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Introduction to Attic Greek

Introduction to Attic Greek

List Price: $29.95
Your Price: $29.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Journey of Discovery
Review: Learning Classical Greek is a rewarding experience. The Romans were rightly jealous of it and thought their own language inferior to Greek, which equipped with several grammatical constructs Latin lacked and a vastly larger vocabulary could be deployed to express thoughts of incomparable beauty. Greek was seriously considered by our Founding Fathers as the official language of the United States.

Mastronarde's book does it right. No lower-denominator spoon-feeding, no anesthetic digressions; faint-hearted, shrinking violets need not apply. One of the reviewers complains about being treated to the untender mercies of some fifty pages of dry grammar for a start -- no sugar in his medicine! Whoever expects learning Attic Greek (or any language) from scratch to be a walk in the park is just kidding himself. No matter how one gets there declensions and conjugations MUST be learned. There is no way out of it. In my view, acquiring that fundamental knowledge at the outset as quickly as possible is the shortest path to comprehension.

There is much more ahead but I feel I am prepared for it. I completed this book in conjunction to the Answer Key book, sold separately, which was of great help. See also Professor Mastronarde's online ancient Greek tutorials...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: excellent
Review: Out of all the books on learning Greek that I have gone through, this is the best in terms of detail. Some books have good explanations, but poor charts; and other books have good charts, but poor explanations. This book, however, has good charts and explanations. This is great for those being taught or tutored. It is also great for review and greater understanding of the grammer. However, this book may be overwhelming for those teaching themselves Greek because of all the information presented in this 400 page book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An overall good, systematic textbook
Review: The grammatical explanations are exceptional - good enough for independent study. My only gripe is that the early practice sentences are completely lame. It would have been nice to have simplified sentences from Classical writers, like there are in Wheelock's Latin. I found that this makes translation far more interesting, and makes the transition to "real" translations easier and less abrupt.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very good reference book.
Review: This book is an excellent reference text of Attic Greek. The explanations were, generally, very clear, and the morphological analyses were often helpful in learning the various inflections. Also, this book explains much more clearly than any other book I've read the principles of Greek accentuation. A good book for a motivated self learner, or just an interesting reference for those who already know some Greek but would like to improve their current skills.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great Book for Attic Greek
Review: This is a very good book for learning Attic Greek (ie, the dialect of Greek spoken in Attica, a part of Greece, focusing on the classical period, although other periods are also covered), the language of Aristotle, Plato and others. It gives one an extensive vocabulary, and gives a good break-down of grammatical concepts (although that may just be for me, since I had previously learned classical Latin, thus learning the basic concepts and terms, like nominative, indicative, etc.) I highly recommend it, and it keeps its promise: to allow one to read most Greek texts with commentary and dictionary.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: used in university class
Review: This is the book that we used in my Attic Greek class at the university I attended. I had no complaints while we used it in the class. However, I must say that I never tried to use it for teaching myself the language. However, other reviews can speak to that situation. I think it is a fine book to use.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Necessarily technical and dense. Masterful.
Review: You'll groan at seemingly unimportant technical details (e.g.: a phrase translated as "(movement) away from (the vicinity of) the tent" p. 41) but in a day or two you'll realize what an essential distinction it was.

One could argue that it's overly technical -- but for anyone seriously interested in learning Attic -- if they aren't already interested in technical thoroughness, they soon will be. It's simply necessary.


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