Customer Reviews

A New Introduction to Greek: Third Edition Revised and Enlarged

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I was inducted into Greek through the Chase and Philips book in college under a knowledgeable instructor after having had much Latin, so perhaps my experience is not that of most readers. The book divides its content well, but chapter ordering could have been done differently. Out of 40 chapters, the Aorist passive and whole perfect system don't show up until 31 and 32 respectively and the relative pronoun is chapter 5's material. This is particularly problematic with the perfect system, because its morphology in Greek is highly irregular for several verbs and as introduced here, the reader has little regular practice before hitting literature. Imperatives and "eim'", "ei'mi", and "oida" are crammed in even later, creating the same problem. Nonetheless, paradigms and examples are abundant and clear. If I can find what I need in this book I will not bother to open Smythe.

Vocabulary is kept at a minimum but the list selected is pretty good for jumping right into Plato, Xenophon, Euripides, Demosthenes, or most any other Attic author, which I think is good for a grammar when trying to lay down concepts efficiently. It would be nice to see an attendant reader like the Oxford course has for optional increased vocabulary learning.

The Greek composition exercises really shouldn't be included. Chase and Phillips provide little if any instruction in writing Greek; you're meant just to guess it out from the grammar you learn with no explanation of style or common usage. I was assigned several of these in school and though I did well, suggestions from the teacher helped.

The treatment of Greek conditionals is shaky. The most common forms are explained well, but there is no section developing a unified picture of them, nor a full explanation of the sequence of moods, and there may even be some direct omissions. Smythe's delineation and classification is far superior.

There is no attention given to the Ionic or Doric dialects which compels me to advise against using this for anyone seeking foremost to pick up Homer, Herodotus, or the lyric poets if working entirely through self-study. This ia an ATTIC grammar: have no illusions about it.

Having learned Greek through this text, I feel I cannot accurately compare it to any other grammars since I approach them with too much foreknowledge to judge their full pedagogical efficacy. New Introduction to Greek presents most concepts very lucidly, has excellent charts/graphs in each chapter and fine appendices. Under expert guidance it is a very approachable for the serious student and makes a handy quick-reference tool for many of the major areas of basic grammar.

When I first started with Chase & Phillips I became very frustrated. I was used to language courses that employed repition. This book contains little to no repitition.

As unpopular as the notion is, only hard work will get you through this book. Unlike other coursebooks, however, this one will remain useful after you have finished the course. The books lack of repition is due to its systematic introduction of key concepts. Its terse style gives you exactly what you need to know, when you need to know it. The way you progress when you follow this book page-by-page is uncanny. It was written 100 years ago and hasn't been updated much at all. There is very little that one could add. I am a third year student of Greek, and still use the one copy that I purchased years ago. It is no longer a textbook to me, but a reference tool. That is what lends this text so much versatility and longevity.

Anyone seeking to learn to read and write ancient Greek needs this book, a little determination, and nothing more. If you are familiar with the only name in Latin instruction texts, <<Wheelock's Latin>>, this book will look familiar in layout and methodology. In comparison with another Greek instruction text I have utilized called <<Athenazde>> Chase and Phillips is better in almost every way: organization, methodology, and presentation. Don't waste your time with any other text, even if they may save you a few dollars--you will regret the loss in content and quality.

I took several years to learn elementary ancient Greek and tried a number of different textbooks in the process. Athenaze (Balme and Lawall, Oxford Univ. Press) was my initial choice, and I proceeded through the entire first volume. I found, however, that the overabundance of vocabulary to learn meant that I would get bogged down with vocab flash cards rather than move through the grammar. I chose Chase and Phillips, therefore, for its brevity---and brevity it has. Hardly anything is repeated, meaning that you had better learn every paradigm and every word in each lesson's list very carefully. (The upshot of this, of course, is that you will be able to read real texts more quickly). I enjoyed Chase and Phillips' brisk pace and learned quickly to commit every table and list to memory immediately.

With all that having been said, there are some downsides to C&P. First of all, without at least some knowledge of Latin, it may take you much longer to learn the cases and their specific uses, which are almost identical to those in Latin (e.g., dative of possession). Second, the English exercises, and many of the Greek translations, are quite difficult, and you may find the lack of guidance frustrating. At times I completed the sentences knowing that my idiom was totally wrong, but sure of how to write. Third, while short vocabulary lists decrease the amount of memorizing time, they also make reading texts, once you're out of the book, more tedious at first. Freeman and Lowe's A Greek Reader for Schools might be a good set of texts to begin with; I would not, however, move straight from Chase and Phillips into Plato or Herodotus unless you have access to a good tutor. Finally, some topics, such as when to use the different forms of indirect statement, are simply not understandable without some help from an ancillary grammar (I used Smyth's Greek Grammar); the Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu) has some good tools on verb form recognition.

In short, if you want a very terse, challenging introduction to Greek and have the requisite grammatical knowledge, Chase and Phillips is for you. Otherwise, there are many other Greek books out there. Mastronarde is probably not appropriate for self-study, and Athenaze, though popular, is also not intended for the autodidact. Shop around: Crosby and Schaeffer, Hansen and Quinn, and White (an old American classic) are all possibilities.

Good luck in your studies, and remember that the goal of reading ancient Greek is worthy of the effort it requires.

As a beginning student in the Greek language it at first seemed an insurmountable task to learn such a language that is "Greek" to me. With a very different and imposing alphabet I thought that it would be hard to come by. Not so with Chase and Phillips text.

Even though I am still in the beginning chapters of this text, it is arranged in a very user friendly format, and the first three chapters are arranged so that it is not too complex or overwhelming, so as not to discourage, but to encourage the student to continue on with a bit of self-esteem.

I have not had the time to really compare the differences between this and Athenaze (the other Greek text) but from what I have seen and heard, the Chase and Phillips excels the Athenaze in most every aspect of the texts. I would highly recommend this text to anyone who is interested in learning CLASSICAL Greek based on the ease and friendly format of this text.

When I first started with Chase & Phillips I became very frustrated. I was used to language courses that employed repetition. This book contains little to no repetition.

As unpopular as the notion is, only hard work will get you through this book. Unlike other coursebooks, however, this one will remain useful after you have finished the course. The books lack of repition is due to its systematic introduction of key concepts. Its terse style gives you exactly what you need to know, when you need to know it. The way you progress when you follow this book page-by-page is uncanny. It was written 100 years ago and hasn't been updated much at all. There is very little that one could add. I am a third year student of Greek, and still use the one copy that I purchased years ago. It is no longer a textbook to me, but a reference tool. That is what lends this text so much versatility and longevity.

Chase and Phillips is typical of a very popular school of instruction for dead languages. It is arrayed in such a way as to present the grammar in very structured, analytical sequence. If you have had the Latin it recommends, this is great, because you've already done this once.

The problem with this methodology is that it ignores the advances in language education over the long span of years since C&P's original publication. It does not treat Greek as a language that is spoken or read or written actively; it does not teach you to do these things in steps conducive to using Greek as a language, much less keeping Greek as a skill. If your goal is decoding passages of Greek texts, well and good. If your goal is language facility, this is not the book for you.

Yes, I realize that nobody uses Attic, let alone the biblical dialect, as a modern language for those purposes, but it is by using a language as a language that you earn the space for it between your ears. This is true for any language, no matter how old, because you don't think in translations. You think in language, which frames your ideas in its own concepts and limitations.

Get C&P if you already have facility, or better yet, get a real grammar, since C&P is nominally an introduction. If you lack facility, don't get C&P. If your professor insists that this is the only way to learn Greek, I sympathize with your plight and hope that your professor is good enough at language instruction to make up for the shortcomings of the text.

If you have little or no background in Latin, then this book will only serve to confuse and frustrate you. The introduction claims that it is meant for students with two years in Latin, and if you have had this much Latin, then you should have enough knowledge of the classical grammar systems to simply re-apply it to the Greek language. WIthout this background, or without a great instructor, you will be lost, because Chase & Philips most often introduces a knew form, gives one or two paradigms for it, and nothing else. Rarely are there examples and even more rare are parallels to English given so that you can figure out the essential basic translations. Beginners beware!

Searching for a way to master the language of Socrates? Look no further! This book is divided into 40 very well organized small chapters. Each chapter deals with a section of grammar and vocab and can be easily mastered in a day or so. Think about it...in just a bit more than a month you can read all the ancient Greek works

This book is the classic text for learning ancient Attic Greek. Some of the grammatical expressions are complicated, but many of them may be ignored without detriment to the main goal of learning the fundamentals of the language. Ancient Greek is a complex and difficult language, but this text provides a good beginning for mastering the fundamentals.