/lit/ - Literature

it's hard and takes along time to actually master to a level of being able to read as fluently as you do in your native language. If its your first time studying a second language start with something easier first to learn how to learn a language. After that pic up the Athenze course plus the workbook and teachers guide if you are a self learner. With these you should be able to climb the "grammar mountain" that is ancient greek. After you've clawed your way to an intermediate level pick up some greek readers by Geoffrey Steadman. After this your ready to move on reading bilingual books as away to speed up your reading speed. Also if you want to learn how to actually speak ancient greek learning modern greek will help you a lot in your pronunciation as the two languages compliment each other.

TLDR

Its a pain in the ass and if you don't have at least an hour a day to spend learning it its probably best to stick to translation. However if you want to continue I would encourage you as I have found learning greek challenging but rewarding.

>>17915954
thanks anon

>>17915958
Im still learning but I've put in a lot of time into finding out the best way to learn it as I've struggled trying to tame this beast. They say it could take five years to actually "get good" but the feeling of being able to read a piece of text written by ancient greek is incredible and I find its worth it to me. So if you start remember to not get discouraged and keep at it because if a retard like me can do it so can you.

DO NOT
LEARN
ATTIC GREEK

DO NOT DO IT

YOU WILL FOREVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE ATHENIANS, TRUST ME YOU DON'T WANT TO DO THAT

PLEASE MAN DON'T DO IT, THIS IS COMING FROM SOMEONE WHO SPEAKS ATTIC GREEK AND LIVES IN ATHENS YOU DON'T WANT THIS

LEARN LATIN OR PERSIAN INSTEAD, TRUST ME, PLEASE DO NOT LEARN ATTIC GREEK IT WILL FUCK UP YOUR LIFE BECAUSE NO TYRANT IS GOING TO BE LIKE 'oh this barbarian knows Greek and can speak it very well, lets just have him not involved in any way whatsoever with Athens'.

The Athenians are absolute shit, they are the worst human beings that i have encountered this side of the Hellespont, and i am EXTREMELY well traveled; including many shithole regions like Thrace. Don't do it man, please take my advice, learn latin or persian or some shit instead, do NOT learn attic greek.

You won't realize the truth in what i'm saying until you're here, but by then it'll be too late. Don't do it man, please. help me help you, learn something else.

>>17916185
Xenos tongue my anus.

T. Pericles

>>17916185
physically kekked at this

>>17916276
Public Business related
>constant whirlwind of activity, bold beyond their means, run risks beyond reason
>for them, to hope for something is the same as to have it
>constantly have to deal with sophists and demagogues, the Athenians will rarely outright lie to you, but they will never just tell you the truth either, unless you can decipher their speeches. The Athenians even have a word for this -- ῥητορικός . It's basically expected to make the weaker argument appear the stronger in debate.

Example 1:
>I work as an delegate. Tyrant wants to know the topic of debate at Athens. He asks me to attend. Alright, i go to the Pnyx, And the speaker is assuring the public they should launch an expedition (To Sicily to the far north, hoping to secure the wealth of Italy to against the Peloponnesians). Well, alright, Athens is the premiere sea-power so i guess they know what they're doing
>nope
>Listen to the plan, arguments are all over the place, from 60 to ~120 ships. I confront them about the number and their claims it could conquer Sicily
>'oh barbarian because these ships are athenian-grade we were obviously talking about triremes, your estimates are based on penteconters
>lying through their fucking teeth, literally everyone who isn't part of the polis backs me in saying we were talking about triremes, speakers deny it
>check the supplies
>silver is less than 1/2 of what they need to support the expedition, troop numbers all over the place, no cavalry component
>'oh barbarian you must be thinking of barbarian hoplites, we should have specified these are athenian hoplites
>there's only one type of hoplite you fucking idiot, if you send a an expeditionary force this small you're fucking doomed to fail
>'so watch us, we have funds waiting for us there, Sicily is fractious and most of the cities will join us' :^)
Expedition fails and everyone is killed

anyway, non-politics related:
>out with a few friends, we're hanging around the agora, as we're talking two guys about 30 feet from us starts approaching
>recognize them as prominent citizens who speak often at the Pnyx
>prepare myself for whatever intrigue they want to get my city into
>'Oh barbarian, Tell me, have you got a dog?'
>a bit surprised, tell them that i do
>'And has he got puppies?'
>Answer that he does indeed have puppies
>'And so the dog is their father?'
>definitely
>'Well then: isn't the dog yours, barbarian?'
>I admit that it is
>'Then since he is a father and he is yours, the dog turns out to be your father, and you are the brother of puppies, aren't you?'
>... What the fuck?
They then offer to teach me logic in their 50 drachma course

>>17915954
/thread

>>17916185
Kek
A worthy pasta

>>17916890
Golden, undeniably golden.

>>17916890
For zero drachmas:
https://youtu.be/hh3TI3iMb1E

>>17916890
Holy kek

>>17916185
>>17916890

>>17915633
You will spend years just to produce a mental translation worse than those already available to read

>>17918987
is this actually how Anglos progress when they learn a heavily inflected language?

>>17916185
Take your meds
Also based

>>17916185
Brekekekex koax koax.

>>17916890
Based, kek'd loudly and enjoyably.

>>17915633
you can't learn ancient greek

>>17916890
outrageously based

>>17919291
you learn english by learning another language

Ancient Greek is pure mind terrorism. Learning all the noun inflections and verb forms is one thing, but the language abuses participles to a disgusting degree and they are also inflected as nouns.

>>17915633
It's the hardest IE language barring only Sanskrit. If a Latin verb table makes a Spanish verb table look easy, a Greek verb table makes Latin verb tables look just as easy. There's a seemingly endless amount of morphology and grammar rules and irregular verbs to learn and memorize, with exceptions to the rules and exceptions to the rules of those rules. The vocabulary is absolutely huge, and at least 3 times as large as a standard Latin vocabulary. Ancient Greek is fucked. Unless your heart is in it, you will get filtered like a little bitch, guaranteed. Good luck.

>>17915633
Why do you want to?

>>17919111
No, and lots of people in this thread are just revealing themselves as turbo-brainlets who are learning from what must be the worst imaginable textbooks. Once you read even a few longer passages in an inflected language, it all starts to fit together.

Who is memorizing declension tables and mentally referring to them as they read?

>>17919604
It’s not that bad learning at my own pace but if you were in a class setting and weren’t familiar with ideas in general grammar and it was your first language that would be rough.

>>17920309
There's some program in the US which aims to have you master Ancient Greek grammar and read Xenophon after 3 weeks or something like that. Apparently it's one of the hardest academic programs. Can't remember the name of it though

>>17920298
>Who is memorizing declension tables and mentally referring to them as they read?
Anglos, that's literally what they teach us to do in foreign language classes

>>17920298
yeah, Greek declension only really gets difficult in minor cases where the fuckery starts eradicating all resemblance to the root (e.g. ετεθραμμεν is the 1.sg. p. q. of τρεφω). I started learning Greek in November and now I'm reading Plato while referring to the translation if I don't know vocabulary. The grammar cases represent concepts that every human being shares and you don't have to refer to your native language to access them, especially if it doesn't have a direct equivalent (there aren't a lot of languages that have something like aorist participle constructions meaning an action that took place before the predicate in the same sentence)