Effectiveness of Assimil- "Le Grec Ancien sans Peine"

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AlexEmp
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Effectiveness of Assimil- "Le Grec Ancien sans Peine"

Post by AlexEmp »

I can only find spurious references to this book online. I'm using it as my primary resource for learning Greek. I'm only on the 30th lesson. I'm wondering if anyone here has actually completed the book. How much Greek did you know at the end? Could you read something like Plato's "Apology" with relatively little difficulty? I know that such a small book couldn't possibly provide a thorough presentation of the language's vocabulary, but is the same true of grammar?

AlexEmp
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Re: Effectiveness of Assimil- "Le Grec Ancien sans Peine"

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Paul Derouda
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Re: Effectiveness of Assimil- "Le Grec Ancien sans Peine"

Post by Paul Derouda »

I have finished the book but I can't really answer your questions. Basically I went through it because I was interested about the audio. Certainly it has about the best reconstructed Greek audio I'm aware of (or actually I think one of the four voices was very good, one the two men – but he was so good I think it made it worthwhile to go through the whole book, although the others were not so good).

But to answer your question – I don't know. I already had the target level when I started it. But basically I think it's a good book, a very practical and pedagogically sound approach. You learn pretty much Greek but the book skips the theoretical parts, so you learn intuitively. But if you've gone through 30 lessons, you probably already know what it's like and whether the approach works for you.

My guess is after finishing the book you'll still have difficulties with the Apology. But if that's the way you want to go, I think Assimil is as good as any other, or better. I can't claim to speak from experience, but I suppose the time will be well spent. Greek is difficult whatever you do. Maybe later on you want to complete with another more theoretical book, but you don't have to do everything at once. First learn some Greek, then learn the metalanguage, or something like that.

But I think it's a good approach to get to read real Greek as soon as possible. With Attic, there are not many easy texts unfortunately. I think the Apology is one of the easier ones.

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Re: Effectiveness of Assimil- "Le Grec Ancien sans Peine"

Post by Markos »

I went through the whole book and found it helpful, IN CONJUNCTION WITH DOING LOTS OF OTHER THINGS AND SPENDING MANY (8) YEARS AND MUCH TIME IN LEARNING GREEK. Like anything else, it is no magic bullet. At the time I was maybe 62% fluent in Ancient Greek. Working through it increased my fluency, but by how much? Maybe from 62% to 67%? More likely 65% (and it took me several months to work through the book and audio and do all the exercises.) Learning Greek is a long, slow, slog. But almost any resource out there will help, bit by bit.

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Re: Effectiveness of Assimil- "Le Grec Ancien sans Peine"

Post by bedwere »

I think it is a very good book to become more fluent in Ancient Greek, provided you already know it like Markos. However, I'm positive that I could not have started my studies from zero using that book. In fact, I began to learn German using the corresponding Assimil and gave it up for Deutsche Sprachlehre für Ausländer.

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