Customer Reviews

Ancient Greek Alive

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ancient Greek Alive, through its early focus on oral skills, offers students an entrance into the language that is natural and enduring. The act of speaking Greek cements many grammatical concepts in the minds of the students before they learn them formally. The presentation is charming, engaging the students in a way that allows them to work through the grammar thoroughly without the sense of mind-numbing drudgery that seems to attend so many introductory language courses. Concepts are introduced at the right time, and in the right way. The book is a powerful learning tool; any student who works through it will be prepared to aquire the deep understanding of Greek that comes only from reading its authors.

Some reviewers below tell of their disappointment with this book as a manual for self-study. I feel their pain; the book teaches Greek like you might teach Spanish, with lots of activities relying on repetition and reading and constructing sentences by analogy.

So if you know no Greek at all and want to learn it, don't start here.

But if you want to re-learn your Greek from school, or refresh the Greek you learned from some other (more self-teaching friendly) book, _Ancient Greek Alive_ is great.

Because it teaches Greek like a living language, there's more emphasis on colloquial Greek than you typically find in a textbook on Attic. You get a much better sense of the meaning of the little words, for instance. Paradoxically, this better prepares you for reading, for instance, Plato, who wrote in dialog form and whose characters do not declaim sentences like you might find in, for instance, Mastronarde.

The chapters are digestible in size. The writing is accessible and clear, and not encumbered by too much technical grammatical terminology early on. The readings are entertaining and accessible, combining progressively longer quotations from ancient Greek sources with folktales from various sources and the adventures of Sheik Nasrudin translated into Greek. Informative interludes introduce famous Greeks, aspects of Greek culture and the history of the Greek language. Hard to beat.

This book has been ever-present by my side in my attempt to master (or at least comprehend) the ancient Greek language, and has made learning a new (or old?) way of thinking more fun and exciting than I ever imagined. The lessons have been created in such a way that the reader builds layers of principle one at a time, and upon this foundation is able to build another layer of skill that in turn, reinforces the lessons of previous chapters. The readings are, indeed, thorough, and although struggling through the sometimes difficult selections can be frustrating, mastery is truly rewarding. Through wise, and often witty, excerpts from works of famous writers including Sappho, Diogenes, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus, the vocabulary and grammatical skills acquired through lessons are incorporated into writings that existed MANY years ago...mind boggling and truly amazing! I can't imagine having learned such a difficult language by way of any both other than Ancient Greek Alive! It's the best! I'm just waiting for a second book in the series so that I may continue expanding my mind!

I made a terrible mistake- I read all the reviews of Amazon.com readers here pertaining to this book and bought it for self-study of ancient Greek as a result. As soon as I opened it, I discovered it was useless -- it is written for the Greek teacher and the student in class who is having the essentials explained by the teacher. There are so many assumptions made in the first chapters alone that an independent learner who does not have a Greek teacher has to give up immediately, and seek another method of learning Greek instead. Advice - don't buy this book if learning on your own. However, as a text used in class in which the teacher provides the context, it may be fine.

There is no possible way that I would have lasted three semesters of Greek without this book being my first instruction in the language. When I moved from basic structure of nouns and verbs to reading original text, I frequently consulted the lessons in this book; and still do when I pick up my Greek Old Testament to read and keep my Greek skills working. Anyone who is willing to put forth some effort can learn Greek with this book- even if they have not done well in Modern Languages, such as Spanish or French.

In my expensive quest to find a self-study Greek book simple enough for not-very-smart-me, I've bought and worked with Athenaze, JACT, Mounce, Dobson, Found, Jones, and Cory. And Ancient Greek Alive.

Some of these are good. Some aren't so good. The one, the only one, that is utterly and absolutely UNUSABLE is Ancient Greek Alive. And I don't mean "unusable" in the sense that it really sucked (although it did). I mean that for self study "you can not use it".

Why? Because for the great bulk of the examples and exercises and readings THERE ARE NO ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS, NO KEY, NO WAY TO KNOW WHAT THE F#%$ THE GREEK WORDS MEAN.

The reason it has no English translations is, it's designed to be used in an academic course, with a teacher providing explanations and translations. But, since you're reading reviews on Amazon, I presume you haven't been assigned the book by a professor.

Also, even if there were English translations, the book would still suck for self study. The logic of the grammatical presentation is scattered and spotty. And since I'm wound up, I'll mention that the Greek font is san-serif and hard to read.

My shopping suggestion: Instead of buying Ancient Greek Alive, spend your money on a hammer, and drive a nail into your head. The experience will be exactly as unpleasant, but the pain will be over quicker. And you'll have just as much chance of learning ancient Greek.

If you want to actually learn ancient Greek, start with Dobson and Mounce, the move on to Athenaze or JACT, or both.

I first took Ancient Greek many years ago in college and was charmed by it, but put off by the stilted tabular style of teaching and by the vocabulary we were taught. After all, how many ways can you learn to conjugate "to loose"? Not to lose, as in I, "I lost my watch", but "to loose" as in "Loose me, you vermin" or more colloquially, "Lemme go, dammit!" That book, which is mercifully now deader than Greek, took me through 300 pages without teaching me how to say yes and no in Greek. Saffire and Freis got those key utterances out of the way in the first 2 pages, along with a rich dollop of culture, morphology, history and humor. Despite my previous exposure, I learned oodles from this book and had great fun doing it. Let's hope this is a wake up call to other language teachers to shake the dust and cobwebs off the classics and revitalize them as these two ladies have done in grand style. Superb job!

Paula Saffire's greek course is far superior to any other I have encountered. There is an early and consistant emphasis on the crucial interplay in classical greek between substantive words, grammar, and all the "little words",like particles,which give the language its flavor and meaning. By a third of the way through the book you already have a sense of momentum,that you can read for understanding. The style is lively and unfailingly interesting.

A good book to be used in class, but if you want to learn ancient Greek and do not have a teacher, try another, like Athenaze, JACT, or Mastronarde.

This ancient Greek manual is different from others currently available on the market in that it offers the student a lot easy reading material right from the start, mostly in the form of humorous stories about "Nasreddinos", a wise fool from the Iranian literary tradition. There are also lots of famous quotes from the New Testament and from Greek authors at the back of the book.

I have been using this book as an auxiliary manual, my main manual being William D.Mounce's grammar of NT Greek. The reason why I didn't start learning Greek with this book is because it is clearly not meant for people who want to study Greek on their own. The book opens with a series of easy dialogues to be used in the class-room. No translation is provided since the teacher is supposed to be there. This quite abrupt introduction put me off completely and I started looking elsewhere. Another downside is the overall presentation, which is quite messy. Some pages clearly suffer from an overload of information and look like a real jungle.

Having digested he main points of Greek grammar thanks to Mounce's remarkably clear and scientific exposition, I have come back to this book for its charming little stories.

Another interesting feature of this manual is the addition of notes and remarks about linguistics, history and culture, as well as judicious study hints.

Nevertheless, if you are planning to learn Greek on your own, I advise you to learn Koine Greek first and buy Mounce's remarkable books. Start with his grammar (don't forget to buy the workbook, it is great!).