Ancient Greek: A Foundation Course (Teach Yourself)

by F. Kinchin Smith

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0340272767
• ISBN13: 9780340272763
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: TEACH YOURSELF BOOKS
• Length: 338 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.9" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

"Greek, sir, is like lace, everyone gets as much of it as he can."

If this book were more widely used, there would be more people who thought the way this older quote goes. Many years ago, I was saying to an older friend whom I know how that I would like to learn Greek on my own. I live well out into rural America, and did not have much recourse to books on Greek, except for an old school primer, which helped, but it did not have any answers by which to check yourself, and was meant to be used with a teacher. Friend is a teacher, and looked around the bookstores in the urban area he lives in, and then gave me this book. It was much help in beginning to learn Greek on my own. I slowed down, due to work, but it really helped me in getting ready for NT Greek class. I turned back to it to review, and found that I really preferred it to the classroom text I had. Kinchin Smith and Melluish explain things well for a beginner, as well as providing good healthy humour along the way. The text gives many exercises that will do their work in exercising the student, and the answers are in the back, by which you can see how you are doing. These gentlemen provide an enjoyable beginning to learning Greek. It is not meant, nor do the authors claim for this book, that it will get you ready to read connected texts of poetry, or one of the histories. But it will introduce you, in a gracious way, to Greek, and give you tastes of the fine literature that is in Greek, giving a taste of stories, the Greek Bible, and snippets of various authors, even a little of Sappho's poetry, made digestible for young students. So you will be able to proceed with another good book on Greek, one of the fine newer books, or even Chase and Allen. In this introduction book, you encounter all the conjugations of the Greek verb, including the optative mood, which is more than one can say for many Greek primer books that are popular today. I recommend this book to help increase one's appetite. And amen to the comments of the other reviewer. Why this book is not available generally, as a beginning course, but they let the other book, which is boring, if more full, take its place, is not understandable, and it is wrong, I think. Bring it back.

A prior superior

This volume in the Teach Yourself Series is far superior to its later successor in the same series. It is creative in concept and presentation, partucularly in its second edition, edited by T.W. Melluish. I do not understand why the publisher issued a later, less imaginative text when they already had this on their list.