I prefer the term "Epic Greek" over "Homeric Greek" because A) it sounds cooler and B) what is Hesiod, chopped liver? I've dabbled in Epic Greek before but it was secondary to Modern Hebrew at the time. Now it's my main and in fact only focus. Instead of Pimsleur I'm listening to music in the car on my commute. It's a nice change of pace!
Those of you who have followed my many logs on will know that I have a tendency to have short bursts of heavy focus and then move on to something else, so manage your expectations about how long this log will last.
Keyboard Layout
The Polytonic Greek keyboard layout is actually ridiculously easy to learn since most of the letters map directly to the standard qwerty layout:
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THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG
ΤΗΕ :ΘΙΨΚ ΒΡΟ Ν ΦΟΧ ΞΘΜΠΣ ΟΩΕΡ Α ΛΑΖΥ ΔΟΓ
the quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.
τηε ;θιψκ βροςν φοχ ξθμπσ οωερ α λαζυ δογ.
There are only six letters that don't match up either in sound or appearance:
- q maps to a question mark (which looks like our semicolon)
- u maps to θ (theta)
- c maps to ψ (psi)
- w maps to ς (final sigma)
- j maps to ξ (xi)
- v maps to ω (omega)
So other than memorizing those six letters, you just need to learn where the deadkeys are. The main one is the acute accent (diaresis with shift), which takes the place of the old semicolon on the home row. To its right is the smooth breathing mark (rough breathing with shift).
The other two big deadkeys to learn take the place of the [square brackets]. On the left is the circumflex (subscript iota with shift) and on the right is the grave accent.
There are other deadkeys for combined diacritics but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Resources
Here is a very comprehensive list of resources for Homeric Greek: https://ryanfb.github.io/etc/2019/02/25 ... greek.html
These are the ones I am using or plan on using:
- Clyde Pharr - Homeric Greek, 4th Ed. (Iliad Book 1)
- W. Sidney Allen - Vox Graeca, 3rd. Ed.
- Frank Beetham - Beginning Greek with Homer (Odyssey Book 5)
- Raymond Schoder, Vincent Horrigan - A Reading Course in Homeric Greek: Book 1 (Odyssey Book 9)
- Raymond Schoder, Vincent Horrigan - A Reading Course in Homeric Greek: Book 2 (Odyssey Books 6 and 12)
- Odyssey and Iliad texts on persius.tufts.edu in web browser
What makes it even better is that there is a terrific supplemental website for it, with lots of multimedia and interactive exercises. My only gripe is that they don't use reconstructed pronunciation.
https://commons.mtholyoke.edu/hrgs/
I ordered a copy of Vox Graeca, 3rd Ed. by W. Sidney Allen, which seems to be the definitive resource for the reconstructed pronunciation of Ancient Greek. I think it focuses on Classical (Attic) pronunciation, but to the best of my knowledge the pronunciation differences are minor. The ones I'm aware of are that some vowel combinations became monophthongs in the Classical period but would have still been pronounced phonetically in Homer's time. And the underscore iota stopped being pronounced during the classical period, but in Homer's time they would have still been pronounced.
If/when I get through Iliad 1 with Homeric Greek, I'll plan on using the other textbooks to have my hand held through three books of the Odyssey and then try to make my way through the full texts.