Why does it use the wrong sigma?
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I bought this book, having some knowledge of contemporary Greek, and wishing to further my depth of understanding of the origins of the language. I found the use of lunate sigma (c/C) rather that the strictly correct form used during the pre-Roman Greek era (and used in contemporary Greek) really jarring.
The authors' suggestion that this was used for "reasons of convenience" (convenience for whom?) seems fairly spurious. All the other texts I've come across in ancient Greek use the standard form. Maybe it seems like a small thing, but if you're used to looking at Greek and seeing certain patterns of letters, you don't want to mentally replace some alien-looking 'c' with a sigma all the time. This just creates confusion. Ultimately, don't get this book; buy something that uses correct Greek letters instead.
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Not For Beginners
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This book is definitely not for beginners. It is dense, difficult, demanding, and not very well laid out. Novices will be struggling from the very outset to get a handle on even the basics. The authors are merciless. For anybody who has previous experience of Classical Greek however this book might function as an excellent aid to revision, and a useful bridge to Classical Greek for anybody who has only ever done New Testament Greek. Otherwise give this grammar a wide berth.
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Very good book!
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The explanations are very good and the book is suitable for both beginners and intermediate learners. I learned a bit of ancient Greek before starting to read this book, so it was easier for me to grasp the concepts. The book is not perfectly structured, but it takes you through the language with baby steps. It's very nice that it has keys for all exercises (books I've worked with before didn't and that was a major drawback), so you can check where you went wrong and correct yourself. I like it that it gives introductions about the ancient authors and works cited, like Aesop etc. and the readings are very nice. Highly recommended. If you know the basic concepts of the English grammar and you don't give up easily, you will for sure be able to read classical Greek texts after going through this book carefully.
Good luck!
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A useful resource, but not a complete course
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This book may appear to overload the complete beginner with accidence (that is the word endings) and there are many substantial tables of noun declension and verb charts, but the fact of the matter is that these are unavoidable and essential for the comprehension of even the most basic of Ancient greek texts so to ommit or dilute them would be unwise.
This book lacks enough grammatical depth in some instances and focuses heavily of describing the syntax etc. rather than explaining it which may lead to some confusion but to make up for this it provides the reader with a very well-rounded and complete set of vocabulary (particularly for complete beginners) and most of the texts are drawn from original sources.
By the end of the course you are reading original and unadapted texts, which is after all the main reason of studying this ancient language.
If used alongside another course, for example Reading Greek or equivilant, it proves to be a helpful reference tool and alternative to other texts.
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Layout lacking
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This is a comprehensive grammar for the beginner. However, I did find the presentation of grammatical detail in 'paragraph form' very hard to digest.
It would be far better for the beginner to have all the information (where appropriate) in table form, rather than written out as a complete sentence. This would mean the book being rather thicker but this could be dealt with by presenting it in two volumes.
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