einzelne wrote:Ex: I had been entertaining the idea of learning Greek for a while and even dabbled with it. But then I realized that in 1000h I need to invest to read, say, Aristotle in the original (it's a very optimistic estimate btw), I can read 100 books about him in all the languages I know (it's a very pessimistic estimate, because when it comes to secondary literature, I read it quite fast). What would make me a better connoisseur of Ancient Greek culture? 1000h of cramming Greek morphology and vocabulary, or 1000h of reading books on Ancient Greece in the languages I already know (which, incidentally, would improve them significantly) and investing my cognitive faculties in pondering about philosophical ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics in the translation while consulting the comments by the brightest minds in the field (which you have to do anyways, if you want to understand them)?
(But then, don't hesitate to satisfy your wanderlust and dabble with a language a little.)
Actually although Aristotle's writings are very abstract and complex to digest, in terms of language level he's often expresses things in a fairly simple and straightforward way, and because of how much influence he's had on other writers, a lot of his key vocabulary has become common in English. I've seen a few translations though that make his writings more difficult than they are in the original. Personally I dabbled in Ancient and Modern Greek for some months and I found Aristotle more accessible than some of the later lessons of Assimil, and the additional repetition makes it easier to absorb. (The New Testament also has some easy books, like the Gospel of John, though I realize not everyone maybe interested in it).
This is another reason why I find Listening-Reading so useful, because I don't know if I'll ever find the hours to get to the point where I can read a new ancient greek text unassisted, but as a beginner I can read the texts in translation while also hearing them in the original and getting some better sense of them and picking up some greek knowledge in passing. Sources of reconstructed ancient greek audio are limited, so I can only use it on a handful of texts (and modern greek also has fairly limited selection, but it provides some additional options for vocab), I dunno if I'll take it to a high level, and I'd probably just read in translation any text I don't have audio for. But anything I read in translation will be easier to try to re-read in the original in the future, and more people may be doing audio recordings so we'll see where I end up depending on where my time goes.
So I'd say I currently don't have any realistic plans to "study" Greek in the sense of getting my raw Greek comprehension to a high level, but there's definitely opportunities for me to get a bit of Greek while pursuring my interest in literature.