Learning Ancient Greek at Source Languages, Department of Historical Studies, CEU
Acquiring knowledge of Ancient Greek is crucial due to its great cultural and historical significance, in addition to its linguistic worth. With direct access to the writings of renowned thinkers like Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, this ancient language is the key to unlocking the rich fabric of historical, literary, philosophical, and religious texts from Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and the Byzantine era. Additionally, studying Ancient Greek helps students develop their analytical and critical thinking abilities as they learn to understand challenging textual sources in their original language.
Goals and Learning Outcomes
This course is suitable for those who have already completed the Ancient Greek Beginner I course and have obtained basic vocabulary and familiarity with the present, imperfect, and future tenses (indicative mood, active voice, and middle voice), imperative mood, contract verbs, and the declension of nouns and adjectives (1st, 2nd, and 3rd declensions), as well as personal, possessive, and demonstrative pronouns. In terms of resources, the course will primarily follow The Joint Association of Classical Teachers’ Greek Course Textbooks (2nd edition, 2007)—specifically, Reading Greek: Grammar and Exercises and Reading Greek: Text and Vocabulary. Following these textbooks, the Beginner II course will continue to focus on developing the text comprehension skills required for scholarly research. By the end of this course, students will further enhance their knowledge of grammar, including aorist I and II (indicative mood, active and passive), participles (present, aorist, imperfect, and future), infinitives (present, aorist, imperfect, and future), and more. By the conclusion of this course, students will possess more comprehensive textual understanding skills and will be prepared to attend intensive summer school courses at the intermediate level.
- Instructor: Dunja Milenkovic