So You Want To Learn Ancient Greek Or Latin?

Wow that is great! When you get it in the form where you are ready for us to feature it as a resource on the page please let us know. Looks like you have made a lot of progress!

First, impressive amount of work and a decent start.

Taking a quick look, it seems the transliterations from Greek to Latin script are a little idiosyncratic. The use of "oo" for ω while technically correct for the length can lead people to try and pronounce it like "boot." Same for ee for η, saying "beet" instead of just a lengthened ε. Also the use of both y and u for υ (upsilon):

δυναμένοις (du-na-me-nois) δυ-να-μέ-νοις: present middle/passive part. from the
verb δύναμαι (dynamai) → "to be able"

There underlining for the accents in the transliterations don't necessarily convey why their important. Plus all the accents are underlined the same way.

That said, this is a great start to an interlinear text for study purposes.

PS. The Greek to Latin letter issue is one of the reasons I decided against transliterations in my Menoikeus commentary.

I see that there are a number of good videos which have been linked in this thread (especially in post 20). I just found this video, and looks like he mentions that he uses "standard/Erasmian" pronounciation... this video is for absolute beginners (like me) to learn the alphabet.

Here's Luke Ranieri's Introduction to the Greek Alphabet using reconstructed Ancient Greek pronunciation all in Ancient Greek (part of the Ancient Greek in Action series of videos). This is in his Lucian pronunciation of around the 1st c. CE (based on how Lucian of Samosata would have *maybe* pronounced his Greek). Watch till the end to hear Ranieri sing an Alphabet Song in Ancient Greek

Erasmian pronunciation is the default for many books teaching Ancient Greek; however, there are better methods now (i.e., more closely approximating Ancient Greek pronunciation). Erasmian - developed originally by Erasmus of Rotterdam - is an academic mishmash of convenient pronunciations in one's native language: English "Erasmian" is different from French "Erasmian" from German "Erasmian." It doesn't really try to approximate ancient Greek pronunciation nor does it attempt to be. The vowels especially are a mess, to my understanding. Long and short vowels are supposed to be distinguished by actual time or length of pronunciation, not different sounds. For example, eta Η η is held longer (let's say twice as long) than epsilon E ε. Short alpha Αα is held half as long as long alpha, and so on. All that's not to say Erasmian isn't alright to start with! But approximating the ancient pronuncation, to me, is just so much cooler LOL

Here's one from the JACT Summer School, JACT is the publisher of the Reading Greek series of books:

Thanks Don ! I also think it could nice to learn both modern Greek and ancient Greek at the same time, just in case I want to visit some Greek islands (no actual plans yet). I see that the pronounciation must be different between ancient and modern, and I found this on Wikipedia:

Quote

The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.^[6] Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin during the modern era. Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between Ancient and Modern Greek usage because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the 5th century BC and today. Modern and Ancient Greek also use different diacritics, with modern Greek keeping only the stress accent (acute) and the diaeresis.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet

But that may make it too complicated to learn both at the same time... perhaps I'll start with modern and learn some basic words for travel and basic communication

Yes, Very different. But that can be a contentious matter.

Learning modern Greek isn't a bad idea as a start. Just realize that the grammar and even meanings of words won't translate (no pun intended) into understanding ancient Greek.

I moved some threads around and so further advanced language studies on ancient Greek can be found over in this thread, cross-referencing:

Post

RE: On Nature, Book 28

[…]

I could see that, but then ῥῆσις has the -σις abstract suffix. I think the -σις is just doing the work of "nouning" (to coin a clunky word) the μᾰρτῠρέω.

ῥῆσις: Etymology From stem ῥη- of εἴρω (eírō, “to say”) +‎ -σις (-sis, abstract noun suffix).

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…entry=marture/w

Derived terms:
ἀντιμᾰρτῠρέω (antimarturéō)
ἀπομᾰρτῠρέω (apomarturéō)
δῐᾰμᾰρτῠρέω (diamarturéō)
εἰσμᾰρτῠρέω (eismarturéō)
ἐκμᾰρτῠρέω (ekmarturéō)
ἐπιμᾰρτῠρέω (epimarturéō)
…

Don

March 17, 2024 at 2:07 PM

I found this in Reddit, a sub-Reddit forum dedicated to learning ancient Greek.

Just saw this:

Quote

Koine Greek, the variety of Greek used after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, is sometimes included in Ancient Greek, but its pronunciation is described in Koine Greek phonology.

Source: Wikipedia

For me, Luke Ranieri is still the go-to guy online for Ancient Greek and Latin. For example, a recent video goes deep into vowel length:

I found this interview of Dr. Emily Wilson talking about her translation of the Iliad. It's a little long, but I found it quite enjoyable, hearing about the nitty gritty of translation choices and the process of word and metaphor choices. If you have *any* interest at all in translation, this is a fun listen/watch. And read Dr. Wilson's Iliad and Odyssey!

This was kind of fun... Ranieri reading an actual Herculaneum school in Pompeiian Lucian Reconstructed Pronunciation:

I was also unaware of this resource:

GreekSchools Open Access Viewer

Seen online...

😬

I did discover poking around in DRN the other day that Yellow River could be translated as flauus fluuius in Latin, which gave me no end of pleasure!

Oh, common Joshua . The moment I saw your yellow river I burst into laugh because this came to my mind instantly.

Not sure if this translator is useful, or has already been mentioned:

Akhos Morphology

Quote from Kalosyni

Not sure if this translator is useful, or has already been mentioned:

https://akhos.net/

It seems a little wonky and only gives individual words definition by definition one word at a time. I would recommend simply going straight to Wiktionary.com. I think that's just what akhos is doing, so just bypass the intermediary and go straight to Wiktionary which gives links to LSJ and other sources.

I noticed today that Wingdings 2:248 is an ancient punctuation mark, the asteriscus "little star," which is the proto-asterisk.

At the very least, this symbol is used a few times in Philodemus' On Methods of Inference (locations listed in second image below).

I'm looking at home study Latin courses. This one from Memoria Press seems geared toward home schoolers, and is nicely divided into Forms 1-4 with accompanying workbooks, etc. Does anyone have other recommendations?

Latin Curriculum | Memoria Press: Classical Education

Our award-winning Latin Curriculum is designed to teach your student to master the Latin grammar through an easy to use, step-by-step process.

www.memoriapress.com

Hello Remus, welcome!

I am not familiar with the Memoria Press version, but I would like to recommend Hans H. Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata series (link). Everything is in Latin from the beginning, but illustrated and simple.