different Greek
dialects anyway, to choose the one that fit best with the dactylic hexameter.

From what I know of islands and isolated communities, each island tends to have their
own unique accents. In Micronesia I can tell you what village someone is from
(sometimes) just based on their accent and pronunciation of certain words.   My non-
professional opinion is that the ancient world would have been the same, and that there
was no single or "right" accent.

That doesn't mean that modern academia won't insist on one!

I don't know if Classical or Koine Greek put the same importance on meter.


Edited by kanewai on 14 October 2013 at 5:22pm

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Domi333
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 4898 days ago

7 posts - 8 votes
Speaks: English*, French, Creole (French), Portuguese
Studies: Turkish, Ancient Greek

 
 Message 15 of 17
14 October 2013 at 2:07pm | IP Logged 
I've been thinking about this too.
I've been going through Athenaze and I'm also working on my Turkish
so I've been using Prof Arguelles advice of sticking to 30 minutes for each language (which I only do for one of them).
This is a long-term goal but I'm not learning Modern Greek so I know where to focus on with Anc. Greek.

Edited by Domi333 on 14 October 2013 at 2:08pm

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polyglossic
Newbie
United States
polyglossic.wordpres
Joined 4103 days ago

8 posts - 9 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian, French, Ancient Greek, Portuguese

 
 Message 16 of 17
17 January 2014 at 11:09pm | IP Logged 
kanewai wrote:
At least for Homeric, I get the sense that the meter is far more important than the
details of pronunciation. I've read that Homer pulled words from different Greek
dialects anyway, to choose the one that fit best with the dactylic hexameter.

From what I know of islands and isolated communities, each island tends to have their
own unique accents. In Micronesia I can tell you what village someone is from
(sometimes) just based on their accent and pronunciation of certain words.   My non-
professional opinion is that the ancient world would have been the same, and that there
was no single or "right" accent.

That doesn't mean that modern academia won't insist on one!

I don't know if Classical or Koine Greek put the same importance on meter.


I just felt like chiming in here because I've formally studied Classical and informally played around with Homeric for a couple of years. Yes of course there were regional accents in ancient Greece - Herodotus writes in Ionic, for example, which can drive you batty if you're used to the Attic (i.e. Athenian) dialect that is usually the focus of any "classical" Greek instruction.

As for your comments about meter, Homer puts a lot of emphasis on meter because Homer is writing poetry. Any Classical Greek writer of poetry would certainly care about meter as well, though it might have been a different meter than Homer's works. Prose authors of course ignore poetic meter. Hence Koine, which only exists in the writings of the New Testament, wouldn't display the "emphasis" on meter that Homer did.

@zabanaflawa, I don't know if this would be an option for you, but after my formal Greek classes ended I found a nice group of former Greek students who get together on Saturday mornings to read Homer for a few hours. We're all working professionals but it's a very pleasant way for all of us to maintain the language we love and keep immersed in the literature. If you live in a big city, or a university town, you might be able to find something similar!


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