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Title: Greek: An Intensive Course by Hardy Hansen, Gerald M. Quinn ISBN: 0-8232-1663-2 Publisher: Fordham University Press Pub. Date: October, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $37.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.06 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Outstanding text for new students of Greek
Comment: As a 37 year old physician, I decided to learn Ancient Greek on my own without any prior experience in classical languages or grammar. Having reviewed a few other texts, this is absolutely the most useful and easily accessible. That's not to say that it's easy, but everything is explained in a well-organized and complete manner. The drills and exercises are very well done and it was thrilling to be able to tackle such a difficult subject on my own. My only minor issue with this book is that there is no answer key for the exercises, so one has to puzzle them out for oneself--a good experience in itself--but there are periodic self-scoring tests with answers that do keep you on track. Overall a wonderful introduction to Greek for the novice.
Rating: 5
Summary: You can learn Ancient Greek
Comment: As an avid reader of the classics I wanted to learn Ancient Greek so that I could appreciate the works in the original language. I started out at my local library where I found very few books on the subject. The few that I did find were too advanced or were poorly written.
Hansen's text book is different. It starts out slowly with pronunciation and alphabet lessons. These are very valuble and were the elements that were most lacking in the other texts. The book builds to syntax and vocabulary. The great thing about the book is that they put easy reading and speaking drills early on. This makes you feel like you are learning and builds your confidence. The book also stresses thinking in Greek, since it makes the language easier to learn and since Greek is one of the most expressive languages.
This truly is an intensive course in the language and some devotion to study is required. However, it is fairly simple and fun to learn from the book. At the completion of the lessons, you will have a basic understanding of the Greek language and will be able to express ideas in the language. I am not very good at learning languages. If I can learn ancient greek so can you.
Other good features of this book are its Greek/English English/Greek translation dictionary for many usefuls words and phrases.
Rating: 3
Summary: Use Mastronarde instead
Comment: The main problem with this book is the overwhelming size of the units. This not only makes it quite difficult to work through the exercises since you have to digest so much morphology to be able to do them, but it also means that by the end of the book, though you will have a good grasp of syntax and morphology, your working vocabulary will still be quite small. I also found the order in which the grammatical concepts are presented to be somewhat unnatural - the subjunctive and optative are introduced before you have a good feel for the indicative mood and its endings. The verb forms are presented in such quick succession that I ended up not feeling very comfortable with them.
On the plus side, though, the basic concepts morphology and syntax are explained very thoroughly and clearly, and the vocabulary notes (usage notes on each individual word, possible alternative meanings, idiomatic uses, etc.) were quite helpful. There were also plenty of drills and reading sentences for practice. Overall, I'd say this book might be well suited to its original purpose - a workshop setting where all of basic grammar is covered in 6 weeks - but for the general reader it is a bit too dense. For the aspiring self-taught Classicist, I'd recommend Mastronarde. I myself ended up switching over to his book after 10 units of Hansen and Quinn, and find it to be better balanced overall, with shorter, more approachable units, and better organized chapter vocabularies.
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Title: Introduction to Attic Greek by Donald J. Mastronarde ISBN: 0520078446 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: March, 1993 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek by James Morwood ISBN: 0195218515 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary by James Morwood, John Taylor ISBN: 0198605129 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Greek Grammar by Herbert Weir Smyth, Gordon M. Messing ISBN: 0674362500 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 1983 List Price(USD): $42.00 |
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Title: Ancient Greek Alive by Paula Saffire, Catherine Freis ISBN: 080784800X Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: May, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.50 |
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