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First sentences in Attic Greek!!!!!

Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2022 3:11 am
by johmica
So, I've got a bit of history with language learning. German undergraduate bachelor's, five semesters of French . . . All of that occurred 20+ years ago. My pandemic hobby has been re-learning Deutsch, and about six weeks ago, I decided to try to learn to read Plato in his native tongue. I've been working on Hansen & Quinn since, and today, I read complex sentences in Greek for the first time. I've got a 20-word vocabulary, and an understanding of the roles that words play in their different declensions (thanks, German!), and today I put it to good use for the first time (Homer's brother is educating the men in the markets by shipping books down the road).

So, this post is mostly just a celebration of my silly accomplishment. But I also realized today that there's a huge difference between my goals in studying French and German and my current goals with Greek. With both French and German, the goal is communication. The goal is reading and discussing Baudrillard or Adorno in their native tongues. With Greek, on the other hand, I never need to speak it. I don't need to be able to produce a vocabulary - I'm content just recognizing it. An ability to read and understand a language seems right now to be so much easier to master than an ability to converse. I'd love to hear folks' thought . . .

Re: First sentences in Attic Greek!!!!!

Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2022 5:18 pm
by MorkTheFiddle
I would agree that conversation needs active rather than passive understanding of vocabulary as well as extra time to learn to speak and to understand spoken language. Understanding the spoken language may be the toughest part and most time consuming part of language learning.

Re: First sentences in Attic Greek!!!!!

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 11:54 am
by jeffers
It is possible to work on spoken Attic Greek. The Cambridge Greek Play is put on every two years (I believe), and they even have a couple of full plays to watch on YouTube. I can't check the sound right now, but I understand it is spoken fully in Greek, with subtitles appearing on a screen at the back of the set. They announce the next play well in advance, so I would love to study an announced play intensively, and then go to Cambridge to watch it live. "Some day".