So You Want To Learn Ancient Greek Or Latin?

Quote from burninglights

inspired me to take a first leap into ancient Greek today.

That's great!! This may involve starting another thread, but what resources are you using? I might have some suggestions, but only if you (or others) are interested.

Quote from burninglights

Just the LSJ and one free .edu site I signed up for that I can't even pronounce and haven't figured out how to use yet. It appears to run on the LSJ too. I'm definitely open to suggestions! I can't say I have grand ambitions, but it's nice to feel empowered enough to "check under the hood" when I have questions about translations and stuff.

*The* two best (i.e., easiest and free) ways to access the LSJ is to:

(a) Use the Perseus Digital Library for texts: ex. Diogenes Laertius, Book X - then look to the right for "Greek (R.D. Hicks, 1972) focus load" - click on "load" - that will give you the Greek text while maintaining the English. Click on ANY word in Greek, and it will open up a separate window with options to see definitions and declensions in the LSJ, Middle Liddell, Slater, and Autenrieth dictionaries.

(b) Open Wiktionary - https://www.wiktionary.org/ - copy and paste in any ancient Greek word - get a good solid basic definition (with sample declensions for nouns, conjugations for verbs!) - and link to the Perseus LSJ and other dictionaries.

That's all my secrets I'm divulging for tonight

PS. Okay, definitely check out Luke Rainieri's stuff online, especially his You Tube channels, ex.

I am slow to the Greek game but I am thinking we will probably split out these last comments / hints into a "Can We Persuade Don To Make A "Greek For Beginner's" Presentation?"

My own small contribution is that I just finally discovered if I did a screen shot of a Greek term I could upload it to Google Images and it will provide a translation. This is hugely useful to me because I am regularly cutting and pasting from PDFs of books that have Greek words, but for some reason my PDF program does not pick up the Greek letters and turns it into gibberish. And looking for a Greek keyboard to retype them is very difficult when you're not familiar with the letters. What I've just discovered is that the link below will take an image of the Greek lettering and turn it into Greek text for you.

Quote from Cassius

I am regularly cutting and pasting from PDFs of books that have Greek words, but for some reason my PDF program does not pick up the Greek letters and turns it into gibberish.

That all has to do with how good the OCR of the PDF was done by whoever uploaded it.

I'm starting this thread as a place for people to share their experiences in trying to learn the ancient languages and to share their go-to resources (print, online, in person). This will also be a place for people to ask questions about where to start, what worked, what didn't, etc. We'll deal with actual translation issues in their appropriate textual threads, but this can be a nuts and bolts "how-to" thread.

btw, I own Dr. Austin's book as an ebook!

... And, full confession, I have NOT completely read all these the whole way through.

And I also just realized my Penguin copy of A.E. Stallings' On the Nature of Things* isn't on that shelf! I'll have to remedy that.

(*It's on the shelf. Just off the frame )

It probably goes without saying, but the first step for anyone wanting to learn Ancient Greek is simply sit down and learn the alphabet.

You'll need it to read.

You'll need it to look up words in dictionaries.

You'll need it to eventually pronounce words.

A fun way to practice is just write English words using the Greek letters like a code. It reinforces the system. in 7th grade, high school, through college, I'd take notes in class in Greek letters, and I still run across those notebooks in a drawer once in awhile.

Just sit down and do it.

Many are the same or at least similar. It just takes practice. Here's one to decipher:

Ι ΚΑΝ ΡΕΑΔ ΓΡΕΕΚ ΛΕΤΤΕΡΣ. ΛΟΟΚ ΑΤ ΘΑΤ!

Ανοθερ τιπ... Oh, sorry... Another tip:

Duolingo has a Greek course that includes an alphabet learning section. I'm currently on day 67 of the course.

But... And this is a big "but"... The language is modern Greek, not ancient or Koine Greek. So the grammar and pronunciation are modern. So, it can be helpful, but it's not a substitute for learning ancient or Koine Greek itself.

Note: I am NOT getting into the pronunciation "debate" here in this post! However, be aware that that is a HOT topic for modern Greeks. For now, stick to reading.

Y'all will notice I haven't mentioned Latin yet.

I am woefully remiss in learning Latin. I really like Luke Ranieri's Latin content on his channels, but I've had a long-lasting mental hurdle to get over for learning Latin.

In my youth, I remember sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table on the farm and her sharing that she still remembered the declension of agricola... agricolas... and so on from school.

I'm from German and Celtic stock, so the my hurdle involved seeing the Romans as the bad guys. Why would I want to learn their languages. But I've discovered Lucretius, Ovid, Vergil, Cicero (....shudder...), and the rest, so maybe it's time to hunker down.

Confession on my ancient Greek skills: Honestly, my skills are probably **just** good enough to get me in trouble. I've never gotten through an entire course. I rely on dictionaries and other tools. I cannot sit down and just *read* a Greek text on sight. So, I appreciate the confidence y'all have shown in me. I'm not going anywhere, but, I just wanted to say that if I can do this, y'all can, too. Let's all dig into the texts together!

Quote from Cassius

if I did a screen shot of a Greek term I could upload it to Google Images and it will provide a translation. This is hugely useful to me

That is a good tip! I used that when I was working through the French of Les Epicuriens. Take a photo of the page, plug it into Google Translate.

Just keep in mind, however, that Google is going to translate it from *modern* Greek into English. This isn't necessarily an issue all the time, but the evolution of meanings has changed over the past 2,000+ years, so just be aware of that.

Quote

A fun way to practice is just write English words using the Greek letters like a code. It reinforces the system. in 7th grade, high school, through college, I'd take notes in class in Greek letters, and I still run across those notebooks in a drawer once in awhile.

I can't remember where I saw this (textbook, website, etc), but it was a set of famous speeches in English but in Greek script. The Gettysburg Address for example is rather well known, and if you already know the words you can work out the Greek letters without much trouble.

I can't find it with Google, but maybe I still have the book.

Quote from Joshua

The Gettysburg Address for example is rather well known, and if you already know the words you can work out the Greek letters without much trouble.

That seems like a VERY good idea. Take a passage you know by heart and express it in Greek lettering.

What about word order in Greek? Do we have the same issues of order and use of inflection that we have in Latin? Did the Greeks write long sentences and intentionally make you wait to the end of the sentence to find out what it is about like the Romans did?

Quote from Cassius

That seems like a VERY good idea. Take a passage you know by heart and express it in Greek lettering.

And one can do this by writing longhand or typing. I'll try to provide a brief guide to the various keyboards and fonts out there soon for those who want to be able to type in polytonic Greek. Anybody want to share their work? Post it here if you want to challenge other beginners to "decipher" it. I suggest writing as English words sound and not as they're spelled sometimes: υεν "when"; δισπλαι "display", etc. You can also puzzle through names to start acclimating to the alphabet: Επίκουρος, Μετροδορος, Αχιλλεύς, Σόκρατες, Πλατό, Οδυσσέας, Αθήνα, Αφροδίτη,...

Quote from Cassius

What about word order in Greek? Do we have the same issues of order and use of inflection that we have in Latin? Did the Greeks write long sentences and intentionally make you wait to the end of the sentence to find out what it is about like the Romans did?

Of course Greek is an inflected language, but this is a feature and not a bug. The genius of this is that a word can be placed first in the sentence for emphasis regardless of whether it's a direct object, subject, etc. I highly recommend the short book The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons to Love Greek by Andrea Marcolongo.

How about short classic Epicurean phrases:

Death is nothing to us.

Nothing comes from nothing or goes to nothing (or some version of that)

and other similar short sentences as a start in both Latin and Greek

Quote from Don

Many are the same or at least similar. It just takes practice. Here's one to decipher:

Ι ΚΑΝ ΡΕΑΔ ΓΡΕΕΚ ΛΕΤΤΕΡΣ. ΛΟΟΚ ΑΤ ΘΑΤ!

A fun side-effect I experienced learning the ancient Greek alphabet is that I suddenly became capable of reading all of the road signs I see on TV when they're covering anything happening in Russia or Ukraine.

... don't have a clue what they mean, but I can at least sound them out!

Quote from Cassius

Death is nothing to us.

For example:

"English": ΔΕΑΘ ΙΣ ΝΟΘΙΝΓ ΤΟ ΥΣ.

"English" upper and lower: Δεαθ ις νοθινγ το υς.

Greek: Ο θάνατος ουδέν προς ημάς.

Literal: The death nothing to us [is].

I've mentioned Podium Arts narrated by Ioannis Stratakis. Here's the link:

Podium-Arts

Spoken Ancient Greek; texts in reconstructed pronunciation. For learning or enjoyment. Samples of audiobooks (most of which are for sale on www.ancientgreek.eu…

youtube.com

So, you have the alphabet memorized now? Where do you start learning the language?

I'm going to stick with ancient Greek and/or Koine, but some of these have good Latin content as well.

I can't say enough nice things about Luke Ranieri and his Scorpio Martianus and Polymathy channels on YouTube:

ScorpioMartianus

Spoken Latin, Ancient Greek, and Ancient Egyptian videos by Luke Amadeus Ranieri. 🤠🦂 Topics & tags: Latin Language Lessons for beginners, Latin Language,…

www.youtube.com

polýMATHY

Polymathy is the study of many things. On my videos I want to share with you what I find interesting about science, technology, languages, geopolitics, and…

www.youtube.com

Feel free to look around, but a good place to start is his Ancient Greek in Action series:

He uses his reconstructed Lucian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in the videos, but there are other videos that talk about other reconstructed ancient pronunciation. (I'm gravitating to his reconstructed Pompeiian pronunciation, but I am still liking Sidney Allen's reconstruction from Vox Graeca).

If you want an IN-DEPTH discussion on the best ways to learn Ancient Greek or Latin on your own, may I suggest (and one of these includes Carla Hunt of Found in Antiquity:

If you want a VERY traditional way to learn Ancient Greek, there's the 118-video series from the Center for Hellenic Studies with Prof. Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) and Belisi Gillespi, his teaching assistant:

The most important thing is just... start somewhere! Explore! See what works!

Another interesting online resource is Textkit:

Textkit Greek and Latin Forums - Index page

It's both a forum and a resource for learning Ancient/Koine Greek and Latin. There are some valuable discussions about books and other things but also in-depth grammar discussions. I haven't spent much time there myself (maybe I should?), but I think it's a good resource to be aware of.

All this online discussion is not to say your shouldn't look at good old books. I think Textkit uses some old books on Internet Archive to learn Greek and Latin like http://www.cloviscorp.com/collegium/gram…se/grammar.html

but there's also

Athenaze

The JACT Reading Greek series (see my bookshelf image above)

Teach Yourself Ancient Greek

Etc...

However, some of those stick to the grammar-translation method which isn't necessarily the best way to go about it. Comprehensible Input (CI) seems to be more in favor now, but it seems to me both have their place. Both Luke Ranieri and Carla Hunt are big proponents of the CI approach and have GREAT content to back it up.

Here's more Latin CI content:

Latin - Bryce Hedstrom - Comprehensible Input Materials & Training

Here are the best links to comprehensible input-based language instruction.

www.brycehedstrom.com

Launching a new Ancient Greek YouTube channel

As I’ve been making more Ancient Greek language videos on my Latin channel, it has become increasingly clear that it is best if these Greek videos have their…

foundinantiquity.com

That's enough for now!

I encourage others to share their experiences and favorite (or least favorite!) learning resources.