Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

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naturalphilosopher
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Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

Post by naturalphilosopher »

Sidgwick's First Greek Writer looks like a fantastic way to start composition while still an absolute beginner. However, most texts I've considered seem to use a quite different order of presentation for grammar. Are there any texts that work well with this old classic?

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rmedinap
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Re: Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

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With "texts" do you mean "reading texts"? What other "texts" have you considered?

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jeidsath
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Re: Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

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Without a teacher, I found that I needed a lot of Greek to use Sidgwick's First Greek Writer effectively. First Greek Writer is mainly about drilling the forms. He starts out with the first and second declensions, providing all verbs for you, as do most grammars. After a few lessons he begins including the consonant declination, and then verb forms. Dickey's composition book may be more appropriate to self-study.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

naturalphilosopher
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Re: Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

Post by naturalphilosopher »

rmedinap wrote:With "texts" do you mean "reading texts"? What other "texts" have you considered?
I feel that to really learn Greek, I need to absorb the language with an active component. I've collected several greek texts. Some, like Crosby and Schaeffer, seem to have adequate exercises and a key, though I think that text doesn't have enough reading practice. Conversely, several otherwise excellent texts are lacking in greek writing exercises with an answer key. If I go the route of pairing Sidgwick for early composition practice to another text, 3 that I've considered are:
* Allen's First Year of Greek: I really like that this includes graded yet unadapted readings from the start. Unlike other texts which claim to use ancient writings, some of these are actually respectable connected passages in reasonably early chapters instead of disconnected, out of context sentences. The exercises in the back have no key, so an outside source of exercises such as Sidgwick or something else seems necessary. (Text at https://archive.org/details/firstyearofgreek00alle)
* Peckett & Munday's Thrasymachus: It seems a well liked option, albeit one using mostly made up Greek. It lacks a key to its own exercises and the exercises at the companion site(http://www.vroma.org/~abarker/thrascontents.html) don't look adequate on their own.
* Hillard and Botting's Elementary Greek Translation: It's not especially popular, but I think this would be a pleasure to learn from.
jeidsath wrote:Without a teacher, I found that I needed a lot of Greek to use Sidgwick's First Greek Writer effectively. First Greek Writer is mainly about drilling the forms. He starts out with the first and second declensions, providing all verbs for you, as do most grammars. After a few lessons he begins including the consonant declination, and then verb forms.
By a lot, do you mean completing a beginner book?
jeidsath wrote:Dickey's composition book may be more appropriate to self-study.
Is this intended for use by beginners or as a follow up to an introductory course?

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jeidsath
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Re: Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

Post by jeidsath »

Why not try starting a thread in the Greek Textbooks and Study Groups forum, with your compositions, and I for one will comment.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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rmedinap
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Re: Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

Post by rmedinap »

naturalphilosopher wrote:
I feel that to really learn Greek, I need to absorb the language with an active component. I've collected several greek texts. Some, like Crosby and Schaeffer, seem to have adequate exercises and a key, though I think that text doesn't have enough reading practice. Conversely, several otherwise excellent texts are lacking in greek writing exercises with an answer key.
I've actually suggested and reviewed several materials in other threads. Even suggested some good Greek Anthologies for beginners and a couple of composition books with an answer key that are far more user friendly than Sidgwick.

Long stoy short. I recommend a combination of Zuntz's Griechischer Lerhrgang and the italian edition of Athenaze.

naturalphilosopher
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Re: Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

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rmedinap wrote:I've actually suggested and reviewed several materials in other threads. Even suggested some good Greek Anthologies for beginners and a couple of composition books with an answer key that are far more user friendly than Sidgwick.

Long story short. I recommend a combination of Zuntz's Griechischer Lerhrgang and the italian edition of Athenaze.
Unfortunately, I don't speak German or Italian. It seems that Zuntz was trying to make a course quite similar to that of James Turney Allen in that he used real but carefully graded Greek from the beginning. Since the feedback I'm getting here indicates that Sidgwick's First Greek Writer isn't what I thought it would be, I may wind up doing scriptorium exercises with some of these resources to get an active start. I certainly found transcription of a few chapters of Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata to be helpful with learning Latin.

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Re: Sidgwick's First Greek Writer useful with what?

Post by Laurentius Mons »

You don't really need to know Italian to profit from the Italian Athenaze, especially if you're not a total beginner. The book contains lots of simple, graded reading with illustrations and marginal notes in Greek. Not knowing Italian means you won't be able to understand some of the vocab notes, but as long as you have a dictionary at hand this shouldn't be that much of a problem. It's not ideal, but I recommend giving the book a try.

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