"Homeric" Greek Suggestions

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jbbulsterbaum
Posts: 11
Joined: January 19th, 2012, 3:20 am

"Homeric" Greek Suggestions

Post by jbbulsterbaum »

So on these thoughts, http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/vie ... 1af6#p4828, anybody have recommendations and insight for sitting down to Tackle the form of Greek in Homer's works?

Textbooks?
Lit beyond Homer? (As much as possible: having to tackle other languages if study resources are unavailable in English is neither preferable nor unacceptable however.)
Works on pronunciation schemes accounting for the phenomena, and scholarly differences of opinion?
Recordings thereof? (Especially extensive.)
And importantly, any notion of when the next group for starting Greek with Homer might initiated on the likes of Quassilum or something similar? : )

Addenda:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ - sweet.
J. Bradley Bulsterbaum.
cwconrad
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Re: "Homeric" Greek Suggestions

Post by cwconrad »

jbbulsterbaum wrote:So on these thoughts, http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/vie ... 1af6#p4828, anybody have recommendations and insight for sitting down to Tackle the form of Greek in Homer's works?

Textbooks?
Lit beyond Homer? (As much as possible: having to tackle other languages if study resources are unavailable in English is neither preferable nor unacceptable however.)
Works on pronunciation schemes accounting for the phenomena, and scholarly differences of opinion?
Recordings thereof? (Especially extensive.)
And importantly, any notion of when the next group for starting Greek with Homer might initiated on the likes of Quassilum or something similar? : )
It's not altogether clear what you're after here, when you write "Lit beyond Homer." From your introduction, it looks like you have either just begun Greek or haven't quite even begun. If you want to start with Greek, and you want to start specifically with Homer, I might recommend Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek: A Book For Beginners (Greek Edition): you can buy a print copy inexpensively and it's also available online at Textkit: http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/165/author_id/81/; once you've got beyond that, I'd recommend Allen Rogers Benner's Selections from Homer's Iliad. This is what I used as a Sophomore half a century ago; it is replete with introductory material on Homeric background and grammar, copious notes on what I like to call the "archaeology" of the Greek language, and a surprisingly adequate vocabulary for the included selections. This too can be gotten in print or also can be viewed online at the Perseus site. You can also find at Textkit selections from the Iliad by Clapp and from the Odyssey by Perrin. If you really want to start with Homeric Greek, thse would, I think, keep you busy for a while.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Mark Lightman
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Joined: May 6th, 2011, 6:30 pm

Re: "Homeric" Greek Suggestions

Post by Mark Lightman »

Hi, Bradly,

I agree with you that, all things being equal, it makes sense to start the learning of Greek with Homer. I think that anyone who is serious about learning Ancient Greek will at some point learn Homer. I don’t think it REALLY matters when in the process this happens.

In addition to Pharr, the other two Homeric intro textbooks are Schoder and Horrigan

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Course-Ho ... 909&sr=8-1#_

and Frank Beetham

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Greek-H ... 094&sr=1-1

I think anyone who is serious about learning Homeric Greek will at some point work through all three. I don’t think it REALLY matters which you start with.

Pamela Draper’s heavily annotated edition of Iliad One

http://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Book-1-Bk/d ... 191&sr=1-1

is fantastic, as is Stanley Lombardo’s audio of same.

http://www.wiredforbooks.org/iliad/


A new, revised editιon of Pharr is due out in April. One of the co-authors, Pam Debnar, has some nice audio files and links to other audios here

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/pdebna ... 101/audio/
If you really want to start with Homeric Greek, these would, I think, keep you busy for a while
.

Yes, for about two years, right, Carl? Isn’t that your sense, that it takes about two years of self study, averaging an hour a day, for one to acquire a BASIC reading competency in Ancient Greek, whether NT or Homeric? Then, about another 3-5 years after that to obtain basic fluency. That was the time frame for me. Of all the resources for learning Ancient Greek the most helpful, and the most fleeting, is time.
Bradley wrote: …read, write, speak, say it aloud, imbibe, and immerse in it until drowned…
I like it. τοῖς τοῦ Ὁμήρου βεβάπτισμαι.
jbbulsterbaum
Posts: 11
Joined: January 19th, 2012, 3:20 am

Re: "Homeric" Greek Suggestions

Post by jbbulsterbaum »

Thanks quite a lot follks!

To answer the uncertainty: I haven't quite started studying "seriously". I've dabbled in Mounce before, and given a look-over of Funk's grammar. I acquired what I read to be rather serious resources for study, and then life threw a mountain range or two in the way (16-22 hr work days and public transportation, among others); I have spent the little free time I have had until recently, however, looking up resources, reading papers like Buth's, and trying to form an early picture about what the best approach to lay a good foundation would be. In what I consider another lifetime (though I am quite young) I drowned in a ton or two of Greek vocabulary, grammatical points, and other pointers in serious commentaries, dictionaries, and just reading aloud (as best I knew) the Greek of Nestle-Aland, before seriously considering how just learning it would probably be a greater time saver than having to compare many different authorities for biblical interpretation, so even without sufficient formal study (to say "I can read/speak Greek") "τοῖς τοῦ Ὁμήρου βεβάπτισμαι" is strangely intelligible (though I'm sure I have to be missing quite a lot about it about it).

What I do remember quite well, however, is that after chemotherapy had fried my high school Spanish work from my brain, when I studied Spanish in college it was semi-difficult until I drowned myself in it for two weeks straight (not a lot of demands from other courses at the time): it wasn't that the language is so bad, but coming to actually think in it, speak without having to pause too long to translate, etc., is another story, so I labelled everything around me in Spanish and forbid myself from thinking or saying "door" when I saw la puerta (repeat for everything), read everything in Spanish, listened to Spanish radio, watched Spanish t.v., and suddenly my professores y professoras thought I was amazing for a "first year" student (re-student): it was short-lived due to life circumstances, and other studies demanding attention, but now I want to learn Greek, and I think I have sufficient free time to devote several hours per day. Now if only I can find a decent forum of Hebrew experts to give similar pointers...and really confuse myself : )

Thanks for the info and pointing to those texts. I'll have at it now, and since they're online I think I'll be reading these things while running on treadmills at the gym and sitting in saunas for all the aches due to weights! Will keep searching for audio recordings of reconstructed Homer (there used to be a site but I can't find it in my bookmarks, err...), but besides that, someone here might find this very interesting, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 74669.html

p.s. loved the mention of "archaeology" of the Greek language: love that sort of thing about languages, the mystery about them, and seeing how things changed between then and later. : )
J. Bradley Bulsterbaum.
Mark Lightman
Posts: 300
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 6:30 pm

Re: "Homeric" Greek Suggestions

Post by Mark Lightman »

so even without sufficient formal study (to say "I can read/speak Greek") "τοῖς τοῦ Ὁμήρου βεβάπτισμαι" is strangely intelligible (though I'm sure I have to be missing quite a lot about).
χαίροις, Βραδ,

That's because you already knew what I meant before I said it. I was just paraphrasing back something you had said. Real-world communication works like that. You may not know the extact "morphological tag" of βεβάπτισμαι or what kind of dative is being used here, but you know the word baptize and you know the word Homer and context, the context of real communication, helps you figure out the rest. This is the way kids and ESL learners learn the language, and that right well.
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