Companion to Mastronade?

[ThatLanguageGuy]

Hey guys I'm using Mastronade's book to learn Greek, and Wheelock had a great number of reading exercises while Mastronade has none. Are there any companions to Mastronade out there that have you reading adapted stories of Greek, or should I just use Reading Greek or Athenaze so that I don't go to long without reading? (I have both Reading Greek and Athenaze, which one should I use for reading if there is no companion to Mastronade?)

[swtwentyman]

The readings are coming, and they get pretty (inordinately IMO) hard. Really with Mastronarde you need to deal with what he gives you; I'd have preferred the exercises to be more plenty and easier, too, and with much more Greek-to-English (a great deal of them are English-to-Greek, which are, however, valuable in their own right; and identify-the-forms exercises, which are effective to a degree, but which are out of context and can be frustrating, and which are unsupported by examples (you're supposed to rote-learn the paradigms and work out the forms back from there)). Mastronarde usually gives one example per concept.

Mastronarde is a flawed book but many Greek concepts have Latin equivalents; since you've been through Wheelock you'll have a considerable leg up. Still I'm going to have to do a thorough review of the course once I'm done with the Anabasis. I don't know much about other courses, but I'm somewhat familiar with Athenaze, having worked through it through the "pros to astu" chapter in a class I took, and I remember that it was pretty "user-friendly" and has you reading Greek right from the beginning; it also has plenty of ancillary materials available. On the other hand it's a less clear, more piecemeal approach and isn't as thorough, compact, or rigorous as Mastronarde (I'm aware that those are also its drawbacks). But who knows? it might be right for you. It does have plenty of reading.

Avoid Pharr.

[ThatLanguageGuy]

Pharr?

[swtwentyman]

Clyde Pharr, who wrote Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners, which is recommended in the "Which dialect?" sticky above. I'm not sure if starting with Homeric Greek is or has ever been widely suggested but he takes you through the first book of the Iliad, providing real, actual Greek to read in every chapter. He has his problems, though (few exercises and the readings usually have nothing in particular to do with the material, plus he has you composing prose in an artificial poetic dialect; also the vocabulary is given ad hoc and isn't intended as a core vocabulary).

I would say that you should avoid out-of-copyright courses in general (although that was the original vision of this site) but I'm not familiar with many at all, although I collect turn-of-the-century/late 19th-century textbooks (all subjects) and the methods were very different then. Plus good luck finding an answer key.

BTW I'm no authority on any of this; I just have experience with a few books. (Had to drop the class with Athenaze; quit halfway through Pharr; completed Mastronarde).

Pharr also made an edition of the first six books of the Aeneid that I'll be starting more-or-less soon; the guy knew his epics.

[ThatLanguageGuy]

Yeah, I've been wanting to learn Greek since last Christmas (when I received Wheelock), and I looked up good Ancient Greek textbooks and I first found Greek: An Intensive Course which I found terribly hard to use. Then I found From Alpha to Omega, which is terribly difficult to use despite its errors. Then I found Mastronade, Athenaze, and Reading Greek, which all seem fairly useful and interesting. I'm on chapter 3 of Athenaze and unit 4 of Mastronade. I really like both of these texts, and I hope I am able to use the Aeneid by Pharr some day.