After a certain level of mastery I've found that most language courses, even those intended for advanced students, simply are not useful anymore. Instead, I have collected a number of more specialized resources which I have found helpful (whether my German has actually improved as a result is of course more difficult to evaluate)
1. A good monolingual German dictionary. Duden and Wahrig are the two standard options; I prefer Wahrig, as it tends to have more examples, but a medium-weight copy of either is adequate for most purposes.
This is absolutely crucial for more advanced study, in my opinion, as a bilingual dictionary simply doesn't provide the necessary information on usage. Furthermore, a monolingual dictionary is a useful way to learn synonyms and other equivalent expressions. (Keep the bilingual dictionary on hand, however: there are still some occasions where it is invaluable -- such as for checking the names of things like tools or plants, or where you don't know the meaning of the words used to define it.)
Duden also produces a number of other specialized dictionaries, but in general I haven't found them to offer much that a regular dictionary wouldn't. However, there is one exception: a Fremdwörterbuch is worth getting, as German dictionaries frequently do not include words which are of obviously non-German origin, even when these words have become fairly well established in the language.
2. An advanced reference grammar. There are many nuances of usage which are simply not generally taught in grammar courses. I like Lederer's A Reference Grammar of the German Language and Hentschel & Weydt's Handbuch der deutschen Grammatik. Both of these are modern descriptive grammars which make use of contemporary linguistic theories of syntax. Lederer's book is specifically oriented towards the needs of English-speaking learners; Hentschel and Weydt's is not.
3. Synonyms, idioms, and usage.
These books are intended for students at a variety of levels. An intermediate student will find them useful for expanding his understanding; a more advanced student will return to them for fine-tuning his knowledge.
Unlike the other books, which focus on the finer points of usage and distinctions between related words, Hachenburger & Jackson's text is intended for vocabulary building. Its thematic arrangement of topics is useful for students who, like me, have fairly advanced knowledge in some areas (literature) but are rather lacking in others (politics, economics). The book includes complex expressions in addition to more basic vocabulary.
R.B. Farrell. A Dictionary of German Synonyms.
K. B. Beaton. A Practical Dictionary of German Usage.
Martin Durrell. Using German: A Guide to Contemporary Usage
Sarah M. B. Fagan. Using German Vocabulary.
Bruce Donaldson. Mastering German Vocabulary: A Practical Guide to Troublesome Words.
Petra Hachenburger and Paul Jackson. Topics, Questions, Keywords
These two books are the closest thing I have found to a true text-based course for advanced students. The exercises are challenging and require not just a high level of comprehension, but also mastery of the usage of various compound forms and fixed expressions.
Joachim Buscha. Deutsches Übungsbuch. (Reprinted, I think, in revised form as Übungsgrammatik Deutsch)
Günter Schade. Einführung in die deutsche Sprache der Wissenschaften.
German figures of speech are one thing I have definitely not yet mastered. For finding equivalents to English expressions, something like Peter Lupson's Guide to German Idioms, or Henry Strutz's German Idioms, which contain indexes for keywords in both languages, is invaluable.
The online, searchable Redensarten-Index is also quite useful. (Since this is not a bilingual database, it does require that one has at least a general idea of which keywords are involved in the German expression being sought.)
Additional online collections of idioms and sayings include redensarten.net (searchable by theme) and Phraseo.
And last but not least, Phrasen.com is a bilingual (English and German) collection of phrases ranging from quotations and conventional sayings to everyday collocations. Content is at least partially user-generated, and there is a form for entering translations of phrases or ones which you wish have translated.
4. Specialized Vocabulary
Although I generally try to avoid actively translating when using a foreign language, in more specialized areas I've found that there is no replacement for a bilingual glossary for looking up terms which one already knows in one's native language. Many fields of science and industry have printed dictionaries in two (or more) languages. For the humanities a bit more searching is necessary.
Literary Theory & Criticism
Saad Elkhadem. The York Dictionary of English-French-German-Spanish Literary Terms
W.V Ruttkowski and R.E. Blake. Literaturwörterbuch: in Deutsch, Englisch und Französisch
Rose M. Bachem Alent. Companion to Foreign Language Composition: A German-English Guidebook to Literary Terms
E.W. Herd and August Obermeyer. A Glossary of German Literary Terms
Alent's text is less a glossary of specialized terminology than a collection of thematically arranged vocabulary and phrases (both basic and more advanced) useful for discussing literature in general. The advantage to this book is that it includes information such as gender of nouns which a non-native speaker needs when using the vocabulary. The other glossaries generally do not include this information, which is highly irritating.
Herd & Obermeyer's book has a somewhat hybrid character. It is organized like an ordinary dictionary of literary terms, but the headwords are all in German while the explanations are in English. It is somewhat in need of updating (I would have liked to see terms for more recent trends in German literature, such as Trümmerliteratur or Wenderoman).
Sewing
I've managed to track down several online sources which include English-German glossaries of sewing terminology (if I ever have time it would probably make sense to compile them into a single list). Unfortunately, there are still gaps and I find myself spending way more time than necessary simply trying to figure out what a particular notion or type of fabric is called so that I can then figure out where to purchase it.
http://www.naehen-schneidern.de/naehlexikon
http://www.funfabric.com/kast.php?cont=tipp&kap=1&let=Tipps&art=038
http://www.neheleniapatterns.com/html/body_nahvokabular.html
I also recommend Pons' Bildwörterbuch for more detailed information about all kinds of everyday objects. My voabulary for things tends to be highly generic (I can talk about sinks, beds, and doors, but not drains, bedsprings, or door frames), and sometimes -- for example, when something isn't working the way it's supposed to -- that's not enough.
5. Slang, Colloquialisms, Neologisms
There are a couple of good sites for looking up colloquialisms that often haven't made it into the dictionary:
http://www.mundmische.de/
http://www.sprachnudel.de/
The Deutsche Welle podcasts Wort der Woche and Sprachbar also contain some interesting tidbits on idioms and colloquial language, although in general the podcasts are aimed at a beginning-intermediate audience.
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Mittwoch, 6. Januar 2010
Donnerstag, 11. Juni 2009
French textbook reviews
Brunetti, Mendor. Read, Speak, Write French. Bantam, 1963.
I don't think I've seen any language textbook that's arranged quite like this. It's divided into three sections: a grammar (with drills & practice exercises), conversations which are keyed to the grammar, and readings, usually 2-3 pages, adapted from various literary sources. The book is designed for self-study and includes a key to all the exercises, and the conversations and readings are presented with a parallel translation. In addition to vocabularies (including separate lists for the individual readings) and grammatical tables, the supplementary material at the end also includes some interesting lists of French proverbs and idioms.
The grammatical section is very condensed and moves rather quickly; the pace may be too swift for many learners, but for someone who has some basic knowledge of French, or who is willing to spend a lot of time at the beginning memorizing paradigms, it may be manageable. I bought this book mostly for the readings, so I haven't been using this section very much, but it seems to be clear enough and the concepts are introduced in a sensible order.
The "conversation" section consists of sets of questions and answers which might be only loosly described as conversations, as the content of most of them would normally not be uttered in any real-life interaction! An example (taken randomly from the book):
"Feraient-elles une bonne promenade si elles n'étaient pas trop fatiguées" ("Would they take a good walk if they were not too tired?")
However, at times the author seems to be aware of the slight absurdity of the textbook sentences, and there's a certain subtle humor to the text, as in the following exchange: "Non parlons-nous pas français maintenant?" "Non, nous ne parlons pas français , nous parlons chinois." ("Are we speaking French right now?" "No, we're not speaking French, we're speaking Chinese.")
Furthermore, because the conversations are organized around grammatical principles rather than themes or subjects, they provide little guidance for coping with situations such as introducing yourself, talking about the weather, going to the store, or any number of everyday occurrences. (There is a short "situational" vocabulary at the back, covering such topics as "food," "family" and "professions," but a list of nouns is not quite the same as seeing the words used in context.)
That said, although the dialogues may not be immediately useful for communicative purposes, as one might expect, the language is idiomatic and makes use of complex constructions, and the sentences are above all useful for practicing transforming questions into statements, substituting pronouns for nouns, changing positives into negatives, and so forth. As in English, the rules governing French word order are fairly complex, and skill in making these kinds of transformations is invaluable.
The readings are quite fun. They are short, fast-paced, and frequently humorous, and contain complex vocabulary and sentence structures while avoiding the long descriptive passages in which a new reader in a foreign language often bogs down. Most of the stories are not by French authors, surprisingly (the second selection is a story by O. Henry), which is rather unfortunate, as it misses an opportunity to provide a glimpse into French culture.
For the $2 I spent on this at the used book store, it was definitely worth buying even if only for the readings & practice exercises. It would probably work well as a succinct grammatical reference and reader used in tandem with a more recent, communicative and audio-based text such as "Teach Yourself" or a similar series.
_________________
William S. Hendrix & Walter Meiden. Beginning French: A Cultural Approach. 3rd ed. 1961.
Another excellent textbook from the 60s. It uses a loosely "natural method" (reading-based) approach, starting with a map of France and discussion of the countries in Europe, and building up to readings about life in France. One possible disadvantage is that actual conversational skills are somewhat delayed; the student who is not interested in the geography of France will find the first few chapters rather frustrating. There are a couple of places where vocabulary is introduced too quickly (as in the section on fashion, which covers a number of fairly technical vocabulary items as well as basic clothing terms). In general, however, it is well organized and successful.
Although it is intended for classroom instruction, the format is also quite suitable for self-study, as the core of the book is the reading selections that open each chapter.
Grammar points are not covered in the individual chapters; instead, the student is referred to specific paragraphs in the substantial grammatical appendix, which can make it very easy to simply skip over this information without looking it up. Likewise, there is a review section after each group of five chapters which includes vocabulary for the unit and additional exercises (usuall English->French) for each chapter. This organization scheme is somewhat irritating when covering the material for the first time, as it makes it necessary to constantly flip back and forth. However, for review purposes it is ideal; having the grammatical information all in one place is convenient, and this section could easily be used as a reference separately from the rest of the book.
Out of print, but easily found online through used book sellers.
_________________
R. de Roussy de Sales. Easy French Reader. McGraw-Hill, 2004 (1970). ISBN 9780071428484. $11
A progressive reader intended for beginning students. It is divided into three sections: a story about an American and a Parisian and their respective cultures; readings in French history; and adapted stories by French writers. Includes a vocabulary in the back and occasional glosses in the margins.
This really is an ideal reader for absolute beginners -- I was able to pick it up and understand most of the readings in the first section with only a very basic knowledge of French grammar (a personal pronouns, the verbs 'to be' and 'to have' and so forth). It's fairly repetitive and provides enough information to learn a lot of words from context. The second and third sections are more difficult, but quite manageable, good for a slightly more experienced reader to expand his comprehension and reinforce vocabulary.
The content is simple -- as is somewhat inevitable for this audience -- but not simplistic or condescending, and the stories manage to be interesting given the context.
Highly recommended as a supplement to any course of study. I only wish there was an audio version to accompany this.
_________________
Christopher and Theodore Kendris. French Now. Level 1 (with audio CDs and answer key). Barron's, 2007. ISBN 9780764179587. $30
This book is simply terrible. It promises to be a beginning high school/college level textbook suitable for both classroom and self-study, which I hoped meant that it was fairly comprehensive, but...unfortunately, in this case, you get what you pay for: a poorly conceived, amateurish book which does not, as far as I can see, meet the needs of any of its potential audiences. The audio is decent, and it has the huge advantage that it is spoken quite slowly, which helped me get a sense of how French sounds are elided together. The rest of the book, however, has so many problems that it's difficult to know where to begin.
The dialogues are artificial, condescending, and completely implausible, and they seem to have been written by an adult who had very misguided ideas about what is important to teenagers. For example, there's a dialogue at the restaurant where a young man asks about various types of food (an apple, a sandwich), but does not want any of them. When the garçon asks him if he would like some chocolate, he says yes, to which the waiter replies that they don't have any.
In addition to the implausible dialogues, the authors' English is frequently unidiomatic, which gives a poor impression of their competence. Although translationese can be found in some very good textbooks and under certain circumstances may serve a useful pedagogical purpose, here it seems symptomatic of more pervasive issues with the book. At one point, for example, the student is prompted "Mrs. Dumont gives the child a candy," with the intention that they will then produce the French "un bonbon." This may be acceptable French, but in English "candy" is a collective noun; we must either use the plural or say "a piece of candy." Recognizing that French expresses certain ideas differently than English is a valuable insight which is crucial to acquiring a language rather than treating it as a code to be translated word by word, and the authors miss an opportunity to use an example like this to illustrate the point. Treating the student as a mature, intelligent individual who is capable of figuring out complex ideas would go far towards remedying this problem.
Finally, even half-way through the book, the language remains exasperatingly simplistic, and it's not because the book focuses on the basics and is rich in examples and meaningful practice exercises: there's simply little content for a lot of bulk. The passé composé is introduces quite late, the imparfait and subjunctive not at all, as far as I could tell. This book might be suitable as an introduction for a student who has no experience at all learning languages, but for the student with any experience at all who is interested in seriously learning the language, I cannot recommend this. (Barron's also has similar books for Spanish and Italian, it seems -- based on my experience with this one, I will be steering clear of them and sticking with Teach Yourself or some such course in the future.)
_________________
William Eric Morrison and Jean Ch. Gauthier. A French Grammar. American Book Company, 1935 (c. 1923)
An old and quite obscure textbook, and therefore probably not of great relevance to the prospective learner. But since I have it I figured I might as well review it along with everything else.
The author's preface describes their approach very well:
"This book combines the Natural with the Grammar method of teaching French....The rules are stated in Englich, but the classroom exercises are in French, and for the most part oral. Furthermore, all headings are in French, as well as the conversational grammatical summary, Sommaire Grammatical, provided in each lesson. French words and expressions are so constantly repeated in these headings, exercises, and summaries, that the student gradually and naturally acquires a facility in using them in his conversation. The grammar rules are taught by a combination of the inductive and deductive methods. The construction to be explained is indicated in a heading; then its use is shown in examples; and finally the rule itself is stated."
I picked this up for less than a dollar at a Goodwill store when I was first starting to think about learning French (mind you, for that price I would have even purchased a grammar of Vietnamese or Swahili -- because you never know when the urge might strike). This was the first French book I used, and (as should be clear by now) the authors' method works well with my learning style. However...
Because of the age of the book, the content of the readings often seems odd in the extreme, bearing testiment to the period it was written:
The book is absolutely packed with information, but definitely moved too quickly for me. By lesson 20 they have introduced the present, past indefinite, future, conditional, imperfect, and past definite verb forms, which I found a little too much. If they had provided extensive drills in recognizing and producing the various forms (as would be the case in a Latin book, for example), it would have helped. The other problem with this is that the explanations of how to conjugate different types of verbs were intended to be systematic, but so abbreviated that they were often less than completely clear -- particularly, I think, for someone still struggling with the phonetics of French. I would also have liked a more extensive explanation of when the various tenses are used, but they were introduced so quickly I had trouble telling what form was being used in a given situation, much less why.
Strengths: Very good explanations of the different syntactic transformations (and in French this is crucial). They also include all sorts of information on idiomatic constructions or notable usages of words being taught. For example, when teaching the comparative and superlative, they not only tell you how to create them from the positive form of the adjective, but also how to say "greater than/less than," the usage of comparatives with numbers, when to use "de" instead of "que," other uses of "plus" and so forth. Furthermore, it has a very useful index of grammatical constructions and usages as well as the usual appendices with verb tables and vocabulary. I've been keeping it around so I can look up half-remembered constructions as needed.
I don't think I've seen any language textbook that's arranged quite like this. It's divided into three sections: a grammar (with drills & practice exercises), conversations which are keyed to the grammar, and readings, usually 2-3 pages, adapted from various literary sources. The book is designed for self-study and includes a key to all the exercises, and the conversations and readings are presented with a parallel translation. In addition to vocabularies (including separate lists for the individual readings) and grammatical tables, the supplementary material at the end also includes some interesting lists of French proverbs and idioms.
The grammatical section is very condensed and moves rather quickly; the pace may be too swift for many learners, but for someone who has some basic knowledge of French, or who is willing to spend a lot of time at the beginning memorizing paradigms, it may be manageable. I bought this book mostly for the readings, so I haven't been using this section very much, but it seems to be clear enough and the concepts are introduced in a sensible order.
The "conversation" section consists of sets of questions and answers which might be only loosly described as conversations, as the content of most of them would normally not be uttered in any real-life interaction! An example (taken randomly from the book):
"Feraient-elles une bonne promenade si elles n'étaient pas trop fatiguées" ("Would they take a good walk if they were not too tired?")
However, at times the author seems to be aware of the slight absurdity of the textbook sentences, and there's a certain subtle humor to the text, as in the following exchange: "Non parlons-nous pas français maintenant?" "Non, nous ne parlons pas français , nous parlons chinois." ("Are we speaking French right now?" "No, we're not speaking French, we're speaking Chinese.")
Furthermore, because the conversations are organized around grammatical principles rather than themes or subjects, they provide little guidance for coping with situations such as introducing yourself, talking about the weather, going to the store, or any number of everyday occurrences. (There is a short "situational" vocabulary at the back, covering such topics as "food," "family" and "professions," but a list of nouns is not quite the same as seeing the words used in context.)
That said, although the dialogues may not be immediately useful for communicative purposes, as one might expect, the language is idiomatic and makes use of complex constructions, and the sentences are above all useful for practicing transforming questions into statements, substituting pronouns for nouns, changing positives into negatives, and so forth. As in English, the rules governing French word order are fairly complex, and skill in making these kinds of transformations is invaluable.
The readings are quite fun. They are short, fast-paced, and frequently humorous, and contain complex vocabulary and sentence structures while avoiding the long descriptive passages in which a new reader in a foreign language often bogs down. Most of the stories are not by French authors, surprisingly (the second selection is a story by O. Henry), which is rather unfortunate, as it misses an opportunity to provide a glimpse into French culture.
For the $2 I spent on this at the used book store, it was definitely worth buying even if only for the readings & practice exercises. It would probably work well as a succinct grammatical reference and reader used in tandem with a more recent, communicative and audio-based text such as "Teach Yourself" or a similar series.
_________________
William S. Hendrix & Walter Meiden. Beginning French: A Cultural Approach. 3rd ed. 1961.
Another excellent textbook from the 60s. It uses a loosely "natural method" (reading-based) approach, starting with a map of France and discussion of the countries in Europe, and building up to readings about life in France. One possible disadvantage is that actual conversational skills are somewhat delayed; the student who is not interested in the geography of France will find the first few chapters rather frustrating. There are a couple of places where vocabulary is introduced too quickly (as in the section on fashion, which covers a number of fairly technical vocabulary items as well as basic clothing terms). In general, however, it is well organized and successful.
Although it is intended for classroom instruction, the format is also quite suitable for self-study, as the core of the book is the reading selections that open each chapter.
Grammar points are not covered in the individual chapters; instead, the student is referred to specific paragraphs in the substantial grammatical appendix, which can make it very easy to simply skip over this information without looking it up. Likewise, there is a review section after each group of five chapters which includes vocabulary for the unit and additional exercises (usuall English->French) for each chapter. This organization scheme is somewhat irritating when covering the material for the first time, as it makes it necessary to constantly flip back and forth. However, for review purposes it is ideal; having the grammatical information all in one place is convenient, and this section could easily be used as a reference separately from the rest of the book.
Out of print, but easily found online through used book sellers.
_________________
R. de Roussy de Sales. Easy French Reader. McGraw-Hill, 2004 (1970). ISBN 9780071428484. $11
A progressive reader intended for beginning students. It is divided into three sections: a story about an American and a Parisian and their respective cultures; readings in French history; and adapted stories by French writers. Includes a vocabulary in the back and occasional glosses in the margins.
This really is an ideal reader for absolute beginners -- I was able to pick it up and understand most of the readings in the first section with only a very basic knowledge of French grammar (a personal pronouns, the verbs 'to be' and 'to have' and so forth). It's fairly repetitive and provides enough information to learn a lot of words from context. The second and third sections are more difficult, but quite manageable, good for a slightly more experienced reader to expand his comprehension and reinforce vocabulary.
The content is simple -- as is somewhat inevitable for this audience -- but not simplistic or condescending, and the stories manage to be interesting given the context.
Highly recommended as a supplement to any course of study. I only wish there was an audio version to accompany this.
_________________
Christopher and Theodore Kendris. French Now. Level 1 (with audio CDs and answer key). Barron's, 2007. ISBN 9780764179587. $30
This book is simply terrible. It promises to be a beginning high school/college level textbook suitable for both classroom and self-study, which I hoped meant that it was fairly comprehensive, but...unfortunately, in this case, you get what you pay for: a poorly conceived, amateurish book which does not, as far as I can see, meet the needs of any of its potential audiences. The audio is decent, and it has the huge advantage that it is spoken quite slowly, which helped me get a sense of how French sounds are elided together. The rest of the book, however, has so many problems that it's difficult to know where to begin.
The dialogues are artificial, condescending, and completely implausible, and they seem to have been written by an adult who had very misguided ideas about what is important to teenagers. For example, there's a dialogue at the restaurant where a young man asks about various types of food (an apple, a sandwich), but does not want any of them. When the garçon asks him if he would like some chocolate, he says yes, to which the waiter replies that they don't have any.
In addition to the implausible dialogues, the authors' English is frequently unidiomatic, which gives a poor impression of their competence. Although translationese can be found in some very good textbooks and under certain circumstances may serve a useful pedagogical purpose, here it seems symptomatic of more pervasive issues with the book. At one point, for example, the student is prompted "Mrs. Dumont gives the child a candy," with the intention that they will then produce the French "un bonbon." This may be acceptable French, but in English "candy" is a collective noun; we must either use the plural or say "a piece of candy." Recognizing that French expresses certain ideas differently than English is a valuable insight which is crucial to acquiring a language rather than treating it as a code to be translated word by word, and the authors miss an opportunity to use an example like this to illustrate the point. Treating the student as a mature, intelligent individual who is capable of figuring out complex ideas would go far towards remedying this problem.
Finally, even half-way through the book, the language remains exasperatingly simplistic, and it's not because the book focuses on the basics and is rich in examples and meaningful practice exercises: there's simply little content for a lot of bulk. The passé composé is introduces quite late, the imparfait and subjunctive not at all, as far as I could tell. This book might be suitable as an introduction for a student who has no experience at all learning languages, but for the student with any experience at all who is interested in seriously learning the language, I cannot recommend this. (Barron's also has similar books for Spanish and Italian, it seems -- based on my experience with this one, I will be steering clear of them and sticking with Teach Yourself or some such course in the future.)
_________________
William Eric Morrison and Jean Ch. Gauthier. A French Grammar. American Book Company, 1935 (c. 1923)
An old and quite obscure textbook, and therefore probably not of great relevance to the prospective learner. But since I have it I figured I might as well review it along with everything else.
The author's preface describes their approach very well:
"This book combines the Natural with the Grammar method of teaching French....The rules are stated in Englich, but the classroom exercises are in French, and for the most part oral. Furthermore, all headings are in French, as well as the conversational grammatical summary, Sommaire Grammatical, provided in each lesson. French words and expressions are so constantly repeated in these headings, exercises, and summaries, that the student gradually and naturally acquires a facility in using them in his conversation. The grammar rules are taught by a combination of the inductive and deductive methods. The construction to be explained is indicated in a heading; then its use is shown in examples; and finally the rule itself is stated."
I picked this up for less than a dollar at a Goodwill store when I was first starting to think about learning French (mind you, for that price I would have even purchased a grammar of Vietnamese or Swahili -- because you never know when the urge might strike). This was the first French book I used, and (as should be clear by now) the authors' method works well with my learning style. However...
Because of the age of the book, the content of the readings often seems odd in the extreme, bearing testiment to the period it was written:
J'ai reçu une lettre d'un ami dans laquelle il me donne des renseignements sur la situation des ouvriers en France....Les ouvriers reçoivent des salaires plus élevés qu'avant la guerre.[yes, "ouvrier," as far as I can tell, has just as much of a Socialist overtone in French as the English translation does]
I received a letter from a friend in which he gives me information about the situation of the working-man in France....The working-man receives a higher salary than before the war.
Dans la dernière guerre, beaucoup d'hommes ont reçu des blessures, dont ils portent encore le trace. Il y a des visages sans nez et des yeux qui ont oublié la lumierè du jour et la couleur des cieux.Or this example from a section on rules of politeness, which is straight out of another era:
During the last war, many men received wounds of which they still bear the traces. There are faces without noses and eyes which have forgotten the light of day and the color of the heavens.
Si vois désirez faire la conaissance de vos nouveaux voisons, vous irez chez aux et vous y déposerez une carte. Si ces personnes désirent faire votre conaissance, elle cois enverront un petit mot pour vous indiquer leur jour de reception.Some general notes on the layout and content:
If you wish to make the acquaintance of some of your new neighbors, you will go to their houses and leave a card. If these people wish to make your acquaintance, they will send a short message to indicate which day they receive [visitors].
The book is absolutely packed with information, but definitely moved too quickly for me. By lesson 20 they have introduced the present, past indefinite, future, conditional, imperfect, and past definite verb forms, which I found a little too much. If they had provided extensive drills in recognizing and producing the various forms (as would be the case in a Latin book, for example), it would have helped. The other problem with this is that the explanations of how to conjugate different types of verbs were intended to be systematic, but so abbreviated that they were often less than completely clear -- particularly, I think, for someone still struggling with the phonetics of French. I would also have liked a more extensive explanation of when the various tenses are used, but they were introduced so quickly I had trouble telling what form was being used in a given situation, much less why.
Strengths: Very good explanations of the different syntactic transformations (and in French this is crucial). They also include all sorts of information on idiomatic constructions or notable usages of words being taught. For example, when teaching the comparative and superlative, they not only tell you how to create them from the positive form of the adjective, but also how to say "greater than/less than," the usage of comparatives with numbers, when to use "de" instead of "que," other uses of "plus" and so forth. Furthermore, it has a very useful index of grammatical constructions and usages as well as the usual appendices with verb tables and vocabulary. I've been keeping it around so I can look up half-remembered constructions as needed.
Freitag, 29. Mai 2009
Greek readers
More ancient Greek resources...with the disclaimer that I haven't used (or even seen) all the titles in questions. Comments/suggestions on omissions (or broken links) are as usual welcome.
Communicative/Reading-Based Textbooks
These texts move away from a traditional grammar-translation approach and focus more on reading and aquiring the language. The approaches are fairly disparate, but all of them, as far as I can tell, apply techniques for modern languages to teaching ancient Greek.
Easy/adapted readers
Johannides' book is hilarous, but unfortunately printed in the verdammt German Fraktur. I'm not sure whether Sellner's book is a phrase book or more of a collection of sententia antiquae.
Vocabulary grouped around semantic fields.
These books are primarily useful for vocab drilling and are organized alphabetically or according to frequency in Greek texts
For composition
Communicative/Reading-Based Textbooks
These texts move away from a traditional grammar-translation approach and focus more on reading and aquiring the language. The approaches are fairly disparate, but all of them, as far as I can tell, apply techniques for modern languages to teaching ancient Greek.
- Paula Saffire and Catherine Freis. Ancient Greek Alive.
- Günther Zuntz. Griechischer Lehrgang (German and Greek. There is apparently an English version which is recommended by Seamus MacDonald)
- Athenaze (Italian edition, adapted by Luigi Miraglia to resemble Orberg's Lingua Latina. It is available at his website)
- Polis Koine. A relatively new French-based course which aims to teach Ancient Greek as a living language (website)
- Assimil's Le grec ancien sans peine. Sample page here.
- A number of people have also suggested the Greek Ollendorff by Asahel Clark Kendrick. Although it's a traditional grammar-based course in many ways, it includes a lot of practice exercises, often in the form of dialogues.
- W. H. D. Rouse. A Greek Boy at Home. (Meant to accompany his First Greek Course. Files for both are here. He also published a reader, available here)
- C. W. Peckett and A.R. Munday. Thrasymachus.
- Joint Association of Classical Teachers. Reading Greek.
Easy/adapted readers
- C.E. Freeman. A Greek Reader for Schools (reprint isbn 0865162670)
- Adolf Kaegi. Greek Readings for Review (reprint isbn 0865165491)
- Francis David Morice. Easy Stories in Attic Greek (updated by Anne Mahoney, isbn 1585101893)
- Evelyn Abbott. Easy Greek Reader.
- Frederic Jacobs. The Greek Reader.
- William George Rushbrooke. A First Greek Reader.
- John E. B. Mayor. First Greek Reader.
- Archibald Hamilton Bryce. First Greek Reader.
- Charles Melville Moss. A First Greek Reader.
- Alexander Waugh Young. A Tutorial Greek Reader.
- Albert Harkness. First Greek Book. (The third part of this text includes reading selections)
- John Stuart Blackie. Greek and English Dialogues.
Johannides' book is hilarous, but unfortunately printed in the verdammt German Fraktur. I'm not sure whether Sellner's book is a phrase book or more of a collection of sententia antiquae.
- Alfred Sellner. Altgriechisch im Alltag
- E. Johannides. (pseud of Eduard Johnson. biographical note here) Sprechen Sie Attisch?
Vocabulary grouped around semantic fields.
- H.W. Auden. Greek Prose Phrase-Book
- J.H. Schmidt. Synonymik der griechischen Sprache (4 volumes, available on googlebooks)
- Pillon and Arnold. Handbook of Greek Synonymes.
- Robert Weir. Greek Vocabulary for Young Boys
Two titles also look useful, but I'm not sure how much they're oriented to the reader who knows Greek, and how much they're intended for students interested primarily in the philosophical concepts.
- Francis Edward Peters. Greek Philosophical Terms.
- J. O. Urmson. The Greek Philosophical Vocabulary.
These books are primarily useful for vocab drilling and are organized alphabetically or according to frequency in Greek texts
- Malcolm Campbell. Classical Greek Prose: A Basic Vocabulary
- W.J Bullick and J.A. Harrison. Greek Vocabulary and Idiom
- Owen and Goodspeed. Homeric Vocabularies
- Thomas Meyer and Hermann Steinthal. Grund- und Aufbauwortschatz Griechisch
Dictionaries
For composition
- Menge-Güthling Griechisch-deutsches und deutsch-griechishes und Wörterbuch
- G. M. Edwards. An English-Greek Lexicon
- S.C. Woodhouse. English-Greek Dictionary
- J. Jackson. Iambica
Sonntag, 19. April 2009
Beginning German Resources
Some books and resources I've found helpful when doing German tutoring.
The textbook I generally recommend for self-study is Deutsche Sprachlehre für Ausländer by Dora Schulz and Heinz Griesbach. This is a natural-method textbook (i.e., all explanations are in German) which starts out with easy readings and dialogues that get gradually more difficult, and it contains plenty of grammar drills (making questions out of statements, replacing nouns with pronouns, and so forth).
The other books I would recommend are the Living Language Ultimate Course and Teach Yourself German, as both these series are generally fairly solid, reasonably priced, and include audio tapes for practice. The usual problem here is a tendency to be a bit superficial - although they go beyond the tourist phrase-book level - and a lack of sufficient practice exercises. But both series serve as a good starting point.
I have generally found reading/grammar-based courses to meet my learning style the best. "Listen and repeat" type courses such as Pimsleur drive me nuts, and textbooks intended for classroom instruction are not necessarily useful for the independent learner (plus, they are frequently incredibly expensive).
There are tons of resources for learning German online; unfortunately, I haven't done extensive research on this as I haven't any immediate need for beginning German instruction. There does seem to be a gap in most languages between phrase-book type stuff and advanced dialogues; most podcasts are more suitable for intermediate/advanced students who already have a good grasp of the basics and need practice listening and building vocabulary.
The online Beginners' German course by Paul Joyce looks good, although I haven't used it with students. It includes a fair amount of audio.
The German radio Deutsche Welle has audio resources for learners of all levels.
The BBC also some lessons in basic German. My impression is that it provides more than just a phrase-book, but is probably not enough for someone who seriously wants to learn the language.
Both these readers are intended for beginners:
Hannelore and William Crossgrove. Graded German Reader. ISBN 0669201596
Heinz Thorn. Beginner's German Reader. ISBN 084422170
Kaleidoskop has short readings on various topics on everyday life in Germany. Seems to be oriented more towards a school-age audience, but many of the topics in the should be appropriate for learners of all ages. Beginners should check out the archive, which is sorted by topic.
Worksheets provided by Nancy Thuleen to accompany her introductory German courses.
Grammar practice
german-grammar.de provides a good overview of essential grammatical topics, as well as some discussions of more advanced issues. Includes audio of all examples. Quite well done, although probably not suited for use as a stand-alone course because of the lack of exercises.
Fundamentals of German. Paradigms and grammar from the University of Houston.
Deutsche Grammatik online has exercises and games on various grammar topics (primarily level B1 - intermediate - and above)
Blogs for beginning and intermediate German language learners:
transparent.com's German blog includes essays on various topics related to German language and culture. The posts are sprinkled throughout with relevant vocabulary, so it's a good way for a beginner to pick up some new words.
Deut(sch)lich includes mini-lessons for learners of various levels. The blog is entirely in German, but there's some material that should still be useful for a beginner (these are listed under the tag "A1").
pukkagerman is a podcast aimed at beginning to intermediate German learners. All episodes include a complete transcript and translations of vocabulary words.
Audio Lingua has audio files of varying difficulties in German (also in various other European languages); sortable by level.
Slow German offers podcasts (with transcript) about German culture and life in Germany.
German Words Explained are short podcasts in German focusing on key words from German politics, culture, and media.
The textbook I generally recommend for self-study is Deutsche Sprachlehre für Ausländer by Dora Schulz and Heinz Griesbach. This is a natural-method textbook (i.e., all explanations are in German) which starts out with easy readings and dialogues that get gradually more difficult, and it contains plenty of grammar drills (making questions out of statements, replacing nouns with pronouns, and so forth).
The other books I would recommend are the Living Language Ultimate Course and Teach Yourself German, as both these series are generally fairly solid, reasonably priced, and include audio tapes for practice. The usual problem here is a tendency to be a bit superficial - although they go beyond the tourist phrase-book level - and a lack of sufficient practice exercises. But both series serve as a good starting point.
I have generally found reading/grammar-based courses to meet my learning style the best. "Listen and repeat" type courses such as Pimsleur drive me nuts, and textbooks intended for classroom instruction are not necessarily useful for the independent learner (plus, they are frequently incredibly expensive).
There are tons of resources for learning German online; unfortunately, I haven't done extensive research on this as I haven't any immediate need for beginning German instruction. There does seem to be a gap in most languages between phrase-book type stuff and advanced dialogues; most podcasts are more suitable for intermediate/advanced students who already have a good grasp of the basics and need practice listening and building vocabulary.
The online Beginners' German course by Paul Joyce looks good, although I haven't used it with students. It includes a fair amount of audio.
The German radio Deutsche Welle has audio resources for learners of all levels.
The BBC also some lessons in basic German. My impression is that it provides more than just a phrase-book, but is probably not enough for someone who seriously wants to learn the language.
Both these readers are intended for beginners:
Hannelore and William Crossgrove. Graded German Reader. ISBN 0669201596
Heinz Thorn. Beginner's German Reader. ISBN 084422170
Kaleidoskop has short readings on various topics on everyday life in Germany. Seems to be oriented more towards a school-age audience, but many of the topics in the should be appropriate for learners of all ages. Beginners should check out the archive, which is sorted by topic.
Worksheets provided by Nancy Thuleen to accompany her introductory German courses.
Grammar practice
german-grammar.de provides a good overview of essential grammatical topics, as well as some discussions of more advanced issues. Includes audio of all examples. Quite well done, although probably not suited for use as a stand-alone course because of the lack of exercises.
Fundamentals of German. Paradigms and grammar from the University of Houston.
Deutsche Grammatik online has exercises and games on various grammar topics (primarily level B1 - intermediate - and above)
Blogs for beginning and intermediate German language learners:
transparent.com's German blog includes essays on various topics related to German language and culture. The posts are sprinkled throughout with relevant vocabulary, so it's a good way for a beginner to pick up some new words.
Deut(sch)lich includes mini-lessons for learners of various levels. The blog is entirely in German, but there's some material that should still be useful for a beginner (these are listed under the tag "A1").
pukkagerman is a podcast aimed at beginning to intermediate German learners. All episodes include a complete transcript and translations of vocabulary words.
Audio Lingua has audio files of varying difficulties in German (also in various other European languages); sortable by level.
Slow German offers podcasts (with transcript) about German culture and life in Germany.
German Words Explained are short podcasts in German focusing on key words from German politics, culture, and media.
Samstag, 28. März 2009
Audio resources for ancient Greek
Please note that inclusion of a link on the list does not imply any judgment about quality or accuracy, except in the case of the tutorials. I have, however, tried to limit the list to resources for the reconstructed classical pronunciation rather than NT or Koine. Recordings which are blatantly non-classical are marked as such. The focus here is on connected speech, not isolated units; hence, recordings featuring only pronunciation of the alphabet or individual words (such as Mastronarde's otherwise excellent tutorials) have generally been omitted.
I do my best to keep this list updated; however, if you notice that any of the links are broken (or if you know of other resources that I've missed), please, please, please drop me a line, either via e-mail or as a comment here in the blog.
Articles and tutorials:
The key texts on this subject are W. S. Allen's Vox Graeca and Devine & Stephens' The Prosody of Greek Speech. The former requires at a basic knowledge of phonetics; the latter is considerably more technical.
For those who read German, Danek and Hagel's article "Homer-Singen" is a helpful discussion of the behavior of the pitch-accent across phrases. There is an additional article from Danek in the Wiener Zeitung which discusses more general problems of how to pronounce ancient Greek.
The late Professor William Harris has a number of articles on the pronunciation and performance of ancient Greek:
The Musical Pitch Accents in Greek ("A basic statement about our misuse use of pitch and duration in ancient Greek!")
On Reading Homer: Acoustic or Optical? ("Will it be optical from a text, or acoustic from your oral performance? A detailed study of this and related problems about text and sound")
Sound of the Homeric Bard ("A study of the problems which face reconstruction of the sound of Homer's epic language, with notes for new performance-reading style")
Reading the Homeric Dactylic Line ("A practical approach to Homeric verse in an acoustically satisfying, realtime reading mode")
William Annis (aoidoi.org) has a number of useful articles on Greek meter and pronunciation, including a tutorial on Reciting the Homeric Hexameter (with audio clips).
Allan Shaw (prosoidia.com) has an article on ancient Greek poetry and music and on reciting ancient Greek along with some notes for classicists.
Recordings from:
Homer, Odyssey 1.1-21
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 40-45, 160-183, and 958-1000
Homeric Recitation by Avery Andrews has audio samples and a discussion of various techniques for reciting Homeric poetry. Includes recordings of Iliad 1.1-7 and Odyssey 11.150-203, 12.154-200 and 19.509-535 (WAV and RealAudio files)
The eccentrically-named www.turdpolish.com used to include a useful discussion of Greek pronunciation along with some readings from the Iliad. The site is now apparently defunct, however.
Stephen Daitz has an audio Guide to the Pronunciation and Reading of Ancient Greek and a short accompanying booklet with the Greek text (for his other recording of ancient Greek texts, see below)
Audio based Greek courses/audio supplements to Greek textbooks
JACT's Reading Greek textbook series has an accompanying Speaking Greek audio CD. It includes an introduction to the pronunciation of ancient Greek as well as readings adapted from classical authors. Audio uses the reconstructed pronunciation but does not attempt pitch accents.
Assimil's Le Grec ancien sans Peine follows their model for modern languages. The audio files are entirely in Greek; the companion textbook includes explanations in French. Stefan Hagel (see above) was involved in the production of the recordings. Information (in French) and sample pages here.
Catherine Fries' has a Language lab with audio drills for the introductory lessons of Ancient Greek Alive on her website. (For the sake of comparision, Paula Saffire, the other co-author of the book, also has some audio samples from the book)
Learning Greek Podcasts
There have been several attempts to create audio courses in podcast form for ancient Greek. Unfortunately, none of them have produced more than a few recordings before being abandoned.
Lingua Latina et Graeca by Seumas Macdonald includes audio recordings from from W.H.D. Rouse, "A Greek Boy at Home" and "Greek via Kendrick". (The podcast no longer exists as of Sept 2010, but some of the files have been archived at the website linked above).
David Clark has recordings of the first two lessons from Kendrick's "Greek Ollendorf".
Recitations of Classical Texts
The Living Voice of Greek and Latin series by Stephen Daitz is unquestionably the largest collection of audio recordings of Greek texts, including:
Exerpts from these recordings, along with a few texts by other readers, are available at the Society for the Oral Reading of Greek and Latin Literature (SORGLL)
The site also includes a short audio guide to Greek pronunciation.
Andrew Reinhard has also posted extensive sections from Daitz' recordings (Aristophanes' Birds and Euripides' Hecuba).
An audio recording of Aeschylus' Agamemnon was produced to accompany a new commentary of the play by David Raeburn and Oliver Thomas. Instructions for ordering the CDs are available on the publisher's website.
Stefan Hagel's The Sound of Ancient Greek has audio files from:
James Diggle and Anthony Bowen recorded large sections from Medea for a performance in Greek by the Cambridge Greek Play Committee in 2007. The website no longer seems to be available, but the recordings can be found at archive.org.
Classics professor John Kirby has recordings from Book 3 of the Iliad and Stesichorus Fragment 192 on his website (edit: link broken as of June 2010. old page at archive.org)
Andrew Wilson's Classics Pages include recitations of fragments of Sappho and the opening lines of the Iliad
The Association for Latin Teaching has put up a couple of audio recordings from Ion. More stress than pitch accent, but otherwise the readers seem to be aiming for a classical pronunciation. (edit: link proken as of September 2012. old page at archive.org)
Griechische Verse - Griechische Prosa (audio CD, ISBN 978-3-487-11807-9)
Selections from Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato. Read by Konrat Ziegler. The publisher, Olms Verlag, includes an audio sample on their website; the Homer recitation is reminiscent of liturgical chants.
"Poems Found in Translation" by A.Z. Foreman includes recitations from several Greek texts in reconstructed pronunciations from various periods. The opening of Homer's Odyssey, a discussion of the problems of most audio recordings, and two post-classical texts by Mesomedes and Lucilius.
The Platonic Players have recorded several excerpts from Plato's Republic as part of a larger project to bring Plato's dialogues to life through performance.
Agamemnon, as performed by the Oxford University Classical Drama Society (YouTube series)
YouTube video of Ladislaus Dolidon reciting Homer, Odyssey 5.270-277
Musical interpretations
Music of Ancient Greeks
(Very short) samples from a CD by Ioannidis Nikolaos. Website includes the Greek text and an English translation for all selections.
Homeric Singing.
Excerpt from the Odyssey. By Georg Danek and Stefan Hagel.
Excerpt from the Odyssey sung by Philippe Brunet (youtube)
Songs of Sappho
Performance by Paula Saffire of the poem "Phainetai moi" (fragment 21) in Greek and in English translation. The website implies that there may be a videorecording of her lectures available somewhere.
Opening of the Odyssey sung by Christian Pecaut (archive.org)
Fragments of Ancient Greek Songs from the Early Empire sung by Christopher Brunelle
Katherina Glau. Rezitation griechischer Chorlyrik: die Parodoi aus Aischylos' Agamemnon und Euripides' Bakchen (audio-CD with accompanying booklet in German, ISBN 3-8253-0753-0). This is not precisely a musical rendering, but seems to fit here because of the focus on recreating the rhythm. Reviews in English and German.
For those interested in ancient Greek music, there may be more goodies here, although I suspect the focus of these recordings is on the music rather than the lyrics as such.
Other (recordings may or may not attempt to use reconstructed pronunciation and pitch accents)
Athenaze
Cornell University's resources for the Athenaze textbook include audio files for several of the chapters.
And another site with sound files for chapters 1-10 of Athenaze (vocabulary and readings).
Consalvus' blog Ta Mathemata includes audio recordings from the Italian Athenaze and assorted other sources.
Audio for other textbooks
Audio files for all the vocabulary and exercises in Anne Groton's Alpha to Omega (courtesy of David Nye).
Christian Vosloh has recorded audio files for all lessons of German textbook Kantharos following the traditional German pronunciation.
A new direct-method Greek course, Polis Koine, includes audio files to accompany the text. They use an intermediate pronunciation with the aspirate consonants pronounced as fricatives. Samples can be found on their website here.
Neoclassical Greek
Recordings of modern texts that have been translated into classical Greek.
Der Kleine Prinz in 100 Sprachen includes an audio excerpt from an ancient Greek translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fable.
Professor Daniel Levine's recording of the first paragraph from the ancient Greek version of Harry Potter
Pantoia is a collection of translations into Greek and Latin of various well-known literary texts and poems. The site includes a recording of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Nänie" in classical Greek.
Miscellaneous Recordings
Smithsonian Folkways has a number of archival recordings available in CD, cassette or electronic form. Website includes audio samples. Ancient Greek Poetry by John F.C Richards includes selections from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and lyric and elegiac poetry; Homer has selections from the Iliad and Odyssey. There is also a recording of a performance of Sophocles' Antigone by Columbia Unviersity in 1957 and a reading of Plato's Apology in Greek and English by Moses Hadas.
Haverford Classics Podcasts
Readings of Latin and ancient Greek texts.
Selections from Herodotus, Histories Book 1. Read by George Reuter. Also available at a slower study speed.
PennSound
Fragments of Sappho read by Thomas McEvilley (Greek and English)
Tadora Press
Includes video excerpts from a university production of Sophocles Antigone and recitations of three of Pindar's Odes
Gerhard Helzel's page on Greek has a number of resources, including audio clips from Sprechen Sie Attisch and a couple of other texts.
Helma Dik's Greek handouts page includes readings from the opening lines of Lysias, Crito, and Oedipus Tyrannus. (Edit: as of Feb 2010 audio files are no longer available. page at archive.org)
Wired for Books
Iliad 1.1-611 read by Stanley Lombardo. RealAudio and MP3 format. Does not attempt pitch accents.
Harvard Classics Poetry Recital
Homer, Iliad 1.457-463 and 6.466-475 read by Carolyn Higbie (embedded audio)
Homer in Performance
Iliad 1.1-16, 9.307-429, 18.478-519, and 24.468-516 read by Gregory Nagy (embedded audio)
Classical Language Instruction Project
Iliad 1.1-16 in several different pronunciations (Erasmic, reconstructed, and with choral music)
Dance of the Muses
Recordings and videos of Homer and Greek choral poetry
I do my best to keep this list updated; however, if you notice that any of the links are broken (or if you know of other resources that I've missed), please, please, please drop me a line, either via e-mail or as a comment here in the blog.
Articles and tutorials:
The key texts on this subject are W. S. Allen's Vox Graeca and Devine & Stephens' The Prosody of Greek Speech. The former requires at a basic knowledge of phonetics; the latter is considerably more technical.
For those who read German, Danek and Hagel's article "Homer-Singen" is a helpful discussion of the behavior of the pitch-accent across phrases. There is an additional article from Danek in the Wiener Zeitung which discusses more general problems of how to pronounce ancient Greek.
The late Professor William Harris has a number of articles on the pronunciation and performance of ancient Greek:
The Musical Pitch Accents in Greek ("A basic statement about our misuse use of pitch and duration in ancient Greek!")
On Reading Homer: Acoustic or Optical? ("Will it be optical from a text, or acoustic from your oral performance? A detailed study of this and related problems about text and sound")
Sound of the Homeric Bard ("A study of the problems which face reconstruction of the sound of Homer's epic language, with notes for new performance-reading style")
Reading the Homeric Dactylic Line ("A practical approach to Homeric verse in an acoustically satisfying, realtime reading mode")
William Annis (aoidoi.org) has a number of useful articles on Greek meter and pronunciation, including a tutorial on Reciting the Homeric Hexameter (with audio clips).
Allan Shaw (prosoidia.com) has an article on ancient Greek poetry and music and on reciting ancient Greek along with some notes for classicists.
Recordings from:
Homer, Odyssey 1.1-21
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 40-45, 160-183, and 958-1000
Homeric Recitation by Avery Andrews has audio samples and a discussion of various techniques for reciting Homeric poetry. Includes recordings of Iliad 1.1-7 and Odyssey 11.150-203, 12.154-200 and 19.509-535 (WAV and RealAudio files)
The eccentrically-named www.turdpolish.com used to include a useful discussion of Greek pronunciation along with some readings from the Iliad. The site is now apparently defunct, however.
Stephen Daitz has an audio Guide to the Pronunciation and Reading of Ancient Greek and a short accompanying booklet with the Greek text (for his other recording of ancient Greek texts, see below)
Audio based Greek courses/audio supplements to Greek textbooks
JACT's Reading Greek textbook series has an accompanying Speaking Greek audio CD. It includes an introduction to the pronunciation of ancient Greek as well as readings adapted from classical authors. Audio uses the reconstructed pronunciation but does not attempt pitch accents.
Assimil's Le Grec ancien sans Peine follows their model for modern languages. The audio files are entirely in Greek; the companion textbook includes explanations in French. Stefan Hagel (see above) was involved in the production of the recordings. Information (in French) and sample pages here.
Catherine Fries' has a Language lab with audio drills for the introductory lessons of Ancient Greek Alive on her website. (For the sake of comparision, Paula Saffire, the other co-author of the book, also has some audio samples from the book)
Learning Greek Podcasts
There have been several attempts to create audio courses in podcast form for ancient Greek. Unfortunately, none of them have produced more than a few recordings before being abandoned.
Lingua Latina et Graeca by Seumas Macdonald includes audio recordings from from W.H.D. Rouse, "A Greek Boy at Home" and "Greek via Kendrick". (The podcast no longer exists as of Sept 2010, but some of the files have been archived at the website linked above).
David Clark has recordings of the first two lessons from Kendrick's "Greek Ollendorf".
Recitations of Classical Texts
The Living Voice of Greek and Latin series by Stephen Daitz is unquestionably the largest collection of audio recordings of Greek texts, including:
- Ancient Greek Poetry (selections from Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Euripides, Aristophanes, Timotheos, and others)
- Aristophanes, Birds
- Euripides, Hecuba
- Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey
- Plato, Apology and Crito, selections from Phaedo
- Selections from Greek Orators (from the speeches of Gorgia, Perikles, Lysias, Isokrates, and Demosthenes)
Exerpts from these recordings, along with a few texts by other readers, are available at the Society for the Oral Reading of Greek and Latin Literature (SORGLL)
The site also includes a short audio guide to Greek pronunciation.
Andrew Reinhard has also posted extensive sections from Daitz' recordings (Aristophanes' Birds and Euripides' Hecuba).
An audio recording of Aeschylus' Agamemnon was produced to accompany a new commentary of the play by David Raeburn and Oliver Thomas. Instructions for ordering the CDs are available on the publisher's website.
Stefan Hagel's The Sound of Ancient Greek has audio files from:
- Aeschylus, Agamemnon 503-537
- Homer, Iliad 18.39-96 and Odyssey 8.267-366
- Plato, Symposium 172f
James Diggle and Anthony Bowen recorded large sections from Medea for a performance in Greek by the Cambridge Greek Play Committee in 2007. The website no longer seems to be available, but the recordings can be found at archive.org.
Classics professor John Kirby has recordings from Book 3 of the Iliad and Stesichorus Fragment 192 on his website (edit: link broken as of June 2010. old page at archive.org)
Andrew Wilson's Classics Pages include recitations of fragments of Sappho and the opening lines of the Iliad
The Association for Latin Teaching has put up a couple of audio recordings from Ion. More stress than pitch accent, but otherwise the readers seem to be aiming for a classical pronunciation. (edit: link proken as of September 2012. old page at archive.org)
Griechische Verse - Griechische Prosa (audio CD, ISBN 978-3-487-11807-9)
Selections from Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato. Read by Konrat Ziegler. The publisher, Olms Verlag, includes an audio sample on their website; the Homer recitation is reminiscent of liturgical chants.
"Poems Found in Translation" by A.Z. Foreman includes recitations from several Greek texts in reconstructed pronunciations from various periods. The opening of Homer's Odyssey, a discussion of the problems of most audio recordings, and two post-classical texts by Mesomedes and Lucilius.
The Platonic Players have recorded several excerpts from Plato's Republic as part of a larger project to bring Plato's dialogues to life through performance.
Agamemnon, as performed by the Oxford University Classical Drama Society (YouTube series)
YouTube video of Ladislaus Dolidon reciting Homer, Odyssey 5.270-277
Musical interpretations
Music of Ancient Greeks
(Very short) samples from a CD by Ioannidis Nikolaos. Website includes the Greek text and an English translation for all selections.
Homeric Singing.
Excerpt from the Odyssey. By Georg Danek and Stefan Hagel.
Excerpt from the Odyssey sung by Philippe Brunet (youtube)
Songs of Sappho
Performance by Paula Saffire of the poem "Phainetai moi" (fragment 21) in Greek and in English translation. The website implies that there may be a videorecording of her lectures available somewhere.
Opening of the Odyssey sung by Christian Pecaut (archive.org)
Fragments of Ancient Greek Songs from the Early Empire sung by Christopher Brunelle
Katherina Glau. Rezitation griechischer Chorlyrik: die Parodoi aus Aischylos' Agamemnon und Euripides' Bakchen (audio-CD with accompanying booklet in German, ISBN 3-8253-0753-0). This is not precisely a musical rendering, but seems to fit here because of the focus on recreating the rhythm. Reviews in English and German.
For those interested in ancient Greek music, there may be more goodies here, although I suspect the focus of these recordings is on the music rather than the lyrics as such.
Other (recordings may or may not attempt to use reconstructed pronunciation and pitch accents)
Athenaze
Cornell University's resources for the Athenaze textbook include audio files for several of the chapters.
And another site with sound files for chapters 1-10 of Athenaze (vocabulary and readings).
Consalvus' blog Ta Mathemata includes audio recordings from the Italian Athenaze and assorted other sources.
Audio for other textbooks
Audio files for all the vocabulary and exercises in Anne Groton's Alpha to Omega (courtesy of David Nye).
Christian Vosloh has recorded audio files for all lessons of German textbook Kantharos following the traditional German pronunciation.
A new direct-method Greek course, Polis Koine, includes audio files to accompany the text. They use an intermediate pronunciation with the aspirate consonants pronounced as fricatives. Samples can be found on their website here.
Neoclassical Greek
Recordings of modern texts that have been translated into classical Greek.
Der Kleine Prinz in 100 Sprachen includes an audio excerpt from an ancient Greek translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fable.
Professor Daniel Levine's recording of the first paragraph from the ancient Greek version of Harry Potter
Pantoia is a collection of translations into Greek and Latin of various well-known literary texts and poems. The site includes a recording of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Nänie" in classical Greek.
Miscellaneous Recordings
Smithsonian Folkways has a number of archival recordings available in CD, cassette or electronic form. Website includes audio samples. Ancient Greek Poetry by John F.C Richards includes selections from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and lyric and elegiac poetry; Homer has selections from the Iliad and Odyssey. There is also a recording of a performance of Sophocles' Antigone by Columbia Unviersity in 1957 and a reading of Plato's Apology in Greek and English by Moses Hadas.
Haverford Classics Podcasts
Readings of Latin and ancient Greek texts.
Selections from Herodotus, Histories Book 1. Read by George Reuter. Also available at a slower study speed.
PennSound
Fragments of Sappho read by Thomas McEvilley (Greek and English)
Tadora Press
Includes video excerpts from a university production of Sophocles Antigone and recitations of three of Pindar's Odes
Gerhard Helzel's page on Greek has a number of resources, including audio clips from Sprechen Sie Attisch and a couple of other texts.
Wired for Books
Iliad 1.1-611 read by Stanley Lombardo. RealAudio and MP3 format. Does not attempt pitch accents.
Harvard Classics Poetry Recital
Homer, Iliad 1.457-463 and 6.466-475 read by Carolyn Higbie (embedded audio)
Homer in Performance
Iliad 1.1-16, 9.307-429, 18.478-519, and 24.468-516 read by Gregory Nagy (embedded audio)
Classical Language Instruction Project
Iliad 1.1-16 in several different pronunciations (Erasmic, reconstructed, and with choral music)
Dance of the Muses
Recordings and videos of Homer and Greek choral poetry
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