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Comment by lvoudour | Hacker News Reader

>Of course, Fitzgerald points out that, no matter the power of the translation, something is seriously lost by not reading the original Greek. One of the sadnesses of the limitations of a chosen life

I'm greek and I still can't read the original, Homer's language is very difficult. I can only imagine how hard it must be for people with no exposure to any form of the Greek language

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As someone who taught themselves greek to read Homer, Aristotle, and the bible, it’s not as hard as you might think. Grab a grammar book and a dictionary for the dialect and get to work! Checking with other translations is not cheating but encouraged—that’s how you learn the subtly of obstruse (to a romantic ear) greek words like sophrosyne and common idioms.

Of course, it’s an absolutely massive time commitment, but not a terrible way to spend a sunday afternoon.

As a point of clarification, are you saying that Homeric Greek is difficult for a native speaker of Modern Greek, or are you saying that, objectively speaking, Homeric is a fundamentally more difficult language to use? I took two semesters of Attic about a million years ago and one of my romantic aspirational goals is to learn Homeric enough to enjoy the Iliad in the original.

I'm not Greek although I have a lot of a Greek friends. I taught myself ancient Greek and can (barely) communicate in modern. I'd say that ancient Greek is about as far from modern as Chaucer is from modern English. Even Greeks can't understand it without study, although of course knowing modern helps a ton. Just a few decades ago, all Greeks spoke Demotiki (modern Greek or "people's" Greek) but also learned Katharevousa in school ("pure" Greek, very close to ancient Greek). They don't teach that any more, but some of my friends say their parents can read Plato like it's the morning newspaper. How envious I am of that! :-)

>Just a few decades ago, all Greeks spoke Demotiki (modern Greek or "people's" Greek) but also learned Katharevousa in school ("pure" Greek, very close to ancient Greek). They don't teach that any more, but some of my friends say their parents can read Plato like it's the morning newspaper. How envious I am of that! :-)

That's correct, but katharevousa was nowhere close to ancient Greek, it was really a bastardized language created to sound more ancient-y in an era when the nation was searching for identity (Greece was heading for its revolution against the Ottomans).

But it was forced and unnatural. There's an era around the turn of the 20th century where many prominent scholars, poets and novelists formed a movement against it but nationalistic reasons (and thick headed archaists) made it stick until the 70's.

It's true that previous generations (like my parents') had a better classical education, but that has nothing to do with katharevousa

All my knowledge of this history is second-hand, so thank you for correcting me! :-)

Difficult for modern Greek speakers. I can't say if it's generally more difficult than classic era Greek but personally I can understand classics better.

The easiest for modern greek speakers to grasp is Koine greek, the language of the new testament. The grammar is familiar, as is the syntax. For an educated person it's almost effortless

The trouble with ancient greek for me is mainly the syntax. Grammar is different as well (more complex than modern) and although many words are the same they have different meanings.

It's still closer to moder greek than eg. Italian or French is to latin

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