Easy Ancient Greek Readers

The texts that have survived from the Ancient Greek world are overwhelmingly of a very high register. As such they are far too difficult for the average learner to tackle after have completed a textbook. Hence many learners find themselves at that point facing an unbridgeable between textbook Greek and and the extant surviving Greek texts. A solution would be produce graded readers of the sort that are available for learning English. There seems to me, however, to be prejudice against any Greek that is not actually written by the Ancients. But to write Greek stories that that have short simple sentences and use a restricted vocabulary is merely restoring a gap created by how many texts have been lost. Are people seriously arguing that Ancient Greek children learned to to read reading the speeches of Demosthenes? For texts to have survived through the centuries they needed to have enough prestige for people to take the trouble and the expense to preserve them. Simple stories suitable for learners are unlikely to have that.

But what makes a good easy reader? First of all it should be easy. A large proportion of texts written for learners are lightly adapted from the extant texts. The adaption is so light that they are still very hard for the learner. Worse the adaption means that the reader is no longer able to use a translation as a help if they get stuck. On top of that it is far more demoralizing to get stuck on a text that is sold as easy than when the learner is laboring over the real thing.

And indeed simply more textbook level Greek would be useful. Textbooks often move very quickly when they come to advance topics. So stories would be useful that merely aimed to consolidate the Greek that learners in theory had covered but were in fact only weakly grasped or worse fading from memory. We don’t need so much easy readers as graded readers which allow the reader to progress step by step from the very easy to the harder without getting out of their depth and drowning.

But the problem with adaptions is that the exercise of adaption is entirely negative. Certain constructions, idioms and words are deemed too difficult and are excluded. The very restriction involved in attempting to keep as close as possible to the Greek original means that it is impossible to increase the frequency of difficult words, idioms or constructions to the point that though familiarity to the reader. they become easier. Very little about a language is truly difficult. μι verbs are not really hard but as they are rare a learner encounters them too rarely to really learn them. An original story can be written in a way than a construction or an idiom can be repeated so frequently that they soon become much less of a problem. There are examples of Ancient Greek textbooks that do just that Thrasymachus and Athenaze both make each episode in each chapter focus on the grammar being taught (though Athenaze has been criticized for missing opportunities to do this to an even greater extent).

Writing original stories makes possible a freshness that adaptions often lack especially when the stories may already be familiar to the reader. Christophe Rico’s Polis has several stories that are clearly intended to illustrate the Greek of specific episodes from the bible. However, he uses those aspects of the Greek language in an utterly different way and the plot however bears no relation to those parts of the bible that they share so much on the level of the language used. As such they are far more more stimulating than an adaption of those episodes would be and hence better preparation for the learner when they go on to read the actual texts as written. What we have learned about memory is that the more interesting and engaging something is the more likely it is to be remembered.

But now we come to real problem. Those most able to write good Greek are likely to be those who took to the Greek language so easily that they quickly moved from their first textbook to reading the extant texts. How can we persuade them that a bridge is needed between textbook Greek and the extant texts when for them there was no noticeable gulf between the two? And how can we persuade them that stories of even simpler Greek would be useful in enabling weaker students to firm up basic Greek so that they had a solid foundation when they progressed to more difficult texts?

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