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< h1 style = " margin-bottom: 0px; " > Αἱ ἐμαὶ περὶ βιβλίου τινὸς γνῶμαι .</ h1 >
< h3 > Review of < i > Easy Selections Adapated from Xenophon </ i ></ h3 >
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It ' s rather a shame , I think , that this book appears to not have any reviews on Goodreads and seems to be , overall , somewhat forgotten . I have seen it recommended by a few people , but definitely not as many as I had hoped . The reason behind this , I believe , is partly due to its age , since it was published in the mid - 19 th century . Modern reprints are available on various online sites , but I find them to be rather costly for what they are — reprints of a public domain book with nothing added to it .</ p >
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I find it a shame mostly because these adapted readings are absolutely blissful for those who have only just begun studying the language . A few things have been left out from the original , but it follows the original closely enough so that finding the corresponding passages in the original text should not prove too difficult a task . Additionally , the readings are , as the preface to the first edition puts it , < q > [ … ] somewhat graduated , so that the beginning is made still easier than the rest [ . ][ … ] </ q >. This approach is , I find , somewhat reminiscent of the great Lingua Latīna Per Sē Illūstrāta though to a much lesser extent than that , of course .< br >
Quick side - note for those wishing to have an experience similar to that of LLPSI , I highly recommend Seumas MacDonald ' s Lingua Graeca Per Se Illustrata which is an open - source project whose goal it is to be similar to LLPSI . It can be found under the following URL : https :// seumasjeltzz . github . io / LinguaGraecaPerSeIllustrata </ p >
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Putting that digression aside , this somewhat graded approach is a fantastic way of slowly having learners approach the language without feeling too overwhelmed right away ; and , indeed , this appears to have been the writer ' s intention , as the preface states — referring to the traditional approach of < q > [ … ] Grammar or Delectus - work [ … ] </ q > — that < q > [ … ][ h ] e [ referring to the learner ] is simply baffled and bewildered by having too many difficulties thrust on him at once , and either buys a word for word translation , or simply looks out the words without trying to connect them and discover a meaning </ q >. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement and fully agree that such an approach is much superior .</ p >
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Attic Greek is the first ancient and dead language I have studied — if one does not count my rather short - lived dabbling in Sanskrit — and I have thus tried to change my learning habits accordingly . Whereas with the other , still living , languages that I have learnt I attempted to get a lot of audio input whilst also trying to have as many simple conversations as possible ; in Greek , I endeavoured to fully pass up on the auditory and conversational part and , instead , delve straight into reading texts as soon as possible . I was , perhaps , a tad overambitious when I attempted to read Geoffrey Steadman 's <q>Xenophon' s Anabasis Book 1 : Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary </ q > after only a few weeks ' study; but having these adapted selections of Xenophon' s greatly simplified that task to the point of me finding it rather simple to go through the book now — albeit line by line . I can frequently grasp the overall meaning of a sentence of the original Anabasis and uncertainties can generally be cleared by reading the corresponding portion of the adapted readings .</ p >
< p > And thus , to end this review , I would like to say that this is a great book , both on its own , but especially when used with the original text with comments and vocabulary help .</ p >
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