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Topic outline

 

  • Time: 10 hours
    Level: Intermediate

 
 

Introduction

  • Introduction Resource
  • The aim of this unit is to enable you to get started in Classical Greek. It has been developed in response to requests from students who had had no contact with Latin before and who felt they would like...
 

1 Learning Classical Greek

  • 1 Learning Classical Greek Resource
  • The aim of this short worksheet is to enable you to ‘get started’ in learning Classical Greek. The material has been developed in response to requests from students who felt they would like to spend a...
 

2 Approaching Greek for the first time

  • 2.1 Introduction Resource
  • Classical Greek is both familiar and strange to English readers. Echoes of the language resound through our modern times from ‘telephone’ to ‘geriatric’. Many of these words were made up artificially to...
  • 2.2 The alphabet Resource
  • Many people know that the first letter of the Greek alphabet is ‘alpha’ and the last ‘omega’. In the following section, we shall learn each letter individually. Most of the letters sound much like their...
  • 2.3 Becoming familiar with Greek Resource
  • There is a problem with pronouncing Greek arising from the fact that it has been, and is still, a spoken language which has evolved over many hundreds of years. During this time its pronunciation has changed...
  • 2.4 The other vowels Resource
  • Greek has two separate equivalents to E:
  • 2.5 Recognising Greek-derived words Resource
  • As you learn the Greek language, you will soon have a feel for modern words derived from Greek.
 

3 Introducing grammar

  • 3.1 Inflection Resource
  • The underlying grammatical rules of Indo-European languages (e.g. English, Welsh, French, German, Latin, Greek, Punjabi) are similar, but it isn't always easy to see this when beginning to learn a new...
  • 3.2 Parts of speech Resource
  • In describing the grammar of written Greek the best method is traditional classical grammar, as worked out by the Greeks and Romans themselves. As a preliminary to a detailed study of Clasical Greek grammar...
  • 3.3 Some common prepositions Resource
  • Many words in English are made up in part from Greek prepositions. In Greek, as in English, prepositions change the case (ending) of PRONOUNS: after HIM, not after HE; with THEM, not with THEY. In Greek,...
  • 3.4 Some common conjunctions Resource
  • The common way to say MEN AND WOMEN in Greek is like modern European and English methods. In this method, using a word for ‘and’, two words or phrases are linked in the middle:
 

4 Understanding sentences

  • 4.1 More about sentences and their meaning Resource
  • A sentence consists of a number of words which, to make sense, must contain a verb (a ‘doing’ word). This will usually have a word telling us who is doing the action:
  • 4.2 Unravelling sentences Resource
  • The dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes.
  • 4.3 Verbs Resource
  • As well as indicating an action, a verb usually tells us when that action happened: ‘I sit’, for example, tells of something happening in the present, whereas ‘I sat’ indicates something which happened...
 

References and Acknowledgements

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