Latin and Greek

[fcgamer | 4,754]

I studied Latin for a few years back in high school, so I have s rudimentary knowledge of the language. I've recently become interested in studying Latin again, as well as classical Greek, with a focus on reading, naturally.

Anyways, I have two questions for those who have studied both. Can anyone recommend to me any particular books of study for Latin and for Greek?

Secondly, to study Latin, then Greek, or to study them simultaneously? 

[RH | 4,980]

What's your intention of reading Greek?  You don't seem like a Christian type (but forgive me if I'm wrong) but I took Biblical Greek for a couple of semesters, which was Koine (Common) Greek from the period of about 200 years ago, with the initial focus on words that appeared 50 or more times within the New Testement.

There are certainly many other sources of Greek text from back then, but if you're interested in reading religious texts (whether religious or not) I highly recommend the textbooks we used because they were very straight forward in teaching ancient Greek grammar and vocabulary.  I am more of a math/science minded person, but even though it was a very intensive class, I was able to ace both semesters, and I think a large part of that was because of the quality of the text and work books.  But, again, they were religious/scripture focused so that might not be your thing.

Anyway, if that piques your interest, I'll go rummage my shelves and let you know the text books and work books we used.

[Philosoraptor | 468]

I've never studied Greek, so I have no clue whether you can study them simultaneously or where to start. I know some people who were going for a Linguistics major in college did, but YMMV. From what I understand, Latin and Greek are pretty different. FWIW, ancient Greek, especially stuff like Homeric and Attic Greek, is also very different from modern Greek, and learning one won't help you that much with the other.

I liked and used Wheelock's Latin the most when I took it in junior high and high school. The college level courses I took didn't use textbooks; instead, we were given excerpts, handed a dictionary, and told "good luck."

[Daniel_Doyce | 477]

Ave amice!

Learn Latin first and don't try to do both at the same time unless you've got a ton of time to devote to it.

Lingua Latin Per Se Illustrata is a great choice, along with a grammar book like Wheelock or Moreland/Fleischer for reference. When you get better, there's a guy who has great annotated texts free online at https://geoffreysteadman.com/

For Attic Greek, which is where most people start, I used Athenaze in college. It's a real steep learning curve to go from a textbook to reading real texts, though. I have an old annotated text of Homer that was helpful during the transition since Homeric Greek is at least building vocabulary and grammatical proficiency from a limited, but large, text.