Classical Greek

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I know this has been a topic of discussion on this forum before. Only Greek Lingq offers is the modern Greek. I need to learn Classical Greek though. Those who have studied using the input method for learning Classical Greek, how have you gone about it? I found Lingq invaluable for all the other languages I have tried it with, but now I need classical Greek, and Lingq does not offer it

Looking forward to your comments!

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What may be the benefit of learning a language with LingQ when it is not spoken? I wonder the same for Latin, which is available here.
You might enter a lesson for Ancient Greek into the environment for Modern Greek, you just will have to create LingQs for a LOT of words.

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I havenā€™t looked into this much but thereā€™s a Latin subreddit with a Discord server where people can practice speaking Latin. (Or at least thatā€™s the impression I got from having visited that sub before. I didnā€™t use the Discord server.)

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FWIW - Iā€™ve had some success translating short pieces in Lingq by swapping the preset dictionary to Logeion - an Ancient Greek dictionary - and working through the texts.

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Iā€™m learning latin to know more about the christian culture. Maybe read the Vulgata Bible writen in latin an so much more.

I centainly use more latin that any other language still spoken except portuguese (my language), english and spanish.

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The benefit is I would be able to read in the original and do research in Plato/Aristotle

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Thank you for your response, Alan. Does Logeion work with Lingq? I am surprised

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If you click on the ā€œManageā€ button next to the ā€œDictionariesā€ tab in the vocab box, youā€™ll find Logeion towards the bottom. It seemed to be the real deal and worked well for what I was doing.

Lexicon Katabiblon might also be worth trying but I think thatā€™s more for Biblical texts.

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  1. Optional, but extremely helpful if you have the mindset to get it done: Go to Luke Ranieriā€™s website and buy his spreadsheet for studying the morphology of Ancient Greek:

The spreadsheet will track reps. Write out all the declensions and verb forms, etc. Think of this like the Ancient Greek version of drilling Kanji for three months in Japanese. Itā€™s hard work, but itā€™s not forever, and it will make everything else easier.

  1. Get the Italian edition of Athenaze. Not the English language edition: the Italian. It has way more text to work with. There are two volumes, 32 chapters. What that will give you is an excellent beginner text. Over the course of two volumes you basically have a novella to read: one continuous story with gradually increasing difficulty level.

Then go to Luke Ranieriā€™s patreon and find the audio recordings of the Italian edition of Athenaze. They used to be there for free, but I just did a quick look and couldnā€™t find them. You might need to join at $2 a month. Itā€™s worth it.

Now you have your first text and the audio to go with.

  1. Start Lingq-ing the old fashioned way. Read chapter 01 intensively. Look up everything. The end of chapter glossaries are good.

  2. The next day read the chapter one sentence at a time, then translate it into English. Work sentence by sentence.

  3. The next day read chapter one straight through. At this point, any words you donā€™t recognize go into Anki.

  4. The next day read and listen at the same time.

  5. The next day start your study session by listening to the chapter with no text, and start working chapter 02.

Cycle in this way for 32 chapters of Athenaze. Treat the audio recordings like mini-stories: listen, listen, listen.

After you are done with Athenaze, pick whatever you are learning Greek for and start enjoying yourself. If you want to read the New Testament you can do that now. If you want to memorize Aesop fables you can do that now. Be smart about the content you pick. If you see anything that Luke Ranieri has recorded (heā€™s done a bunch of pedagogical stuff) you can keep running the old-fashioned Lingq method on that stuff as well, but if you are serious enough to work through Athenaze in this way you are serious enough to go use the language the way you intended to when you started this process.

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ā€œYou might enter a lesson for Ancient Greek into the environment for Modern Greek, you just will have to create LingQs for a LOT of words.ā€

I think this is probably the way to go and Iā€™ve thought of doing it myself at some point.
Just specify your LingQ is Ancient Greek and not Modern where the meaning differs so you donā€™t confuse people.

Also Iā€™d advise you heavily to manage your expectations when learning Ancient Greek, as someone who studied it to a low-intermediate level at university - itā€™s a daunting language, much harder than Latin, variously because it has far fewer modern European loanwords, more complex grammar, and difficult phonology, with its vowel-system of triphthongs, length distinctions and pitch accents.

Finally if youā€™re serious about reading primary sources, keep in mind Ancient Greek texts can vary in their verb conjugation and lexicon by time period, region, and the idiosyncracies of the author. Of the big names, Herodotus and Homer in particular wrote in pseudo-Ionian forms that differ significantly from the formalised Attic-inspired Greek that later became the standard.

That being said, if your interest is primarily Christianity, the New Testament (particularly the synoptic gospels) use a relatively simple, even simplified (to the point of being criticised for poor grammar) form of the Greek language, the international ā€˜koineā€™ form.