At 1:08 PM +0000 2/4/99, Maurice A. O'Sullivan wrote: >At 21:28 03/02/99 -0500, you wrote: > Does anyone have any recommendations >>re: what good classical Greek grammatical tools/learning aids (both >>accidence and syntax) I should look at? Is there anything out there >>that is designed for those who have been exposed to koine but not >>classical Greek? >> >David: >My recommendation -- which will not meet your second requirement above -- >is to use the Joint Association of Classical Teachers [ Cambridge, England >] "Reading Greek" > >This comes in two paperback volumes: >Reading Greek: which is a collection of texts, very simplified to begin >with, getting nearer to the originals as you progress >and >Reading Greek : Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises As one who (although offering a tutorial to students who've had Attic but want to read Biblical Greek) regularly teaches Classical Attic Greek in a secular university using the JACT texts for several years now, I heartily endorse what Maurice says about it. Its great advantages are: (1) it is solidly grounded in the principle of reading massive amounts of text illustrating the new items of grammar in sequence; (2) it quickly gets into real literary Attic Greek texts, beginning with Aristophanes and Plato, continuing through speeches from the corpus of Demosthenes, Herodotus, more Plato, and finally a fair portion of Book 6 of Homer's Odyssey. Should you go this route, you might well need to ask some questions as you go along: I think you'll find people on this list open to such questions, and you may certainly address them to me off-list (although I won't guarantee being able to answer just any and every question). Let me add that it's not easy going backwards from KoinŽ to Classical Greek, but I did it with effort myself 45 years ago--read gospel of Mark in a horrible little textbook by Rife the first year, did Homer's Iliad in the wonderful edition with commentary by Benner (still in print) the second year, plunged into Aristotle and Sophocles the third year. I would definitely recommend going the other way around to anyone who has the choice. Here we don't offer Biblical Greek EXCEPT as a tutorial to people who have done at least one year of Classical Attic. >The JACT have their own web-site at: >http://www.source.co.uk/users/jprogs/jact/ I'm grateful to Maurice for this URL for JACT. Let me add another for some Macintosh HyperCard stacks that Matt Neuburg has written (freeware!) to accompany the JACT Reading Greek Course: http://www.tidbits.com/matt/default2.html#agthings There are other possibilities, of course; but this is one of the best texts for one who DOES already have a background in Biblical Greek precisely because its focus is on acquisition of ability to read--not isolated sentences, but narrative and dialogue in connected prose of authors that are worth reading in their own right. Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics/Washington University One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018 Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/ --- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu