Ὁμιλεῖτε Ἑλληνικά (Do you speak Greek?)

[Markos]

Thanks to Joel for finding this

https://archive.org/stream/DoYouSpeakGr ... 0/mode/2up

although I note that Louis Sorenson mentioned it in passing a few years ago on B-Greek.

http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/lists.ibi ... 53149.html

This book does three things which are staples of the Direct Method.

1. It includes Ancient Greek forms of all its metalanguage.
2. It uses pictures and L2 definitions to minimize the need for L1 glosses.
3. It uses simplified Greek, namely lengthy paraphrases of the Anabasis (It's interesting to compare this to the Phillpotts version.)

The book uses a little Modern Greek, but this is minimally problematic.

[calvinist]

Thanks for posting this Markos! I haven't seen this one before, it's interesting that the author recommends a fully modern pronunciation.

[mwh]

I took a quick look out of curiosity, and it is indeed a curious thing.

A few things I noticed right away:
1. The title is not ancient Greek. I don’t know why they couldn't say Ἑλληνιστί.
2. It is very very old.
3. It stipulates a teacher fluent in Greek. (The same is true of Rouse’s things too.)
4. It uses e.g. δὲν εἶνε (19th-century Greek), with a footnote saying Attic (sic) is οὐκ ἔστι.

I skipped to near the end. Simplified passages from (guess what) the Anabasis are followed by notes in English (but the grammatical terms in Greek!) and sentences for translation from English to Greek. So much for Direct Method.

From the Special Directions:

"Never, under any circumstances, must the pupil be appealed to until, in addition to the above, the teacher has distinctly asked and answered the question."

I can’t imagine anyone making profitable use of this today.

[jeidsath]

I posted this for a friend, who uses it and enjoys the book a great deal. It seems unconnected with Blackie or Rouse, and I have the impression that it was written by someone from a Greek background teaching in the U.S. -- I'm welcome to be corrected on that.

There is also a Latin version: https://archive.org/details/novasermonislat01mogygoog

That said, the approach seems well-suited to a direct, communicative method. I wouldn't mind seeing someone revising and updating it into something that could be useful for a classroom. While it depends on a fluent teacher, I have the impression that the teaching demands are far less for Rouse's method.

[Shenoute]

Interesting, I didn't know about the Greek version. Did Avellanus copied it without giving credit or was it done the other way round?

[Qimmik]

The Greek version is written in what seems to be a mixture of ancient and modern Greek (katherevousa?). εινε for εστι. And why do these things always start with geometry?

[jeidsath]

According to some library records, the publisher for both the Greek and Latin books seem to be "Societas Rugbiana colloquii Latini Graecique," original publication date 1894. Notice however that the 1896 version that I've linked to does not mention Rugby at all. I don't know if Avellanus ever taught at the Rugby Academy, but he was in Philadelphia at the time (1894-96), publishing Praeco Latinus. Judging from the internal features of the books, the Greek seems to attempt to copy features from the Latin text rather than the other way around. However, the (1896) Latin version doesn't have the introduction about the goals of these textbooks. The Latin text looks far more thought out.

I don't know anything about Avellanus, although it seems that I should investigate him once I start in on Latin. Was this the only Greek teaching collaboration that he ever did?

[Scribo]

Yeah the book is awful. I've seen it before and the authors don't seem to have a grasp of what they're trying to teach. You've got modern, pseudo-ancient and I suppose, yes, some Attic thrown in. I'm going to have to agree with MWH here.

As for the Latin, I had no idea the books come from the same source! Avellenaus produced a much fuller book around...1912 or so. Much better than the Greek but its definitely been superseded by Orberg. Lingua Latina is wonderful.

That said, in addition to Palaestra A. also produced a few translations of novels which I recall finding fun when I read them. I bet Swiss Carl knows a lot about this stuff.

CAROLE! CAROLE! UBI ES?

[calvinist]

And why do these things always start with geometry?

I know, right? I guess it's an easy way to introduce the language through simple pictures.

I don't know anything about Avellanus, although it seems that I should investigate him once I start in on Latin.

I already have his Latin book that you posted here, I didn't realize the two books were related, but now that I look at them it makes sense. Avellanus seems like he was quite an interesting person. He supposedly learned Latin as an infant and was speaking Latin before his native? language Hungarian. He did some excellent Latin translations of novels like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. He was advocating Latin as an international auxiliary language when Esperanto (which he despised) was starting out. The wikipedia article gives a brief overview of him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadius_Avellanus

[calvinist]

Yeah the book is awful. I've seen it before and the authors don't seem to have a grasp of what they're trying to teach. You've got modern, pseudo-ancient and I suppose, yes, some Attic thrown in. I'm going to have to agree with MWH here.

As for the Latin, I had no idea the books come from the same source! Avellenaus produced a much fuller book around...1912 or so. Much better than the Greek but its definitely been superseded by Orberg. Lingua Latina is wonderful.

That said, in addition to Palaestra A. also produced a few translations of novels which I recall finding fun when I read them. I bet Swiss Carl knows a lot about this stuff.

CAROLE! CAROLE! UBI ES?

I agree with you, Scribo, about the strange mixture of modern and ancient. I don't know any modern Greek, so it was annoying for the most common of verbs, ειναι, to become foreign again. I think it would be more useful if someone went through the book "correcting" the modern Greek elements.

And I agree with you 100% about LLPSI. The course is almost perfect. Avellanus' text is still useful as a type of easy reader though. I read through most of it and enjoyed it.

[jeidsath]

I had been assuming that it was just katharevousa. Is it not?

[calvinist]

I had been assuming that it was just katharevousa. Is it not?

You're probably right, although it seems to have more ancient elements than the katharevousa I've seen before. I'm not very familiar with katharevousa.

[Qimmik]

I would imagine that there were various levels of "purity" in what was referred to as katherevousa.

[mwh]

katharevousa was what I was referring to, a tad prejudicially to be sure, as 19th-century Greek. (It persisted into the 20th, and among diehard traditionalists even into the 21st, but it was a 19th-century invention, and this is 1894.) In the tiny amount I sampled, I didn’t spot anything that wasn’t either katharevousa or “Attic” (i.e. quasi-ancient). Perhaps they make the transition somewhere along the way, but outside of the readings themselves didn’t they stick with katharevousa?

The geometry was for the sake of schoolroom deixis I thought.

I’m glad (or should I be sorry?) that Scribo is “going to have to agree” with me. The book is of purely historical interest.

[jeidsath]

The katharevousa is the reason that I've never read through it. However I do like the concrete visual nature of the lessons. What does everyone think (of the presumably better) Latin version?

As far as I know, all of the existing reading approaches to Greek are all inspired to various degrees by by Rouse's approach at Perse (Thrasymachus, JACT, Athenaze). This is a wholly alternate approach -- not wonderfully executed -- but the idea remains interesting to me.

[calvinist]

@Joel
The Latin text by Avellanus is very good. If you're willing to spend a little money though, I would recommend Lingua Latina by Orberg. He wrote the quintessential Direct Method text. Contrary to what some say, I don't think it's suitable for self-learning by an absolute beginner, but if you grasp the case system of Greek and things like indicative/subjunctive you'll be fine.

[mwh]

@Joel. JACT, Athenaze etc. “inspired” by Rouse?! I don’t think so. And “a wholly alternative approach”?! To what? Please don’t say “grammar-translation.” They all involve that, lots of it. And a good thing too.

@calvinist. I may be wrong, but I thought Ørberg's approach was fundamentally different from the Direct Method as that term is generally understood, since it doesn’t require a teacher fluent in the language (or any teacher at all, apart from itself), and while Ørberg evidently wanted users to develop speaking ability, or at least to use "correct" pronunciation, it's not interactive or primarily oral-aural.
I admire Lingua Latina, as I’ve said before, mainly because
the Latin is good,
it’s excellently graded,
it explicitly and systematically and progressively introduces the grammar, and
it includes systematically and progressively organized exercises designed to develop practical mastery of the new grammar.
[EDIT: And, of course, its cultural content.]
It's altogether too methodical for my liking, positively soul-destroying, but that's just me.

The progressivity and the grammar distinguishes it from the “natural” method, to which it is opposed. The only thing it shares with the Direct Method, so far as I can see, is that it avoids translation. And I think most everyone here agrees that the goal is to be able to read without translating.

[jeidsath]

@Joel. JACT, Athenaze etc. “inspired” by Rouse?! I don’t think so. And “a wholly alternative approach”?! To what? Please don’t say “grammar-translation.” They all involve that, lots of it. And a good thing too.

Thrasymachus is written by a student of Rouse, and is best described as an update of Rouse's materials for a non-conversation based classroom. Athenaze takes a certain part of its lesson and exercise format from Thrasymachus. The JACT organization is actually an umbrella organization that includes the Rouse-founded ARLT. For both JACT and Athenaze, the basic idea is to learn Greek through reading a constructed text built to illustrate the grammatical points in the lesson.

The wholly "alternative approach" presented here -- in the initial lessons -- seems to be based on using constructed Greek for direct classroom communication. That's a bit different from Rouse's approach, where all of the conversation is abstract, centered around talking about the texts being read.

[calvinist]

@calvinist. I may be wrong, but I thought Ørberg's approach was fundamentally different from the Direct Method as that term is generally understood, since it doesn’t require a teacher fluent in the language (or any teacher at all, apart from itself), and while Ørberg evidently wanted users to develop speaking ability, or at least to use "correct" pronunciation, it's not interactive or primarily oral-aural.

I think you're right, mwh, the Direct Method is actually a conversational approach I believe. I guess Lingua Latina could be called a Reading Method, where you learn the language through gradually more complex "texts", as opposed to the Grammar-Translation where the theory of the language is front-loaded and then you apply the theory to (generally) disconnected sentences.

I would say Lingua Latina is similar in structure to Thrasymachus, but there is much more reading material and it is graded much better, in addition to the fact that there is no English in the text. LL would be the perfect text to use as a reader for a Direct Method class though.

[daivid]

From the Special Directions:

"Never, under any circumstances, must the pupil be appealed to until, in addition to the above, the teacher has distinctly asked and answered the question."

I can’t imagine anyone making profitable use of this today.

That doesn't seem so far from what we were told in my teaching English as a foreign language course to model the language constructions that you are trying to teach before getting your learners to produce it. (At least I think that's what he is advocating.)