Entry level Classical Greek

[yourfathersmeltofelderberries]

My 13 year old is doing entry level classical greek. What are your experiences? Any feedback much appreciated.

Yourfather, what does that mean? If you could explain a bit more, I'll have a go at commenting, if I can. Going out later so it might be some time before I get back to this thread.

Op, ds started Classical Greek at 13 (year 9) and liked it much he is doing a Gcse in it. He had done Latin for many years previously and found that very helpful.

Allmimsy- Classical greek entry level is like half a gcse in ancient greek. It's ancient greek language and ancient greek culture.

Thanks, yourfather! I see now. So like a taster course in Greek language and a bit of Classical Studies? Sounds like fun. I hope he enjoys it.

I studied Greek at school (and Latin) - O level, A level - and then went on to do a Classics degree. I started Latin in what we would now call year 8 and Greek in year 10. It helped a great deal to have a good grounding in Latin before starting Greek as a lot of the terminology for grammar and so on is similar. (I had also been studying French since year 7.)

My husband also has a Classics degree and our daughter was desperate to study both Latin and Greek after hearing us talk about our studies. She took Latin from year 9 at school to GCSE. My husband taught her Greek during the summer holiday between year 9 and year 10. She took GCSE at the end of year 11 and went on to do A levels in both Latin and Greek at a different school. She's also now doing a Classics degree.

If your son hasn't studied any Latin, he may need a bit more support from his teacher with Greek grammar. One of the key things to grasp is that in both Latin and Greek word order is not that important in grammar, whereas in English it's crucial.

The dog bites the man.

You know who's done what to whom because of the order of the words in the sentence. If you switched round 'man' and 'dog' it would mean something quite different!

In an inflected language (like Latin and Greek) you work out what's going on by looking carefully at the endings (and sometimes the beginnings) of the words, because the form of the word changes to show what job the word is doing in the sentence. It helps enormously to put the work in at a very early stage and learn the verb and noun endings off by heart. His teacher will guide him with this and so will the reading scheme s/he uses.

The other area that needs hard work is learning vocabulary - this is the same as learning any other language, of course.

A lot of people think the hardest bit is going to be learning the alphabet. I would say this is in fact just about the easiest bit as it becomes second nature very quickly.

Greek society and culture is absolutely fascinating. I really hope he gets a lot out of the course! Good luck to him.