[B-Greek] light reading?
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Fri Jul 24 23:17:46 EDT 2009
Hi Mike,
Your question, what is sometimes called the
“Second Year Question,” is one of the most
commonly asked questions on B-Greek,
and one which is likely to generate many helpful
responses. The question reminds me of the Robert
Redford movie “The Candidate.” After running a slick
and largely vacuous campaign, the main character
unexpectedly gets elected Senator. The last line
of the film has him turning to his campaign manager
on election night and saying “What do we do now?”
What do you do now? Your instincts are correct,
to find large blocks of “light reading,” by which I think
you mean easy Greek. You have two choices: real
easy Greek or made up easy Greek. You will find
that there is no real easy Greek. Well, let me restate
that. In the thousand year history of ancient Greek,
three, and only three things were ever written in Greek
that are easy: the Gospel of John, the Gospel of Mark,
and the Didache. If all you have done is Machen,
the only thing outside the NT that you will find truly
easy is the Didache. Everything else which has been
and will be suggested is “fairly easy,” which means
easy compared to Pindar, easy compared to Thucydides,
easy for five or six words until you hit a bunch of tough
vocabulary and difficult constructions for which Machen
prepared you about as well as the campaign prepared the
Candidate to govern. You should read it, of course, read it all,
because light reading is only one pedagogical approach.
The reason we discuss pedagogy so much on this list is
that no one really knows what works. It’s all anecdotal.
There is no control group. If you could spend the next
three years doing nothing but reading easy Greek, and
then go back in time and spend three years doing nothing
but reading hard Greek, and then go back in time and spend
three years doing nothing but speaking Greek and etc and etc
and then get all the parallel yous into a room and give your
selves tests, then we would have something. Until then you
just have try what works for you. It all works, and it all doesn’t
work as well as I’d like it to.
But I digress. If you are looking for easy Greek
you can turn to made up Greek. One of the best places
to read made up Greek is in textbooks like Machen’s,
because at the same time you are reviewing vocab and forms.
I have worked my way through at least a dozen NT and
Classical grammar/textbooks and I have never found one
that is not helpful. Some are more orientated to large blocks
of continuous readings, like Paula Saffire’s Ancient Greek Alive
or Athenize. The “easy Greek” in these books tends to be easy
in the beginning and then gets kind of hard. In fact, lots of easy
made up Greek is really not easy enough for our purposes.
I have recommended Morice’s Stories in Attic Greek, but
for some reason he includes many rare words that will
cause the beginner trouble wheras more common equivalents
are available. W. H. D. Rouse “Greek Boy at Home” is
pretty easy in the beginning, but it too gets harder and harder.
Audio selections of this are available on line which is nice.
There are many 19th century Greek “Readers” available.
Here is a link which will refer you to several:
http://www1.union.edu/wareht/books/
Reddenda Minora starts off with a couple of hundred
easy Greek sentences.
I actually think that what is needed for beginners
and maybe even for intermediate students is
“Very Easy Greek Stories.” Hundreds of pages
of Greek with simple syntax and vocabulary
that never goes beyond Machen. No graded
approach, just Doctor Seus for Greekers.
I’m not necessarily claiming this would be helpful,
but it doesn’t really exist. Somebody needs to
compose something like this and post it on the web.
I think the easiest made up Greek I have yet read is in Rico’s
new book Polis. The Greek there is light because it’s conversational,
often witty, and accompanied by pictures. And of course
his c.d. allows you to listen to it over and over again
with the hope of internalizing it better. Polis is exactly
the kind of book that Machen would have written had
Machen been French, and had he been born a century later
and had he developed a completely different philosophy
of teaching Greek. Which is to say that both Machen and Rico are great.
Finally there is one more book which I don’t think
I have ever seen recommended on the list, Daily Prayers
for Orthodox Christians edited by Michael Vaporis.
This was recently reissued in an affordable paper back which
has a pretty good font size. These prayers are pretty easy
and the reader is aided by repetition.
One last point. Clyde Pharr argues that the easiest
Greek ever written is Homer. Once you get past the
elision, the non-Attic/Koine forms and the massive vocabulary,
Pharr is probably correct. There are excellent books
that will guide you through a book or two of Homer,
and Homer is surely the easiest author to RE-read.
Homer is the lightest of all Greek in that there is nothing
frustrating in him, nothing dark or not beautiful.
I’ve never read anything like him in Greek or English.
I’m not sure I’ve ever DONE anything like reading him.
Mark L
FWSFOROS MARKOS
--- On Fri, 7/24/09, Mike Noel <mike at vnoel.com> wrote:
From: Mike Noel <mike at vnoel.com>
Subject: [B-Greek] light reading?
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Friday, July 24, 2009, 10:10 AM
In a few weeks (or couple of months, depending on how much time I
find) I will be finishing my self-study through Machen. I'm very
excited by the fact that I can gain a bit of traction when reading
Greek texts now. But I don't want to stop here. My plan going
forward is twofold. First, I plan to work through a second year text
(haven't decided which one) for a formal study of syntax and other
word forms that I haven't learned in Machen. Second, I would like to
do a lot of reading. This, I feel, will help me progress towards
fluency best. However, it is frustrating, and probably counter
productive, to read stuff that is just too far above my head.
So I am now looking for some "lite reading" material in Koine.
Preferably non-GNT. I'm looking for stuff that is "lite" in both
content and Koine grammar/structure. Does anyone on this list know of
any books (preferred) or online resources with this type of reading
material? All suggestions and recommendations are appreciated.
Thanks.
_M_
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