there are answer keys on the internet for the autodidact

books:


	• Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners Clyde Pharr, John Wright University of Oklahoma Press, 1986 - 361 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Would have been much better if written in 2007

Let me preface this review by noting that I came to Pharr's text after I had acquired a good, working knowledge of Biblical Greek. Homeric Greek and Biblical Greek are vastly different in their vocabulary but fairly similar in their grammar and syntax and I anticipated that working through Pharr would have been easy.

However, I found it slow and difficult going and Pharr's text presupposes that a teacher will be working with the student. The text is old--from about 1920--and the additions by John Wright are few. The text reflects teaching methods that are nearly a century old. Since then, several new and better methods of teaching Greek and of vocabulary acquisition have been developed. I have found the teaching methods developed by William Mounce and Daniel Wallace and the organization of their textbooks to be superb for learning Biblical Greek. Pharr's approach is decidedly outdated and inefficient by comparison.

Instead of learning the vocabulary by the frequency the words appear in the Iliad, the student must learn all of the words as they come up, line by line, in the text, no matter how infrequently they occur throughout the Homeric corpus as a whole. I found that I had to supplement Pharr's vocabulary lessons with Owen and Goodspeed's "Homeric Vocabularies," which are arranged by frequency of occurrence. In addition, the text is based on a line by line presentation of the Iliad, and the student is forced to deal with the various noun cases and verb tenses and moods before they are formally taught in the text. Fortunately, I had a good working knowledge of at least one dialect of Ancient Greek before going in; had I been an absolute neophyte to the Greek language it would have been very difficult to do without an instructor. The rules of grammar and syntax are poorly explained and presuppose a knowledge of both English and Latin grammar. Intense memorization is required, reflecting the "drill method" of teaching of a century ago. Compared to Mounce's approach, which is like a guided set of swimming lessons by lifeguards at the YMCA, Pharr's approach is to take the student and throw her/him out in the middle of the lake. This book will present a great challenge to the autodidact. I am quite certain that had I not already known Koine Greek, I would never have been able to learn Homeric Greek with Pharr alone and I am good with languages.

What the student of Homeric Greek really needs is for someone to make a William Mounce-style learning package: a textbook of Homeric Greek, organized logically by Mounce's system, a workbook with exercises in translation, vocabulary cards, audio CD's and interactive CD-ROMs. Only then will Homeric Greek be accessible to the devoted autodidact. Until then, we'll have to make do with Pharr.

If you have never previously studied a foreign language don't even bother with Pharr.

for more information click here

there are answer keys on the internet for the autodidact

such as the one at greekgeek dot org. Also from time to time a new study group for this book will start, on the forum/message board of textkit dot com.

for more information click here

Great for beginners...immediate access to the Iliad

This book has helped me realize a lifelong dream-- to read Homer in the original Greek. This book is a reprint, with some revision, of a text used in the early part of the 20th century. It is not, as far as I can tell "watered down" and the vocabulary started with words that allow the learner to begin reading the Iliad almost immediately. The practice lessons are sentences that relate to the first lines of the Iliad. Both Greek->English and English-> Greek are provided. The first half of the book are the lessons and explanation, the last half is a grammar and usage. The lessons take the learner through the first book of the Iliad. You begin actually reading and translating the first five lines in Lesson XIII. The author also spends times explaining the scansion of the Iliad so that the learner can begin to "hear" the Iliad as well as read it. Although Attic Greek is different from Homeric Greek, I found Teach Yourself Ancient Greek: a Complete Course helpful in clarifying some of the explanations of the grammar and syntax. This book is also available from Amazon. In fact, I don't suppose I would be reading Greek now if I hadn't discovered Amazon (pardon the plug, but I'm hooked!). Finding the complete Iliad can be a challenge. I finally located it at Harvard University Press: Greek and English on facing pages. Join the new Renaissance made possible by the Internet and read the real Homer. It is, to use a common expression, awesome!

for more information click here

Excellent

Pharr's Homeric Greek has much going for it. It is an old-style grammar, however, and one must be prepared for a different version of user-friendliness. No, there are no cute comicbook characters or a made-up story about a family caught up in the conflict, a la Athenaze or, on the Latin side, Ecce Romani. On the other hand, the book conserves space by placing all paradigms in the back of the book. This feature forces students to review more thoroughly than grammars that present paradigms piecemeal throughout the body of the text. The introduction contains an interesting argument for teaching Homeric Greek in a child's first year of Greek study, rather than the more traditional Attic Greek. The book is reasonably sturdy, for a paperback. John Wright revised the book lightly, mainly taking out material a modern student would not use or need.

What do I like about it? Each lesson presents a manageable amount of vocabulary and focuses on a single point of grammar. Once the student starts reading real Homer, the passages of poetry are preceded by prose sentences for review of new vocabulary and grammar. A teacher might assign these as homework, after a sufficient amount of in-class review, and have students read the Homeric passage at sight the following day. I also like the suggestion that students memorize the first 21 lines of the poem. Few things enliven a dead party like the ability to recite long passages of poetry in a dead language. Doing so drunk merely adds to the charm!

Finally, the book does not confuse students about its aim: the goal is the ability to read Homer's Greek. This straightforwardness arises from a confidence that most modern texts lack: modern editors seem to feel students won't bother with the language unless the cup is sweetened with loosely written and shallow 'essays' on Greek culture.

A very useful ancillary text is Homeric Vocabularies: Greek and English Word List for the Study of Homer.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

hot