Learning Ancient Languages

[alcuin18]

Hello. I am interested in studying ancient languages and would appreciate some advice. Specifically, for learning inflected languages like ancient Greek or Old English, what is the best way to study them? Is it best to write down the declensions repeatedly, or just refer to them during exercises and translation work, or some other method? Or is vocabulary more important than learning the inflection paradigms? I’ve heard that focusing on grammar doesn’t facilitate true retention and literacy, but it seems necessary.

These issues and any other tips would be greatly appreciated. God bless.

 

[adamhovey1988]

You can find all kinds of stuff on ancient Greek. I know you can get books in Old English, but not sure about study guides and the like, though, there is an Old English Wikipedia

 

[BartholomewB]

There are plenty of inflected languages out there today. German, French, Spanish, Italian … plus (I believe) all the Slavic languages. Not to mention non-European languages such as Hebrew.

Sooner or later you’re going to have to sit down with a book of verb tables and learn them off by heart. I have never attempted to learn a language at home, by myself, only in a classroom environment, and then it’s the teacher, of course, who decides what is the right dosage of that kind of rote learning.

In the last few months I have been toying with the idea of learning Biblical Greek, at home, by myself, just me and my computer. I joined a site called B-Greek, which is expressly for Biblical Greek, and I downloaded a textbook I found there, made freely available by the author, Shirley Rollinson. I showed it to an online acquaintance who is a professor of Classical Greek, and he said he liked it so much he’s going to use it himself to clear up his doubts about koine Greek. This is the book:
http://www.drshirley.org/greek/textbook02/contents.html

This is the B-Greek site:
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/index.php

There’s also Textkit, for Latin and Classical Greek.
https://www.textkit.com/

Good luck!

 

[alcuin18]

Thank you very much, I’ll look into that!