Ancient Greek for Everyone: A New Digital Resource for Beginning Greek 2013 edition Wilfred E. Major [email protected]

Ancient Greek for Everyone:A New Digital Resource for Beginning Greek

2013 edition

Wilfred E. Major

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Ancient Greek for Everyone

• This class – You have learned the Greek alphabet and other

components of the Greek writing system.– This slide show offers an overview of Ancient

Greek for Everyone (AGE), the digital textbook resource for this class. It surveys: – The organization of AGE by Part of Speech – The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – The method and purpose of the readings.


• The organization of AGE by Part of Speech– The units of AGE are organized by Part of Speech. – Greek has effectively the same parts of speech as

English: – verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs,

conjunctions, prepositions, interjections


• The organization of AGE by Part of Speech– The units of AGE are organized by Part of Speech. – Each unit consists of: –A survey of some feature of a Part of Speech –A vocabulary list of items pertaining to this feature –Reading passages which provide practice with this

feature and review of the Greek you have already learned.


– The organization of AGE by Part of Speech• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – Each unit includes two vocabulary lists: a Classical

Vocabulary list and a New Testament (NT) vocabulary list. – Both lists are geared to the topic of the unit.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – Many words appear on both lists. – The lists both consist of high-frequency Greek vocabulary,

and since the most frequent words in Classical writings and the New Testament are often the same, the lists often overlap. Because of differences in time and topic, there are also some differences, of course.

– You are required to memorize vocabulary that is common to both lists. Each unit includes a “Core” vocabulary list that compiles this vocabulary.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – The Classical vocabulary list derives from the Core

Vocabulary list of the Dickinson College Commentaries (DCC) series

– At this link, you can view the entire list and you can select various subsets of the list by type or meaning: http://dcc.dickinson.edu/greek-core-list .

– The DCC list consists of a little under 500 words.

http://dcc.dickinson.edu/greek-core-list

http://dcc.dickinson.edu/greek-core-list


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – The DCC list consists of a little under 500 words. These

words make up an average of about 2/3 of Greek texts. – This is because, like most languages, Greek in practice

repeats some words often and uses other words more rarely.

– In English, for example, words like “the” “a” and “is” appear repeatedly, but a word like “paraclausithyron,” sadly, is used very rarely.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – Scholars have studied word frequency in English and

learned that adult English speakers typically carry about 10,000 to 15,000 vocabulary items. They do not use them all equally, however.

– In fact, about 100 words make up nearly half of speaking and writing in English.

– Furthermore, about 2,400 words make up 80%. After that, vocabulary becomes more specialized and less frequent.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – The 50% and 80% levels are common leveling points in

vocabulary usage and the numbers for these levels in English are average compared to many other languages (although the complete vocabulary of English is much larger than for most languages).

– Greek, by contrast, uses a much small vocabulary.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – It takes only about 65 words to make up 50% of Classical

Greek texts. – It takes fewer than 1,100 words to make up 80% of these

texts. – The DCC list at a little less than 500 makes up somewhere

around two-thirds.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – The DCC list is designed to serve as the high frequency

core vocabulary list for all intermediate readers of Classical Greek.

– As new readers are developed for the DCC and elsewhere, they will provide running vocabulary for words, but assume you already know the words in the Core.

– By the end of AGE, you will have the entire DCC Core Greek vocabulary list. Thus, you should be ready for intermediate-level reading at that point.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – The New Testament (NT) list works on similar principles. – Each unit includes high-frequency vocabulary items from

the NT. By the end, it includes every vocabulary item that occurs 30+ times in the NT.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – Two intermediate reading editions of the NT make use of

this same list: – Richard J. Goodrich and Albert L. Lukaszewski, A

Reader’s Greek New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), ISBN 978-0310-273783.

– Barclay M. Newman, The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), ISBN 978-1598562859.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – Both include this list of words occurring 30+ times in the

back, and then provide running vocabulary for all other words on each page.

– By the end of AGE, you will have the complete 30+ vocabulary list and thus be prepared to use either of these readers.


• The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists – Note: The AGE vocabulary lists do not include the proper

names of people or places, even when, statistically, such names are frequent enough for inclusion.

– Running vocabulary lists for the readings in AGE include any words that have not appeared in the AGE vocabulary lists up to that point. Vocabulary which is part of the Core Vocabulary by that point will not be glossed.


– The organization of AGE by Part of Speech– The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists

– The method and purpose of the readings. – Each unit of AGE includes three readings: • readings from Classical Greek• readings in Greek from Biblical texts.


Classical Greek strictly speaking refers to writings from the city of

Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. These writings include:

• Scripts of the world’s first plays, both comedies and tragedies (Aeschylus,

Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes).

• Some of the earliest writings about history (Thucydides, Xenophon).*

• The earliest complete writings of philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle).

• Important legal and political writings, as well as the earliest biographies,

essays, literary letters, and historical fiction (Xenophon, the canonical

orators).

The readings in this course in Classical Greek draw primarily from the

above writings.


• Recall that Attic/Classical Greek became the basis for koine Greek.

• The most famous writing in koine Greek is the New Testament.

• The Hebrew Bible was translated into koine Greek in the second century B.C., and this version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), was the one known to early Christians.

• Other writings from this period related to the Bible were also written in koine Greek.

• The Biblical readings in this course draw from New Testament, the Septuagint, and related ancient writings.


– The organization of AGE by Part of Speech– The method and purpose of the vocabulary lists

– The method and purpose of the readings. – The readings are chosen in part because they use the

grammatical topic of a particular unit, and because they are famous or interesting.

– The readings from Classical and Biblical texts are unchanged from standard scholarly editions.

– Vocabulary (as explained above) and grammatical notes are added for material not covered yet in AGE by the time of the reading.


Ancient Greek for Everyone (AGE) – At this point, AGE includes units only for Classical and

Biblical Greek. – In coming years, the plan is to add units for Homeric/Ionic

Greek, post-Classical Greek, Medieval/Byzantine Greek and Katherevousa/Demotic Greek.

– Even now, however, the lessons of AGE provide the core and gateway for these others eras of Greek!

Documents

Ancient Greek for Everyone: A New Digital Resource for Beginning Greek 2013 edition Wilfred E. Major [email protected]