Ancient Greek guidance needed. Please.

[redsquirrel]

My son is begging me for a chance to learn ancient Greek. We would start next year. Hellllp!

 

I know there are different kinds of ancient Greek and I want to get the correct version. His goal is to be able to read Homer. I am guessing that is not Koine Greek?

 

Any guidance is helpful.

 

I know that Galore Park has a beginning Greek program but I cannot tell what flavor it is.

 

You know, when I told him that next year (7th grade) he would have more of a say in his schoolwork this is NOT what I was expecting. I thought he was going to tell me that he wanted to blow stuff up and count it as science. That I was prepared for. Ancient Greek wasn't on the radar.

 

If it helps he has been studying Latin for 4 years.

[gardenmom5]

koine is later than homer.

 

1dd is a classics major - so three years of college classical/attick greek. there is actually an older greek . . . but you don't need it. (It had cases that were dropped in later years. I believe some type of future perfect tense, don't remember exactly, and her prof said something like "god saw no future in it".)

 

Latin is dd's favorite language. she much prefers the "classical" periods for latin and greek.

Edited December 20, 2011 by gardenmom5

[Heather in Neverland]

He will want to study Attic Greek to read Homer. Here is a website with some info: http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/curriculum/language-greek.html#secon

[redsquirrel]

So does anyone now if Classical Greek is the same as Attic Greek? and if so, anyone know of any homeschooling resources?

 

I did follow the link and it mention Attic Greek, but I don't see resources for teaching/learning.

[AmericanMom]

Try Athenaze. It's a high school program with workbook, teacher key, etc. They sell it at Rainbow Resource and they have samples there, too. Jut remember it will take a long time to get to the point of reading Homer, and it will take a tremendous amount of motivation and dedication. Greek poetry is really difficult. You may need a tutor at some point, but Athenaze is a good way to get started. My son is using Crosby and Schaeffer's Introduction to Greek, but it doesn't have a teacher's key. Galore Park's Greek program is classical, too, if I remember correctly.

 

Some links for you:

http://www.bolchazy.com/index.php?cat=greek&sub=main

http://rainbowresource.com/prodlist.php?subject=15&category=5066

 

You might want to post this on either the Logic stage board or the high school board. It is likely to get a better response over there. Posts get buried pretty quickly on this board.

 

Good luck!

[Aquinas Academy]

It's confusing isn't it! :)

The Galore Park book is Attic Greek. It is a nice intro to Ancient Greek and might be a good taster kind of course to see if Greek is really your son's thing.

The most popular (and, IMO, best) Attic Greek textbook is Athenaze. It's commonly used in university Greek classes, but two of my kids started it in 7th grade and had no troubles (we went fairly slowly, of course). It took DD 15 three years to complete Athenaze I&II and DD 13 is on track to finish in a similar amount of time.

My one hesitation with mixing the Galore Park book and the Athenaze book is that they use a different order for declensions. :glare: Athenaze follows the nominative, genative, dative, accusative, vocative pattern, whereas GP goes nominative, vocative, accusative, genative, dative. It's not really a big deal, so long as you stick with one format, but it can be confusing at first.

[suppleasthewind]

I used Athenaze in college and it taught Attic Greek. I still have that book and look through it sometimes.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

I attended the demonstration by these people at the Cincinnati Homeschool Convention. They offer online classes. They use the Athenaze book for Greek. Their program seems really interesting.

[redsquirrel]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

 

That is annoying that the GP and the Anthenaze don't match up. I have heard very good things about the GP program, but I am also seeing that they are not planning a follow up to the level 1 Greek. But thank you so much for telling me. That was very helpful.

 

He knows it is going to take a long time to get to the point of reading Homer, but he has talked about doing this since he was 5 or 6. I guess we need to get started.

 

I need to start saving my $$ for a tutor or those online classes.

[BarbaraL in OK]

So does anyone now if Classical Greek is the same as Attic Greek?

 

While studying Attic this fall, I ran across info on the development of (ancient) Greek over the centuries, and it was really helpful. Here's what I have picked up.

 

Ancient Greek sort of began with Linear B, and then leapt forward to Homeric Greek, in terms of written works. To study Homeric, there are a few books available, and the works used are indeed the Iliad, the Odyssey, and some other texts of similar age. Yet most people study Attic first (see below), and then switch to Homeric.

 

Much later, Homeric turned into the Greek of the Classical Greek period (I think that's the right term). "Classical Greek" was a bunch of Greek dialects, of which the most studied is Attic Greek -- because many of the greatest works of the Classical Greek period were written in Attic. I think Attic was the dialect of Athens.

 

Others wrote in Ionian, or Sapphic, or various other dialects. Also, anyone writing certain types of texts would use a specific type of Greek to indicate what they were writing; for example, an epic written in the Classical period would still be written in Homeric Greek.

 

To read major works from this period, you would study Attic (using Athenaze or a variety of other books) and then start reading Aeschylus, Aristotle, etc, etc, etc. Then you could move from Attic to learning another dialect of the same time period in order to read other works -- OR from Attic, switch to learning Homeric!

 

Moving forward another chunk of time: in the late Greek period, the time of the New Testament and the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Greek had become much simpler and this was Koine, the Greek spoken at that time and in which the New Testament was written.

 

To study Koine, you use resources for Biblical Greek/Koine -- there are tons -- and very quickly start reading the New Testament and some other early Christian writings.

 

This fall I decided to start learning ancient Greek (!!!), and after a little research I decided to focus on Attic as my foundation so that I could choose to go back in time to Homeric or forward to Koine if I get far enough to make those kinds of choices. I gather it's significantly harder to tackle Attic or even to dare Homeric if your foundation is Koine.

 

Also, for what it's worth, it helped a TON that I was already very familiar with the Greek alphabet, both upper and lower case, the sounds of the letters, and how to write them. Thank you, college and grad school in science with lots of math! I encourage anyone tackling Greek to really get the alphabet solid as your first task.

[Corraleno]

I highly recommend Lukeion's Greek classes! The first two years cover the two volumes of Athenaze, then Greek 3 & 4 are reading courses. The great thing about Athenaze is that there is a lot of translation and reading, not just grammar drill, so students are reading whole pages of Greek from the very beginning.

 

The Lukeion course covers 1 chapter per week, with an hour-long live lecture plus online homework assignments, practice games and activities in Quia (flashcards, memory/matching games, etc.), and an online quiz. So in Greek 1a, for example, there were 15 lectures, 15 assignments, and 15 quizzes. There are also some audio files, links to lots of other resources, self-quiz activities, and other things.

 

The teacher, Regan Barr, is a classical archaeologist and a wonderful teacher — very warm and funny and supportive of the students. DS has taken several history classes with Regan, as well as an intensive grammar course (The Barbarian Diagrammarian), and I've been extremely impressed with all of them.

 

My DS is dyslexic and ADD, and never in a million years did I expect him to ask to learn Greek, but he has the same motivation as your son: to read Homer (and Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, etc.). Greek is now his favorite subject; he worked his butt off this semester and earned an A+!

 

Jackie