Greek: An Intensive Course - Appendix

by Gerald M. Quinn and Hardy Hansen

Book Overview

The first edition of this extremely popular two volume Greek text has been successfully adopted in many high schools and colleges; the organization and approach used by the authors, make it an equally... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0823211827
• ISBN13: 9780823211821
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Wrong book sent!!!!

I ordered the 2-volume intensive Greek set NOT the appendix!! This is the third time I’ve gotten the appendix and I am disgusted!!!! HELP!!!

Appendix Only (Greek: An Intensive Course [2 volumes])

The product as advertised is misleading, as I only received the appendix. I should've read the reviews and double-checked the ISBN. I advise going after the edition "Greek: An Intensive Course, 2nd Revised Edition" solely instead.

Anyone else only get the appendix?

Item description states a 848 page length book(/s?), it neglected to include that it starts at page 530..

Extremely Comprehensive Text

Having studied Latin for several years, I decided toward the end of my Freshman year of college that I would like to pursue Greek also in order to focus on ancient languages as a classics major. For me the best option was an Intensive Elementary Greek course offered at my university over the summer. The course, GREK 112, uses this Hanson and Quinn textbook and is, as the title of both the text and the course indicates, intense. The text was specifically designed by Hanson and Quinn to be used for their own summer session in New York. And as I was later told, their course is ten weeks long whereas mine was only six--this certainly added to the intensity of the course. That being said, however, the amount that I was able to learn would not have been possible were it not for this text. Each section is definitely long, a fact about which other reviewers have complained, but that is because the new material in each section is to be covered in a morning lecture and the drills are to be completed in an afternoon session. Other reviewers have also contended that someone who holds a certain natural proficiency in languages or more experience in language comprehension, historical linguistics, et al. is at an advantage. This is not exactly a notable observation, nor is it helpful criticism (least of all is it a reason to lower one's rating of the text), because all education is the same in this regard! Someone with a strong background in historical linguistics will have an easier time with this text than someone who has little second-tongue experience in the same way that someone with a strong background in calculus will have an easier time in microeconomics than someone with a weak mathematical foundation. This text is certainly intense and time consuming, but it provides a fantastic framework on which to build a working knowledge of Attic Greek.

An Excellent, Not-For-Dummies Greek Course

I picked up this book recently with a friend with the intention of learning Attic Greek. We are both Latin students, and having heard many good things about this book, we decided to try it.After just a few weeks of work, I can already see the difference between this text and others: this book assumes that the reader is capable of understanding a language vastly more complicated than English. Having a strong background in Latin and an open mind definitely helps, though; I don't suggest using this text if you lack either of these qualities. However, if you are planning to work alone, this may not be the best option: the title does not lie when it reads "Intensive." I know that working with a friend has helped me so far, and I can only imagine how much help a qualified instructor would be.After the first few units, I was already finding myself reading and understanding parts of Plato's Republic and other authentic Greek texts.Either way, I highly recommend this series over the other Greek texts out there, and i hope you pick this one up.

You can learn Ancient Greek

As an avid reader of the classics I wanted to learn Ancient Greek so that I could appreciate the works in the original language. I started out at my local library where I found very few books on the subject. The few that I did find were too advanced or were poorly written. Hansen's text book is different. It starts out slowly with pronunciation and alphabet lessons. These are very valuble and were the elements that were most lacking in the other texts. The book builds to syntax and vocabulary. The great thing about the book is that they put easy reading and speaking drills early on. This makes you feel like you are learning and builds your confidence. The book also stresses thinking in Greek, since it makes the language easier to learn and since Greek is one of the most expressive languages.This truly is an intensive course in the language and some devotion to study is required. However, it is fairly simple and fun to learn from the book. At the completion of the lessons, you will have a basic understanding of the Greek language and will be able to express ideas in the language. I am not very good at learning languages. If I can learn ancient greek so can you.Other good features of this book are its Greek/English English/Greek translation dictionary for many usefuls words and phrases.

Outstanding text for new students of Greek

As a 37 year old physician, I decided to learn Ancient Greek on my own without any prior experience in classical languages or grammar. Having reviewed a few other texts, this is absolutely the most useful and easily accessible. That's not to say that it's easy, but everything is explained in a well-organized and complete manner. The drills and exercises are very well done and it was thrilling to be able to tackle such a difficult subject on my own. My only minor issue with this book is that there is no answer key for the exercises, so one has to puzzle them out for oneself--a good experience in itself--but there are periodic self-scoring tests with answers that do keep you on track. Overall a wonderful introduction to Greek for the novice.

Outstanding and currently without rival

I have taught ancient Greek to students from middle school age to graduate students for more than ten years. This book is the best available, hands down. It is not condescending. It contains no serious errors; such infelicities as there are in its Greek sentences are to be excused on the grounds of pedagogical expediency. Its grammatical and morphological sections are the very definition of clarity and succinctness. It may be guilty of an occasional oversimplification or a venial sin of omission. It leaves certain declensional systems and conditional constructions to the appendix, for example, and it certainly should include the an account of the dual, at least for nouns, somewhere in the body of the text. But those shortcomings are easily outweighed by the advantages of this textbook. It's the only one I have found where a student can actually a) get through the morphology and grammar of the Attic dialect in a realistic amount of time (Athenaze, in contrast, takes FOREVER) and b) leave students actually ready to tackle, say, a Platonic dialogue or a Euripidean tragedy when they're done. (Athenaze takes a distant second on this count, too.)Other shortcomings: not enough vocabulary to give students a real "working minimum". Relegation of some fairly important morphology and grammar to the appendix. Or, conversely, Other strengths: Doesn't overwhelm students trying to give them a "working minimum vocabulary", I take it because the contents of such a hypothetical working minimum vocabulary vary widely depending on the genre or author the student is going to tackle.