Why Ancient Greek is so hard... and how to fix it!

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  • Опубликовано: 2 янв 2025

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  • @polyMATHY_Luke
    @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +26

    If you want to learn to read and speak Ancient Greek, Latin, Biblical Hebrew, or Old English in fun, immersive classes, sign up for lessons at AncientLanguage.com 🏺📖
    Why exactly is it so hard to learn Ancient Greek? While learning Latin poses no small challenge, those who have learned the first language of the Romans often find the Hellenic tongue to be strikingly difficult by comparison, for reasons never quite clear. In this video, I summarize all the greatest challenges and pitfalls of studying Ancient Greek, I explain why Ancient Greek is much harder to learn than Latin for the majority of people, much more than they expect, at least, and most importantly I tell you how you can remedy these problems and become a fluent reader of Ancient Greek, once and for all.
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    Ancient Greek is easy...GOTCHA! ruclips.net/video/XI66x0bISJ8/видео.html
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    Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart, conducted by Neville Mariner
    00:00 Intro
    1:10 Alphabet & diacritics
    4:32 Morphology, stem changes, augments
    10:08 Heterogeneity of the target literature
    13:12 The Textbooks & Readers
    18:19 The BIGGEST Problem is...
    25:09 How to solve the problem
    30:20 You’re not gonna like this
    41:16 Why the Ranieri-Roberts Approach is so effective
    46:53 The most important thing I should tell you
    48:35 HOW to read
    54:57 How to begin reading real Ancient Greek literature
    58:29 Bilingual texts are NOT cheating
    1:10 Tentative Reading Plan
    #ancientgreek #greek #ancientgreece

    • @Seventh7Art
      @Seventh7Art 3 месяца назад

      So, which language is harder than ancient Greek in your opinion? Sanskrit? Chinese? Japanese? Finnish? Arabic? Hebrew?

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад +1

      ​@@Seventh7Artnone of them

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад +2

      Dude i really appreciate your efforts BUT... Your accent and your pronunciation are very bad... You cannot analyse a language like that. For example the EFYGON it s not epewgon😂 You pronounced it this way... It s E-feeghon,the correct way. I understand i m not expecting from you to talk like Socrates BUT indirectly you re mispronouncing also modern greek.

    • @BesserGlauben
      @BesserGlauben 2 месяца назад +2

      ​@@EmpireOfLEMBERG
      You shouldn't be correcting someone, if you don't have the knowledge yourself: His pronunciation as an emphatic P is the historic attic pronunciation, it only became a fricative F in the later Koine period. So no buddy, his pronunciation is exactly correct.
      The υ is only pronounced as ee (as in "bee") in the later koine to byzantine period, certainly not in attic pronunciation, before that it was pronounced as the french u in "tu" or as the german ü in "Tüte".
      Luke has multiple videos on his channel with a wide variety of pronunciations - he has videos in attic, in koine, in byzantine and even in modern greek pronunciation.

  • @iberius9937
    @iberius9937 3 месяца назад +115

    Not going to stop me from learning it to fluency, no matter how long it may take.

    • @zinknot
      @zinknot 2 месяца назад

      Why?

    • @BesserGlauben
      @BesserGlauben 2 месяца назад +1

      ​@@zinknot why not

    • @iberius9937
      @iberius9937 Месяц назад +1

      @@zinknot Because I love it that much. That's why.

  • @daniel16234d
    @daniel16234d 3 месяца назад +36

    It amazes me how many extremely helpful videos about learning Ancient Greek you've released in just ONE year: detailed 2.5-hour Lucian pronunciation guide, Ranieri-Roberts guide for autodidacts, macronizing guide, Iliad recitation guide+Kephalos challenge, and now this video! And this year isn't even over yet! You have single-handedly eliminated the excuse that there are no accessible entry-level materials about Ancient Greek on the web. You are truly a gift to humanity, Luke!

    • @violetka1197
      @violetka1197 Месяц назад

      whtas do you say..????.ALL GREECE KNOW THAT ATHENS SPOKEN ALBANIAN TILL 1930.................ALSO TODAY IN GREECE SPEAK MAJORITIES IN ALBANIAN...............................THE MITOLOGY IN GREECE SPEAK ONLY ALBANIAN..!!!...ruclips.net/video/hmZjeU599MQ/видео.html&pp=ygUbbWl0b2xvZ3kgYWxiYW5pYW4gaW4gZ3JlZWNl

  • @zc32-official
    @zc32-official Месяц назад +5

    0:07 I also had this question when I first started learning this language, you’re not alone.

  • @zita-lein
    @zita-lein 3 месяца назад +24

    I’m pretty much dead set on learning ancient Greek. I’ve got three years of college Japanese, so you can’t scare me off. ❤

    • @violetka1197
      @violetka1197 Месяц назад

      whtas do you say..????.ALL GREECE KNOW THAT ATHENS SPOKEN ALBANIAN TILL 1930.................ALSO TODAY IN GREECE SPEAK MAJORITIES IN ALBANIAN...............................THE MITOLOGY IN GREECE SPEAK ONLY ALBANIAN..!!!...ruclips.net/video/hmZjeU599MQ/видео.html&pp=ygUbbWl0b2xvZ3kgYWxiYW5pYW4gaW4gZ3JlZWNl

  • @BakerVS
    @BakerVS 3 месяца назад +21

    I was lucky growing up with German and English, and learning French and Italian at school. Later on, I also learnt Russian. When I needed to do a year of Latin, I found it surprisingly easy, with a lot if vocabulary from French and Italian, and a lot of grammar from German and especially Russian.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +8

      Exactly! If only it were so easy to go into AG. MG is helpful, like I said, if you get to C1.

    • @John-qd5of
      @John-qd5of 2 месяца назад +2

      It works the other way, too. I learned Latin first, and it made Polish grammar easier to understand.

    • @mihovillmisha9885
      @mihovillmisha9885 2 месяца назад

      Croatian grammar is 90% latin. Proto latin is very slavic

  • @SouthPark333Gaming
    @SouthPark333Gaming 3 месяца назад +53

    Why is Latin so hard? I speak like 7 modern languages, many of which are more difficult than Latin, yet I still struggle a lot with this ancient tongue. Why is Latin so hard? I think it comes down to something similar; dead languages are much more inconvenient to learn. If there were lots of dubs in Latin, lots of easy, but compelling works of fiction (which there are not past the beginning to early intermediate stages!), lots of people to practice with, I am sure it would be a lot easier.

    • @marcmonnerat4850
      @marcmonnerat4850 3 месяца назад +11

      Latin is easy in comparison of Ancient Greek ;-)

    • @jorgitoislamico4224
      @jorgitoislamico4224 3 месяца назад +1

      I actually think Latin is quite easy in some ways (until you start learning all the verb conjugations lol), do you mind if I ask you what languages you speak and which one is your mother tongue?

    • @SouthPark333Gaming
      @SouthPark333Gaming 3 месяца назад +8

      @@jorgitoislamico4224 My native language is Danish, and I speak the following languages (in order of proficiency): English, German, Russian, French, Spanish, Swedish and a little Mandarin Chinese.

    • @jorgitoislamico4224
      @jorgitoislamico4224 3 месяца назад +2

      @@SouthPark333Gaming Well Danish is quite different from Latin so no wonder why it was harder for you, my native language is Spanish so I found Latin to be slightly easier to learn that let's say German for example (I'm still learning both tho) but considerably harder than Portuguese or Italian.

    • @SouthPark333Gaming
      @SouthPark333Gaming 3 месяца назад +1

      @@jorgitoislamico4224 I am conversationally fluent in almost all the other language I just listed and know the grammar very well. I do not find Latin difficult; I find it more inconvenient and therefore harder than most modern languages.

  • @obonyxiam
    @obonyxiam 3 месяца назад +25

    i finally saw mozart's magic flute live yesterday, was not expecting to recognise the first piece! brilliant choice for intro music you chose.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +3

      Oh that’s great! I hope you enjoyed the opera! One of my favorite pieces by Mozart.

    • @obonyxiam
      @obonyxiam 3 месяца назад +2

      @@polyMATHY_Luke optima erat!

    • @jr.jackrabbit10
      @jr.jackrabbit10 3 месяца назад

      mi lukin e sitelen lawa sina

    • @obonyxiam
      @obonyxiam 3 месяца назад +1

      @@jr.jackrabbit10 tenpo ni la sina sona e ni: mi jan pi toki pona :)

    • @kazsolan
      @kazsolan 3 месяца назад

      sina lukin sama mi a!

  • @cleavesley
    @cleavesley Месяц назад +4

    I will say that reading the book of Revelation in the Bible was the single most gripping experience I've ever had reading Greek. I got to chapter 8 and literally couldn't put it down. It's so vivid and there are so many intriguing things happening in quick succession if you can get past some of the mild disconnected-ness of it.

  • @jelmar35
    @jelmar35 3 месяца назад +19

    I can really recommend the "Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine" written by Constantinus Tischendorf from 1842. It's a side-by-side Greek and Latin version of the new testament. If you can already read Latin well, you can use the Latin to understand the Greek. The Latin translation is so literal that it is extremely useful. I am now reading Mark after (almost) fimishing volume 1 of Athenaze. There are some things that confuse me in the Greek, but most is understood and it is a very nice break from Athenaze

    • @Roma_eterna
      @Roma_eterna 3 месяца назад +1

      Where did you find it? Now I wanna check it out!

    • @jelmar35
      @jelmar35 3 месяца назад +1

      @@Roma_eterna For me, it is the second google entry if I search with "Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine Tischendorf" (the first one too, but that one includes handwritten notes)
      I don't know where I got it from. It sat on my PC for years before I finally decided to use it :)

  • @gabrielkuhl3018
    @gabrielkuhl3018 3 месяца назад +10

    The biggest lie/scam that we're told is that bilingual texts are cheating when we know that the ancients themselves used such materials in their own second-language acquisition. Indeed, one of my greatest resources has been my Latin-Greek New Testament; the claim that the Evangelists are an excellent first step in a Greek reading plan is 100% true in my personal experience.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +3

      I have become convinced of the same! In Second Language Acquisition theory, it is definitely well established that it is better to stay in the target language whenever possible, especially when explaining grammar, and certainly when conveying meaning. Thus we must use bilingual texts effectively: learn the meaning of whatever passage, then read the target language original; understand everything about it. Then see if, upon reading it solely in the original, you can understand it all.
      Similarly, if we use Familia Romana or another Latin-only reader, we need to eventually be able to read the text without looking at any of the notes or pictures for meaning. That is what builds confidence and competence.
      Since any of the Greek “PER SE ILLUSTRATA” readers are mediocre to terrible, they are almost useless, robbing us of confidence as often as they seem to give it. I’m quite disillusioned with them having completed that grand spreadsheet.
      It seems there are many paths up Mount Parnassus.

  • @suem6004
    @suem6004 3 месяца назад +3

    Luke, you may have a new beginner Greek student here. I studied classical Greek some ‘centuries’ ago from a prof as old as Euripides who took on the beginner classes because the TAs would show off and give students a hard time. So, he lead us through the declensions like taking a bath. He used a text from some primary school in bygone years with brief texts. Brief exercises. Brief chapters that limited new info to one grammatical item in the chapter instead of say 10 in modern textbooks with 20 page chapters. My happiest class at college. I may be willing to restart.

  • @jasonbaker2370
    @jasonbaker2370 3 месяца назад +1

    Thanks!

  • @SoulcatcherLucario
    @SoulcatcherLucario 3 месяца назад +64

    hi, luke!! just wanted to let you know i have beaten cancer and even rung the bell!! the last video i watched before the ceremony was the gladiator ii video

    • @iberius9937
      @iberius9937 3 месяца назад +5

      @@SoulcatcherLucario Praise God!

    • @nmanything
      @nmanything 3 месяца назад +2

      I literally have never seen you before but this is amazing news

    • @concerninghobbits5536
      @concerninghobbits5536 2 месяца назад +1

      Hell yeah that's crazy impressive

    • @aaronmarks9366
      @aaronmarks9366 2 месяца назад

      That's fantastic, congratulations!

  • @obsidianwinters5857
    @obsidianwinters5857 3 месяца назад +2

    17:03 smoothest transition ever, even without the drums!
    No one could, with a straight face, call me good at Latin and while I am proud to say I can understand John Charity Spring for the most part, Minecraftium is definitely my high watermark, but even with all that said, boy do I feel inadequate after watching your videos. You're an inspiration, Luke!
    Ah, well, who knows, one day, I may even finish il metodo natura. :)

  • @einstein7323
    @einstein7323 Месяц назад +2

    As a native Russian speaker, for me it is exactly the opposite. Some letters of the Greek alphabet are similar in spelling and sound to Russian ones. Also, Russian has many borrowed ancient Greek words that sound the same. These languages ​​are of course not similar at all, but I like to find something similar to my language

  • @ceruchi2084
    @ceruchi2084 3 месяца назад +2

    30:00 You're right that the only way to develop a strong vocabulary is by reading, reading, reading, especially with Greek verbs, whose principal parts are so treacherous. You have to see διήνεγκα in context several times before your brain automatically "reads" διαφέρω into it. But Greek literature is so spread out and rarefied that I keep having the experience of seeing a word I recognize and thinking, "Oh yeah, I learned that word from Euripides, but it seems to have a slightly different meaning here. I better look it up..." And then I look up the word and LSJ cites it in exactly two places, once in Euripides, once in the text I'm reading but with a slightly different sense. It's like a "dis legomenon," I suppose, and I wonder why I put so much cognitive energy into a word when now I've encountered it in, like, the two places in extant Greek literature that I'm ever going to see it. My favorite author by far is Homer, but the hapax legomena are out of freaking control! Nowadays if I can reasonably guess what a Homeric word means, like "oh, it's probably some part of the ship" or "this must be a certain cut of meat," I don't bother looking it up. There have been too many times when I bustle off into Cunliffe only to find, "Nobody knows what this word means, but apparently it's a part of the ship." Thanks lol! This has not been my experience in Latin, except for some technical terms and obscure plant names in Vergil (I don't mean the Aeneid!). I think there's a lot more Latin literature from all eras for the lexicographers to work from, and so I get the feeling, while in the dictionary, that the word I'm looking up will help me in my future reading. AT LEAST most Greek words are made up of other, more common, Greek words and so at the advanced level you can grok a compound you've never seen before.

  • @ellenyoung9223
    @ellenyoung9223 3 месяца назад +1

    You’ve inspired me once again to get back into it! I’ve been doing a lot of Sanskrit studying the past few years, and sometimes I get discouraged by that, like will I ever be able to just read??? But then I get back into Latin and Greek and it feels like there’s just so much more material to help with reading fluency. This was a great outline of a reading plan, very helpful.

  • @jorgitoislamico4224
    @jorgitoislamico4224 3 месяца назад +9

    I was learning using an online course for Ancient Greek called Lingua GRAECA Per Se Illustrata and I found myself in this exact same place 😭 I didn't know if I found it so much more difficult to learn than Latin because I wasn't smart enough, because the language was just harder or because the course was just not good enough for me, I'm glad you decided to finally answer my question lol good video as always

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад

      Because we use a different alphabet... Our letters d probably make it hard for you

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад

      However in all honesty... Ancient greek is the hardest language. I m not saying it from the aspect of patriotism but it s the hardest one💯💯 NOT even greeks can speak it...

    • @jorgitoislamico4224
      @jorgitoislamico4224 3 месяца назад +1

      @@EmpireOfLEMBERG Oh no I had already studied the alphabet before and I can read it pretty much as easily as the Latin alphabet, it was the grammar that was hard
      Also, why do you have a menorah if you're Greek? I thought Greeks were Christian.

    • @lushu3943
      @lushu3943 2 месяца назад +1

      @@jorgitoislamico4224 maybe he is a Greek jew, bro use your mind.

    • @jorgitoislamico4224
      @jorgitoislamico4224 2 месяца назад

      @@lushu3943 Well, I don't think Greek and Jewish Greek are the same, Greek Jews are Jews living in Greece, and Greeks are the descendants of Ancient Greeks

  • @eniotna_379
    @eniotna_379 3 месяца назад +5

    Great video dear Luke. Your passion is inspiring

  • @dimitrisnikolaou1387
    @dimitrisnikolaou1387 3 месяца назад +2

    I'm a greek native speaker and sometimes I was so frustrated in my Ancient-Greek learning course comparing the progress I made reading through Oerberg's books about Latin. I used to start from early Greek authors who were writing in Kathareuousa going back all the way to Greek-Koine. I felt that there was a huge gap between those two, maybe because Kathareuousa in my eyes was seen as something "man-made/fictional". Watching your approach I know that patience is the key and if I want a more complete approach I should start your method through the excel file I had obtained in another video. Also there is a useful Latin-Greek-French parallel reader that may be useful. Thanks for the amount of time you spent giving us advices about the matter Luke!

  • @djt-lu8tw
    @djt-lu8tw 2 месяца назад +1

    This is a helpful speech for learning almost any topic

  • @beebarfthebard
    @beebarfthebard 2 месяца назад +1

    I found your channel through metatron. 10:06 Made me feel so much better as just a mom learning Koine Greek to read the new testament. Learning alone. So much fun, but very confusing at first.....still. I'll pick it up though. I'm using biblioliguo and videos like this.

  • @jaredgotcher
    @jaredgotcher 2 месяца назад +1

    Thank you, Luke. The moment I started typing this, I realized I have way too much to say to put in a YT comment. Anyways, I was encouraged by this video and accidentally watched the entire thing. I have been climbing the Greek mountain for a while with pretty dismal progress (in my estimation). Spanish was so much easier.

  • @cornmono3665
    @cornmono3665 3 месяца назад +2

    25:08 I’ve felt the same way. Recently I’ve even wanted to find some way to get a list of cognates. I remember Keller & Russel giving cognates in English to Greek words that did not seem similar at all but it was cool to see nevertheless & even that helps me personally.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад

      Any technique that works, is valuable. For me, I think the solution is to encounter the text in entertaining narratives. That way you remember the word from context.

    • @PedroMachadoPT
      @PedroMachadoPT 3 месяца назад +2

      I feel that almost every Greek word has some cognate somewhere.

    • @pierreabbat6157
      @pierreabbat6157 2 месяца назад

      What are the most surprising cognates? I don't have a most surprising cognate, but here are some cognates:
      φρέαρ - burn (in names like Washburn, maybe also fire burn but that's not certain)
      ομίχλη - мгла (the initial ο represents a laryngeal lost in Russian)
      μισθός - meed (reward).

  • @Jimserac
    @Jimserac 10 дней назад

    In the late 1960's I tried learning Ancient Greek from an old 1901 textbook I had bought at a book sale. In those days, you could go to book sales or book stores up near Brown University where I lived and buy old textbooks from the turn of the century for 50 cents or a dollar, or at most, $5. The book I used was based on Xenophon's March of the 10,000, it had glossy high quality pages and was in remarkable shape for a 70 year old book. The main verb it started with was the one you mentioned but I mastered it and some cases. I already knew Russian, so cases and the alphabet were no problem at all.
    What stopped me was pronunciation. In those ancient days before the Internet I had no idea how to pronounce the word "King" in Greek. Was it BASILAYUS, BASILEEUS, BASILUS, BASILOUS.... ?? Within a short while this occurred with other words, and reading the pronunciation guidelines proved more confusing than helpful. Eventually I gave up after going to a famous language book store up in Cambridge Mass. several times and trying some of the expensive language LPs.

  • @investmentgammler4550
    @investmentgammler4550 3 месяца назад +12

    What makes a language hard to learn is not the complexity of the grammar, but its irregularity. That's why Turkish is so much easier to learn than Greek - its grammar is far more complex, but it is almost perfectly regular.

    • @HaSatanhagia
      @HaSatanhagia 3 месяца назад +2

      You compared the richest language to s Mongolic one...

    • @erentoraman2663
      @erentoraman2663 2 месяца назад

      @@HaSatanhagiahow ignorant...

    • @concerninghobbits5536
      @concerninghobbits5536 2 месяца назад

      Man Korean has so many weird pronunciation rules and exceptions from the one year I took, I think it's mostly regulated but definitely some exceptions. I actually found French way easier once I learned a lot of the rules for phonetics because there's a lot but they're super consistent. The grammar not quite as much.

  • @snowboy6890
    @snowboy6890 3 месяца назад +1

    Great video so far Luke. I'm about 25 minutes in and it's all so interesting. Again thank you for the inspiration and the expertise you bring.
    I tried to learn ancient Greek and got stuck on lesson 3 or 4 of The Great Course ciriculum. It was the case system, it was hard to comprehend. Then I noticed the same teacher also taught Latin! So I began Latin to take a break from Greek's case system... ... *sigh*... In this moment I realized there was no escape 😢. But the case system was much easier to learn using a English alphabet! Currently im in chapter 19 of LLPSI and I love all of your videos.

  • @jelmar35
    @jelmar35 3 месяца назад +6

    For me, the hardest part of ancient Greek has always been the unrelatability of the vocab. As a native Dutch speaker growing up with English, a lot of Romance vocabulary was familiar from the start, making Latin much more accessible.

  • @iberius9937
    @iberius9937 3 месяца назад +1

    2:37-2:41 Really looking forward to those as well as to more videos about evidence for the pronunciation of the other diphthongs you haven't covered yet!

  • @jhanschoo
    @jhanschoo 3 месяца назад +2

    3:25 The illegibility of the readings get worse in some modern typefaces designed for Modern Greek, with polytonic an afterthought. There for legibility of the modern script the relative x-height is typically large, meaning that the diacritics are further minimized. Some sans serif faces adopt square quotes like those found in Helvetica's commas, further reducing the part that distinguishes the breathings to a diminutive tail! This is not a problem for modern greek, but a serious issue indeed for polytonic!
    One additional thing is that I observe that the diacritics in Byzantine texts are usually large and ample, so this is quite something introduced in the evolution of writing technology to metal typesetting.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +1

      Very good point! Some of the free fonts on the GFS (Greek Font Society) are nice for this.

  • @Theodisc
    @Theodisc 3 месяца назад +2

    Ahhh, observing your video I now understand why "the view" in Modern Greek is «η θέα». Thank you 🧿

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +1

      Ah indeed!

    • @Theodisc
      @Theodisc 3 месяца назад

      ​@@polyMATHY_Luke And you are so very right about this state of disconnect that Anglophones will have with Greek, ancient or modern. When I was growing up my Mum took me from New Zealand to Paris where she worked as a personal secretary for one of the Secretaries General of the OECD. One day I went in to meet her for lunch and we were traversing through one of the tunnels under the chateau there and we came across some of the ladies of the Greek delegation whom she had obviously met before this. Mum was always very proud to present me to any Greek, but I think should have been more proud of the perfect immaculate Greek that she mastered learning off my Greek Father. I could see that these ladies held her in esteem for her use of their language as not many non-Greeks learn Greek nowadays, especially Anglos, and especially ones from NZ. But for me watching on, this was "all Greek" to me. I felt this disconnexion to it that I didn't get with the ease I had learning French there, or, like you, German at school. Because there were no free lunches it turns out. Well, these last three years I have been learning Greek at the local Orthodox church here in Auckland. I can now read Greek with ease and learn many new words on a quotidian basis. You say "read, read and then read". I do this and I also learn Greek songs on YT and sing along to them. And now, for me, I get these free lunches with Greek, and with that example with η θέα these are small ways of broaching this large disconnect between us speaking English and learning the Greek tongue. So, thanks again (and sorry about the the wall of text, but you inspired me here).🙏🏽

  • @pierreabbat6157
    @pierreabbat6157 2 месяца назад

    Don't forget Euclid! He wrote early Koine; the dual is conspicuously absent (δυσιν ορθιαις ισαι εισιν instead of δυοιν ορθιαιν whatever the verb would be). I'm a mathematician.
    I had a Teach Yourself book in which Element 1:15 (Εαν δυο ευθειαι τεμνωσιν αλληλας...) and the part of Anabasis where a Rhodian suggests catching 2000 animals and making mollags to cross the river were passages.

  • @BesserGlauben
    @BesserGlauben 2 месяца назад +1

    Will you offer Biblical Aramaic in the future at the Ancient Language Institute?

  • @mravalik
    @mravalik 3 месяца назад +1

    Learning both Greek and Italian at the same time, and I even being beginner to intermediate, I can't even IMAGINE attempting Ancient Greek OR Latin, thank you for your beautifully passionate videos, from us - as passionate - language learners! 😌

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад

      Έμαθες τίποτα καινούργιο;;

  • @CannedMan
    @CannedMan 3 месяца назад

    _Thank you_ for this. I am glad i watched through it and now feel more encouraged to try again. In the description text, the tentative reading plan should probably be at 1:01:10, not 1:10.

  • @billrogers5219
    @billrogers5219 3 месяца назад +2

    He nailed the problems, lack of cognates and lack of lots of reading material. I learned Greek via Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek. He takes you through Book I of the Iliad. After that it took me years to get through the rest of the Iliad and the Odyssey, using Cunliffe's Lexicon of the Homeric dialect. Painfully slow, but it was more interesting to read great epic poetry painfully slowly than to zip through page after page of paradigmatic sentences. Latin at least has a bunch of fun translations of modern novels into Latin on which you can work up reading fluency - Pride and Prejudice, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, The Hobbit, Harry Potter, etc. For Greek, there's slim pickings (Harry Potter in Attic). And in a modern language like portuguese you can just work up speed and fluency by reading fun modern novels (e.g. Jorge Amado) one after the other.

  • @truthterrain3484
    @truthterrain3484 3 месяца назад +1

    Thank you for putting together the list of readings, amazing work.

  • @That_Amani
    @That_Amani Месяц назад +2

    I have learned (putonghua-mandarin) Chinese to a b2 level but Ancient Greek and koine Greek which I’ve studied for years I can’t even understand a word just sounding out words is difficult

  • @LordRoku-
    @LordRoku- 3 месяца назад +1

    Grazie, Luke! Una volta finito con i miei studi, riprenderò il greco antico. Le recensioni di libri che fai sono fantastiche, e comprerò sicuramente ὁ Φάρος e cercherò di imparare un po' ogni giorno. Es gibt so viele Dinge, die ich lernen will, aber wie es aussieht, muss ich mir einen Plan erstellen und hoffen, dass alles klappt. 😆 ευχαριστώ, διδάσκαλε.

  • @corbul32stefan58
    @corbul32stefan58 Месяц назад

    Hey mr. Luke it is an honor to meet you my real name is Steve handshake. I wanna learn Latin because I am afraid of completely losing my native language of Romanian because I rarely get to speak it now after my mom died. I wanna learn latin because If i ever forget Romanian completely, I can still speak to my native people by using latin.

  • @krupam0
    @krupam0 3 месяца назад

    Just about sums up what I've concluded about learning a new language. Pronunciation can usually be summed with a short article, and after that it becomes a matter of practice. Grammar can be trickier, because you can always find some weird quirk you might not expect (why can I be _in_ my house, but _at_ my home?), but at the end of the day even the most complex system is learnable. The biggest obstacle, however, is just the sheer size of vocabulary you have to acquire, remember, and recall in a second to be in any way functioning in a language. Pronunciation and grammar are mostly finite processes, but acquiring vocabulary is a struggle with no end in sight, to some extent even with your native language.

  • @jimatreidēs
    @jimatreidēs 3 месяца назад +38

    As a modern Greek speaker, I find koine Greek much, much easier to learn and understand than classical or Homeric Greek.

    • @CitizenMio
      @CitizenMio 3 месяца назад +3

      As a modern Greek learner, I found his pronunciation confusing to say the least.
      Like I recognise the letters, and some of the components are familiar. So I would have read αποφευγην as apofevgyn, not apopeogyn.
      I've always found Greek eu = ev to English (and in my own Dutch) eu like in Europe to be easy enough to understand as a simple transposition of letters that would look very similar when chiseled in stone. Eu being eo, not so much.
      Did pronunciation really change that much?

    • @jimatreidēs
      @jimatreidēs 3 месяца назад +7

      @@CitizenMio this is a big debate. Some scholars think it has, some think it hasn’t.
      In the video, the Erasmian pronunciation is used, which again is debatable. If you ask me, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
      You have to understand that there was no unified Ancient Greek language, but various dialects. In some, the use of the aspirated “h” was already in decline. Others had already done away with the use of the “w” sound in front of certain words. Many of these changes toward the modern Greek pronunciation were already happening since ancient times, so, who knows exactly how Ancient Greek was pronounced, when first and foremost, there was no such thing as a unified Ancient Greek language that kids learned in school.
      Today, those who wish to learn Ancient Greek, a standard reconstructed pronunciation has been developed for the sake of standardization, especially for non-modern Greek speakers. In Greece, only the modern Greek pronunciation is used to render Ancient Greek.
      In my opinion from what I have read, I believe that there were definitely differences in pronunciation between ancient and modern Greek, but the shift to the modern Greek pronunciation was already happening since the classical times. So, having said all that, I don’t think that the differences were so stark such as the reconstructed pronunciation used in this video, which sounds very foreign to modern Greek ears. It sounds like a German trying to speak Greek. If anything, if someone wants to have an understanding of the pronunciation of Ancient Greek, they should use modern Greek as a reference, not some random reconstructed version of it. Someone may argue that languages and pronunciations change through time, and I agree, but you have to understand that Greek as a language is VERY conservative.
      The fact that without training, a modern Greek can understand 80% of a Koine Greek sentence, two forms of the Greek language removed by a span of 2000 years, speaks volumes!

    • @Mazorca-qq3li
      @Mazorca-qq3li 3 месяца назад +3

      ​​@@jimatreidēsIn any case, using modern pronunciations for ancient texts of the same language is very common. In Spanish, for example, we read everything according to each one's accent and no one really uses the pronunciation of 16th century to read the more classic literature of our language. I think the best thing is to look for optimal conventions, especially on the part of current Greeks, for very anachronistic whether to use one pronunciation or another, at least we shall not "waste the time" with these debates, which confuse, above all, many new learners

    • @jimatreidēs
      @jimatreidēs 3 месяца назад +1

      @@Mazorca-qq3li I would choose one pronunciation and stick with it.

    • @HarosOfStyx
      @HarosOfStyx 3 месяца назад +1

      Because you're speaking it without understanding what the root of the words reference.

  • @jeremychambers
    @jeremychambers 3 месяца назад +2

    Koine Greek (Ben Kantor’s channel) has koine Greek videos for the Gospels of Matthew and Mark which help with understanding for newer readers

  • @greekorthodoxmonarchist
    @greekorthodoxmonarchist 3 месяца назад +1

    Thank you Luke for another great video! I'm also learning ancient greek with help of ,,alexandros" , athenaze or lingua graeca per se illustrata :) Thanks for good adivises!!

  • @iberius9937
    @iberius9937 3 месяца назад +4

    I see you have an "Ancient Egyptian Phonology" book behind you! I'm learning a little Egyptian hieroglyphics myself and am interested in the restored pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian. Have you had a chance to read it, yet? If so, is it recommendable?

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +3

      It is a decent book, though Allen disagrees with Peust - Stefano Vittori prefers Peust 1999, and I cannot offer a better piece of advice than to follow Stefano’s recommendation.

    • @CitizenMio
      @CitizenMio 3 месяца назад

      I wasn't really sure, but while he was explaining the comparative ease of learning different but similar alphabets, I noticed and read the shape behind him as the hieroglyph nb for gold and was already pretty proud of myself for that😂

  • @StephenHarrisJr
    @StephenHarrisJr 2 месяца назад

    @52:16, @polýMATHY, What you are describing regarding playing the role of a teacher sounds rather like the models for question and answer presented by Rouse in his "The Teaching of Greek at the Perse School, Cambridge" report for his Department of Education. Have you read it? It's fabulous.

  • @maxlensherr
    @maxlensherr 3 месяца назад +2

    When is your textbook on ancient Greek being released? Something like LLPSI for Greek would be great

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +3

      The textbook that I am currently helping in developing (I am not the author) is superior to LLPSI.

    • @eamonncurran3640
      @eamonncurran3640 3 месяца назад

      What's the name of this textbook or any information about it?

  • @johnboyce8279
    @johnboyce8279 2 месяца назад

    Hunch (since I haven't even completed a first year Greek grammar): Could it be that the authors of so many Greek textbooks don't expose students to some aspects of the grammar, because they are 1. teaching to the exams, 2. are keeping it "short" since they don't expect many students to continue reading Greek anyway?

  • @stefansoare1123
    @stefansoare1123 6 дней назад

    Hey, Luke!
    What about the other dialects of ancient Greek? When could one start reading doric or aeolic following your reading list?

  • @elinars5638
    @elinars5638 3 месяца назад +2

    Is the Ranieri-Roberts approach also effective for modern Greek?

  • @RobertFisher1969
    @RobertFisher1969 3 месяца назад +1

    I have joked for decades that all languages are equally hard because the difficulty of learning vocabulary is so much greater than all the other difficulties. Indeed, I think that the real advantage of Esperanto is not the simplified grammar but the agglutinative word-building tools. Not only does it mean that learning a fewer number of roots helps you parse so much vocabulary, it also makes it easier to periphrastically construct words that'll be understood when you don't know the "proper" term. So, yeah, I agree that more cognates with your native language is a huge part of how hard a language will be for you to learn.

  • @LeoStaley
    @LeoStaley 3 месяца назад +2

    I took ancient Greek at university 15 years ago. Hansen and Quinn. Hardest thing I ever did. I never did get the accents comoletely down.

    • @stephencuffel4932
      @stephencuffel4932 3 месяца назад +1

      Exceptions to exceptions. Drives a person nuts.

  • @williambranch4283
    @williambranch4283 3 месяца назад

    Interlinear is the best I can do in any foreign language, because it cuts the non-vocabulary complexity. I'm sure I could get to a "foreign only" level, but that would just take more hours than I am willing to commit. Also, a word of encouragement, composing simple sentences in your new language is great too.

  • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
    @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад +1

    If someone knows what s an SOV language, ancient greek is also all the variations... It can be also VOS, SVO etc etc. This is what makes it complicated BUT simple at the same time ❤

  • @ToddDoucet
    @ToddDoucet Месяц назад +1

    What are those nice modular cubbyhole bookshelves?

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  Месяц назад +2

      They’re nice, aren’t they? My parents got them for me when I was in high school; I’ve had them ever since.

  • @FabletOfficial
    @FabletOfficial 3 месяца назад +4

    As someone who was raised bilingual (English and Spanish), I can say when I started to actually try to learn Italian, modern Greek, ancient Greek, and Latin it sounded very familiar to me, and the pronunciations came naturally at least for Italian, modern Greek, and Latin (Classical Greek much harder for me though lol), I can also say this for Arabic as a Spanish speaker, it was influenced by Arabic for almost 1,000 years in Spain.
    Just give it a try folks, it's not that scary to fail and sound dumb, sometimes it's funny and you make good friends.

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад

      Unfortunately we don't know the original pronunciation of that greek Language... Everything s just speculations. However we just speak them based on the modern greek accent and more precisely on the accent of Athens.

    • @mapache-ehcapam
      @mapache-ehcapam 3 месяца назад

      The influence of Arabic on Spanish won't make Arabic any easier. Their influence on Spanish is limited to some vocabulary, nothing else.

  • @genegoranov5865
    @genegoranov5865 3 месяца назад +1

    χάριν σοι οἶδα : The theme is so close to my heart. My major complain to academia has been : "why the heck not to create so many textbooks, with gradually increasing complexity which would let us eventually much less painfully attack something like Phado. But this is possible in an ideal world. I think, with the absence of my dreamy eventualities, your advice may be very good. I will really try to get through Steadman's edition of Symposium without relying on gloss.. I did that with Shakespeare ones. Also I want to reread John similarly..

  • @PC_Simo
    @PC_Simo 2 месяца назад +3

    1:45 Funny; I learned the (Russian) Cyrillic alphabet, in about half an hour. Yet, in Greek alphabet, I’m still hot-dog water, after years. I guess, because I’ve never officially studied Greek, in a classroom. 😅

  • @RadicalPersonalFinance
    @RadicalPersonalFinance 2 месяца назад

    Super useful. Thanks, Luke!

  • @yashagarwal8741
    @yashagarwal8741 3 месяца назад +2

    Since i speak sanskrit too.
    i found it alot easier if i adopted the sanskrti method to study greek where i started from root and aorist first.
    (I can elaborate) like using the process of gunation in greek since its really similar for us
    like bhuž is root it comes bhauž / bhāuž. where bhauž became bhoj and bhāuž bhauj

  • @paulweinheimer3687
    @paulweinheimer3687 3 месяца назад

    How many times do you think rereading is helpful? When do diminishing returns kick in? When is it time to move to something else? Once you can read through the respective work fluently in the original? Thank you for this video, as for every one!

  • @LinguarumFautor
    @LinguarumFautor 3 месяца назад +1

    Pharr has many flaws, but you can't fault him using the hook of the rage of Achilles for Homeric Greek.
    On French in Action, I immediately remembered MIreille.

  • @LittleMissAwesome121
    @LittleMissAwesome121 2 месяца назад +1

    Hello Luke
    [I don’t suppose you’ll see this as this video is old but worth a try anyway]
    I tried learning AG some years ago, technically it was two semesters as part of my history degree, and it was a complete bust. My instructor employed the grammar-translation method (Luschnig specifically 😅) and honestly I didn’t retain much post my exams, and certainly couldn’t read anything of substance. I mourn this because I have always loved the dramas and wanted to read them in the original AG but we got nowhere near any of those during my time in school. As such, a little older (& hopefully wiser) I have been looking for alternative methods to hopefully make some headway in that ultimate ambition as an autodidact and this Ranieri-Roberts method seems promising.
    However, I wished to know if you would still recommend raw-dogging the paradigms first à la Ranieri-Dowling method?
    Though I have taken some AG in the past I’d still probably call myself a beginner, so please advise as though we are starting from 0.
    Thank you very much.
    Also really appreciate your content.
    Best

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  2 месяца назад +1

      Hi there! That’s a great question. As I have proceeded in my studies of paedagogy, I have become convinced that input is really so very important, and reading is the best way to get it for Greek (though I do make the occasional podcast: ruclips.net/video/Wc6enX_Wo5k/видео.htmlsi=AmrVxkOvxzYekpHg ).
      Learning grammar rules and focusing on translation tends to distract the mind; recently someone left a comment on my “Why traditional methods don’t work” video, and I’ll copy and paste it in its entirety since I think it’s quite brilliant:
      “The work put into vocab speeds up reading, because you automatically perceive the words.
      Grammar stops you 'reading' because you spend time identifying grammatical features and that is not what reading is.
      If someone says to you "if I were you" you can understand this without knowing it is using the subjunctive mood. Most hearers and users of the phrase don't know it is in the subjunctive, don't know what the subjunctive is and yet still (somehow, goodness only knows how) understand the phrase.
      Key thing is reading is a different category than conscious "parsing". One is slow, laborious and cognitively demanding. The other is at speed. The more grammar you juggle in your head the slower and slower and more laborious it will be. It will then become too difficult and you'll give up.”
      Ancient Greek happens to have a number of complex rules - so unless one is interested in translating into AG or composing in AG immediately, it is best not to think too much on any of these rules.
      Then, what about learning grammatical paradigms? This I think is up to the individual. I thrived learning the Latin paradigms by heart before reading Familia Romana. The AG ones were doable, but they are much more complex - much more complicated patterns to memorize. Still, it’s useful knowledge. But I dare say much more important is to acquire vocabulary, so that you can recognize the basic meaning of every word. One must learn what tenses are past, and a bit about aspect, but other than that it’s mostly about recognizing vocabulary. Thus memorizing some of the paradigms, especially “irregular” ones, is a great help.
      Was this helpful? If not, write another comment on this or another video and I’ll try to help offer some guidance.

  • @ssl007
    @ssl007 3 месяца назад

    You should interview Stanford historian Victor Davis Hanson about this and other topics regarding ancient Greece and Rome. It would be such a fascinating interview!

  • @cpnlsn88
    @cpnlsn88 3 месяца назад +1

    I hit a barrier with Latin. But at the same time found I was fine with the Vulgate Bible. So I read in the Vulgate with ease.
    Now, obviously, Vulgate Latin differs in some respects to Classical Latin. But there's a massive overlap of both grammar and vocab (but obviously differences as well).
    When I started out I couldn't read the Vulgate Bible. Now I can.
    My conjecture is this. If you become competent and fluent reading the Vulgate Bible it will be eadier to approach other forms. Because the content is a stepping stone.
    So my adapted conjecture applies the same to Greek. This approach starts out from Koine Greek and the Bible. Other people might have different starting point. But the principle is the same.
    My conjecture here is that if you're an accomplished Koine reader you will do reasonably well in other Ancient Greek but you'll need sone adaptation, but you won't be starting from scratch.
    Boiling down the conjecture. You do well to read a lot of stuff that is accessible to you.
    Btw. I am a big fan of the idea of adaptation of original works. Sad it's not done much. This for every language including one's own! Adaptation should be done a lot more to my mind.
    Final point. Rereading is for me a religion. Things don't come on first pass.
    Take away. You need to become a reader. You need to fluent at reading something. Totally agree.
    John is a lot easier than Luke, btw. Might be a good progression. While on Luke, worth thinking sbout Acts of the Apostles. Same author as Luke (I think), part faith, part mythology, part historical novel. Higher literary style.

  • @dalefavier2949
    @dalefavier2949 3 месяца назад

    Thank you! I got along better after I conceded that acquiring Greek is was just going to take twice as long as acquiring Latin, no matter what methods I used. I glanced at an interesting study recently -- can't for the life of me remember where I saw it -- that suggested that the cognitive drag of using an unfamiliar alphabet remains a factor for much longer than you're aware of it being a factor: a new alphabet slows down your reading even months after you have supposedly mastered it. -- But I think you're right, it's the paucity of cognates that's the real killer.

  • @paulmitchell2916
    @paulmitchell2916 3 месяца назад

    I'm surprised you don't mention the post-positive particles, and also the substantive use and sometimes pronominal use of articles.. those things really stumble my reading... but getting past that by trying to take in whole sentences at a time. I'm reading from JACT vol 1 and Athenaze vol 1.

  • @brian2007tube
    @brian2007tube 3 месяца назад +3

    A question I asked about one of your previous videos (but did not get an answer) - can you give an example of where vowel length changes the meaning of a greek word (like it can in Latin) please?

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +3

      Sorry I missed your question - I get hundreds of comments a day, it's hard to keep up! I'm glad you asked again.
      Just a few off the top of my head:
      ἄριστον "the best" vs. ἄ̄ρῑστον "lunch",
      ἀφινκοῦ "arrive!" (2ps present imperative) vs. ἀφῑκνοῦ "you were arriving" (2ps imperfect indicative)
      διαβατέα (neut. pl.) vs. διαβατέᾱ (fem. sing.)
      There are thousands of such examples distinguished in macrons alone. Much of the vowel length contrasts are clearly demonstrated by the orthography: ε ει η, ο ου ω, circumflex accents and accent rules, etc. - the language ceases to function without vowel length distinctions. They are to be ignored at one's peril, if one hopes to appreciate the literature.

    • @PedroMachadoPT
      @PedroMachadoPT 3 месяца назад

      @@polyMATHY_Luke
      I have a related question that’s been lingering in my mind for months. When I utter a word in Ancient Greek that has an accented short vowel followed by an unaccented long vowel, the latter sounds to me as being the stressed vowel, even if I try not to stress any vowel. Shouldn’t the accented vowel sound like the stressed vowel, given that modern Greek inherited as stressed the accented vowels of its ancient version? Am I pronouncing it wrongly? Or: Why did Greek use the accented vowels as stressed when it changed from being a pitch accent based language to a stress accent based one, instead of using the long vowels? It would make more sense to me. Latin stress depended on the length of the last syllables of the words. I don’t know how it inherited the stress from its more ancient version.

    • @brian2007tube
      @brian2007tube 3 месяца назад

      @@polyMATHY_Lukethanks Luke, I appreciate the reply. You have really got me thinking about this. I’d like to ask a follow up question, which is a bit of a challenge to what you are saying about vowel length being essential. I learned greek several years ago from JACT Reading greek and have also gone through Athanaze. I have since read/translated several hundred pages of greek. It is only recently, thanks to your videos, that I became aware of vowel length. Of course breathing and accent is essential and these are always marked in texts, but none of the text books nor original texts that I have used have marked vowel length. So… apart from recreating how the greek sounded (and I do agree that is important for poetry) is knowing vowel length really essential if you just want to translate greek prose, or just a nice to have?

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад

      Man SORRY but the dude here, doesn't know what he writes... I FULLY appreciate his efforts but he has no idea to a point where it s weird... I can answer to you though as a greek guy.

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад

      Man SORRY but the dude here, doesn't know what he writes... I FULLY appreciate his efforts but he has no idea to a point where it s weird.

  • @ryam4632
    @ryam4632 3 месяца назад +1

    I'm delighted that you're using the attic dialect.

  • @trien30
    @trien30 3 месяца назад +6

    I have tried reading ancient Greek: Iliad, Plato, Elements.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +3

      Did it not go as you liked? Could the advice I provide here be of help?

  • @DemetriosKongas
    @DemetriosKongas 3 месяца назад

    Please explain to the phobic ones that the tenses of irregular verbs are simply formed by different verbs which are fascinating because they give so many derivatives.
    Take the verb λέγω. In the past the type ειπον is used which relates to έπος. In the past perfect the type ειρηκα is used, related to the future ερεω or ειρεω related to ρητός (explicit), ρήτωρ (orator), ρησις (dictum) etc!

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +2

      Αλήθεια! Μ’ αρέσει

    • @TP-om8of
      @TP-om8of 2 месяца назад +1

      @@polyMATHY_Luke Go ~ went

  • @pierreabbat6157
    @pierreabbat6157 2 месяца назад

    What if the Latin you're interested in is Aranei Svecici (1757) or Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)? How different are those from classical Latin works?

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  2 месяца назад

      Other than the technical terms that may differ from modern scientific ones, such as Newton’s terms for force and gravity etc., you’ll find it quite the same.

  • @pierreabbat6157
    @pierreabbat6157 2 месяца назад

    Today after the service I sat next to the preacher and read Acts 27:9,10 in Greek, then handed him the book. He read it with somewhat less fluency and a more archaic pronunciation. I picked that passage because today is the Fast and everyone in the room recently experienced a hurricane (but the one mentioned in that chapter occurred after the Fast).

  • @andrelegeant88
    @andrelegeant88 3 месяца назад +2

    If English did not have a large Latin vocabulary, and so a student had to learn equal amounts of vocabulary for either language, I actually think Greek would be easier than Latin because the syntax can more closely match that of English. Verbs don't by default go at ends of sentences. Participial constructions are more diverse like that of English. Articles are super helpful. Sentences are broken up with enclitics and conjunctions more frequently, and one doesn't find sentences running as long in Greek through (over)use of relative pronouns.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +1

      I agree! That seems to be the case.

  • @NoferTadros
    @NoferTadros 3 месяца назад +2

    Just started Ancient Greek in University. Nice points, Luke! I wonder how the Romans (e.g., Cicero) did it.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +1

      They went to Athens and learned from Athenian rhetors. It’s much easier to learn a language when you can get that kind of input and practice.

    • @NoferTadros
      @NoferTadros 3 месяца назад +2

      @@polyMATHY_Luke I was Athens just summer. Too bad I couldn't find many of those!

    • @jammehrmann1871
      @jammehrmann1871 3 месяца назад

      ​​@@NoferTadrosthey are long gone sadly but that's modern Greece for ya!

    • @HaSatanhagia
      @HaSatanhagia 3 месяца назад

      🤣 sorry but ancient greek cannot be taught by a non greek guy. First of all the accent... If your teacher speak it as the dude here... Good luck 🤣🤣🤣

    • @logos3522
      @logos3522 3 месяца назад

      Let me guess, you also dont like katharevousa?

  • @troelspeterroland6998
    @troelspeterroland6998 3 месяца назад

    I certainly agree that the degree of unrelatability of new vocabulary has an impact. When I started learning English in 5th grade, it seemed easy at first, until it became more advanced and all the new vocabulary was of French or Latin origin which was unrelatable to me back then. That was a small hurdle, and suddenly German seemed easier. However, in high school English suddenly helped me tremendously with French, and later with Latin.
    I experienced this again when I tried to read through a textbook of Finnish and all the vocabulary was again unrelatable. But I felt dopamine every time I could see a word of Swedish or even Proto-Norse origin, and I tried to latch on to those words.
    But even if the word is not a borrowing, I think that all vocabulary is easier to remember if you have the possibility of looking up the words' etymologies. Our learning styles differ, of course, but this works for me. Whenever you can embed the new words in some sort of story, they are easier to remember. It can be the word's linguistic history, or alternatively, it can be your personal story: If you think back to the situations where you learned the words (I often remember the place or setting where I learned a given word), then they often stick better in your brain.

  • @lazydictionary
    @lazydictionary 3 месяца назад +12

    The solution to most language learning problems - consume more content!

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +5

      Indeed! And the best and most consistent input we can get are simply the texts themselves.

  • @thedemisdem98
    @thedemisdem98 3 месяца назад

    You must go from language learning to language creating . After having ste general structure of languages down then learning a partucular one is much much easier.

  • @Xardas131
    @Xardas131 3 месяца назад +2

    I have just started re-learning Ancient Greek for my Byzantine Studies. This video is like it was made for me especially 😂

  • @j.burgess4459
    @j.burgess4459 3 месяца назад

    I long ago came to the conclusion that strong understanding of vocabulary is the single most important thing in language. If one has a deep and wide ranging knowledge of word meanings (even just in terms of passive recognition) then only a somewhat sketchy knowledge of the essential grammar will suffice to make texts highly transparent. This is something that native speakers of modern Italian or Spanish (for example) can benefit from if learning Latin - a high percentage of the vocabulary will be instantly recognisable to them. And if language is transparent then we can easily and pleasurably interact with it by extensively reading things which interest us. It is in this way that we deepen and reenforce language knowledge. But of course when it comes to something like Ancient Greek it's something of a conundrum to know how to build that body of vocabulary...

    • @NorbertNahumEvreuklovic
      @NorbertNahumEvreuklovic 3 месяца назад

      Ancient greek is the richest language and the MOST important. That s WHY almost every term in fields such as science,math, poetry are... Greek words. I haven't seen ANY sumerian or Sanskrit word 🤔 Unfortunately it s a language that cannot be taught by a foreigner and i m not saying this with a weird insinuation. But it s the reality.

    • @NorbertNahumEvreuklovic
      @NorbertNahumEvreuklovic 3 месяца назад

      Lol is this Jezus Burgess from op wtf 😂

  • @samcrane5338
    @samcrane5338 3 месяца назад +4

    FIRST I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS BRO

  • @eibhlinniccolla
    @eibhlinniccolla 3 месяца назад +2

    I'm currently learning Scottish Gaelic and I've dabbled with Old Irish, and it's the same situation. All the learning materials are SO focused on teaching grammar instead of basic vocabulary, -ō stems and -ā stems and copulas and yadda yadda and it's like, I just want to read about Étaín getting turned into a moth and blown around Ireland by Midir's jealous wife.

  • @lespleiadesdutaureau7349
    @lespleiadesdutaureau7349 Месяц назад

    I get that Ancient Greek is more difficult than Latin because of the vocabulary, but once you know the vocabulary in a text, is it really more difficult than Latin? Because with Latin I struggle also when I know the vocabulary, in Ancient Greek the presence of the articles seems to me that reading it is much easier (but I have learned extremely little of it time ago so I could have a false perception)

  • @aresaurelian
    @aresaurelian 3 месяца назад

    I will sing my ancient Greek, like if singing to the song "Birds of a feather". It is poetic, and it is meant to be sung. It has natural beat, partitions, and delays. First I must select the correct era, and know what was sung at the time, what was popular.

  • @annagattellari85
    @annagattellari85 3 месяца назад +1

    Your videos amazing ❤️

  • @markpolo97
    @markpolo97 3 месяца назад

    In Germany, the students are expected to study only Attic, but then the Abitur is all about Homer, to the point that the written exam often has a question on either explaining the difference between the Homeric form and Attic, or providing the Attic form for a Homeric form. (A few years ago, we also had to read the Pre-Socratics, but I've never seen an Attic text as a required text for the German students.)

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад

      Good luck then with Homeric greek 😆

  • @adameury60
    @adameury60 2 месяца назад

    I'm interested in learning both Latin and Ancient Greek. Would it be recommended to focus on one of them first, i.e. Latin, or do you think it's possible to learn both of them at the same time?

  • @CunoDante0
    @CunoDante0 3 месяца назад

    Hi Luke. What do you think of using Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana in the early and intermediate stages as part of the extensive reading plan? It contains parallel texts of conversations and (somewhat) graded original works.

  • @sherifi1965
    @sherifi1965 3 месяца назад

    Great viceo as usual, Thank you. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on From Alpha to Omega by Anne Groton?

  • @chadb7694
    @chadb7694 2 месяца назад

    I hope you have a solution to my query (from to ask, haha). It's so hard making sense of a paragraph in Latin (nothing seems to flow because there are no articles, pronouns, punctuation, etc). How can this get easier? Finally, many words are cognates, yet many seem to have very different meanings. This is tough too. Thank you.

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  2 месяца назад +1

      Hi Chad, hopefully I’ll be able to answer your question. It certainly depends on your level. If you’re a beginner, you should purchase the Familia Romana book, and then listen along with my recordings: ruclips.net/p/PLU1WuLg45SiyrXahjvFahDuA060P487pV&si=ex6tMddqm2cAXhkQ
      If you’re a bit more advanced, listen to Latin conversations with my podcast Legio XIII: ruclips.net/p/PLUeVDmRP3bxQZKs-fScKErqPdulqeOf-S&si=DZ1v9chkXRnL6Sh7
      If you’re at the point of reading prose literature, then this technique is quite helpful: ruclips.net/video/6Zuoiky_tqM/видео.htmlsi=p75ZJRZQpx2QXzQR
      Thus the answer is, as I said in this video, to expose yourself to as much as you possibly can. Also, try to speak it to yourself as much as you can. Ask questions as you go along, like this: ruclips.net/video/wpxfXiWqnlg/видео.htmlsi=3mNScyWA83gu4LOr

  • @mahmudibnumar
    @mahmudibnumar 3 месяца назад

    Salve Luci! I would appreciate your opinion about the Assimil course for (Attic) Ancient Greek (Le Grec Ancien) including it‘s pronunciation on the audio material.
    I could‘nt find written macrons in it BUT every text/word is pronounced clearly on the audio material, so I wanted to ask if it‘s possible to know every vocal length only by hearing the audio without seeing written macrons?

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад

      Hi there, I know the Assmil Ancient Greek course quite well. The text’s simple dialogues and easy are quite nice, but the presentation is atrocious and confusing. I learned a number of useful things from reading it, since the main text is composed well. So it’s not useless. But if you don’t know French you may not have a lot to help you.
      The audio is one of the worst pronounced Ancient Greek I’ve heard in my life. I believe one of the vocal artists is attempting to use an Attic pronunciation but has no clue how to do that at the most fundamental level. Thus I do not recommend the audio.

    • @mahmudibnumar
      @mahmudibnumar 3 месяца назад

      ⁠@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you Luke! I did'nt expect that the audios are so bad :( I bought the course because I want to learn Ancient Greek in Attic pronounciation and need something for beginners before starting with Athenaze... I found your Attic readings for Athenaze but your Ancient Greek in Action is in Lucian pronounciation... Is there anything you can recommend?

  • @jaredmorein
    @jaredmorein 3 месяца назад

    Luke! Where can i buy that mug at 1:20????

  • @MatthewOlsonTech-gr8yv
    @MatthewOlsonTech-gr8yv 3 месяца назад

    You mentioned learning modern Greek and its benefits and pitfalls. If I start with Attic Greek, will I have the same problem with Koine?

    • @EmpireOfLEMBERG
      @EmpireOfLEMBERG 3 месяца назад +1

      No❤ On the contrary it ll help you. I m greek.

    • @MatthewOlsonTech-gr8yv
      @MatthewOlsonTech-gr8yv 3 месяца назад

      @@EmpireOfLEMBERG It's hard to find enough extensive reading material in just Koine. It's good to know they will benefit each other.

  • @raufmamedov8255
    @raufmamedov8255 3 месяца назад +1

    your vedeos are amazing.

  • @L1ghTx
    @L1ghTx 3 месяца назад

    Ironically enough you could think that this video is telling you to just learn Latin and you're going to have a much better time with it haha.
    Loved this more "rambling" type video.

  • @DemetriosKongas
    @DemetriosKongas 3 месяца назад

    You seem to have a problem with the werb λυω as an exemplar of verb declension in ancient Greek as it is rather rare. And yet it gives such important compounds as αναλύω, (analysis), διαλύω (dialysis in medicine) επιλυω (solve a problem), καταλυω (dissolve), απολυω (dismiss), εκλυω, (secrete).

    • @DemetriosKongas
      @DemetriosKongas 3 месяца назад

      I forgot παραλύω (paralyse).

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад +1

      I don’t actually have a problem; it’s a reference to a comedy video I did: ruclips.net/video/XI66x0bISJ8/видео.htmlsi=lBHNfL36dnNg29Es

  • @LordSuppethmybrutheth
    @LordSuppethmybrutheth 3 месяца назад

    If we’re following the spreadsheet you made, when should we begin the reading schedule?

    • @polyMATHY_Luke
      @polyMATHY_Luke  3 месяца назад

      As soon as you ready works; if you are okay with slow but steady progress, you could try the spreadsheet the end. That could take a year or two, depending how much time you have available. If you’re anxious to get into real literature now, you can certainly take a look.

    • @LordSuppethmybrutheth
      @LordSuppethmybrutheth 3 месяца назад

      @@polyMATHY_Luke sounds good! Im currently reading through the NT book by book, I’ll begin John in month or two, so I’ll just begin the reading plan then as follows.

  • @TMPOUZI
    @TMPOUZI 3 месяца назад +2

    The only solution to learn ancient Greek easier is to learn the roots and the orthography of the words that indicates the root in many cases, so that you recognise the words and eventually the phrases without thinking too much. Syntax and grammar are the easy stuff. Modern Greek is very helpful to that cause, because all the roots are there and also there are a lot of people to practice it. There is no other way for me, unless of course you are born in a family that speaks ancient Greek. The latter should be so rare lol

  • @LordLatin
    @LordLatin 3 месяца назад

    1:20 how could a get that beautiful cup?