I have been impressed and inspired by the conversion (to communicative approaches), commitment, and creativity of Carla Hurt over at Found in Antiquity in recent months, and especially the project to translate LingQ’s 60 Mini-Stories into Latin. I am keen to see the same for Greek, so I’ve set up the following project to collaborate on it.
The Project
This is an open Creative Commons project. LingQ, created the original 60 Mini-Stories in English, and they have made them available in the public domain. The stories revolve around ordinary situations, feature many repetitions of vocabulary, and are already available in 39 other languages.
There are few good resources for contemporary spoken Ancient Greek. No, I’m not going to spend this post defending why you should, or talking about why not just speak Modern Greek (for the record, if you want to learn Modern Greek, please do so!). Many of the conversational materials for Ancient Greek assume an ancient, or at best medieval or early modern setting. It’s certainly possible to use Ancient Greek to speak about contemporary things (with a little bit of creative but conservative neologising), but few people do, and less people have the confidence. I believe it’s possible, and it’s beneficial – few things are as helpful in learning to read Ancient Greek texts as having an active competency in the language.
Sharing and Acknowledgments:
These stories are provided by LingQ, who require a link wherever they are shared. Many thanks to them for making these public domain. Thanks to Carla for getting the Latin versions off to a great start and inspiring me to do the same for Greek.
Documents:
LingQ 60 Mini-Stories, Ancient Greek: Stories 1-10
LingQ 60 Mini-Stories, Ancient Greek: Stories 11-20 (coming soon)
LingQ 60 Mini-Stories, Ancient Greek: Stories 21-30 (coming soon)
LingQ 60 Mini-Stories, Ancient Greek: Stories 31-40 (coming soon)
LingQ 60 Mini-Stories, Ancient Greek: Stories 41-50 (coming soon)
LingQ 60 Mini-Stories, Ancient Greek: Stories 51-60 (coming soon)
Contact and Guidelines
You can reach me via email: thepatrologist@gmail.com to be added as an editor. I’ll also co-ordinate style and progress across the whole project. We’ll look to do some audio and possible video later on as well.
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I am familiar with the Chinese mini stories, I thought about translating them, there seemed to be just a few too many concepts that I wasn’t quite sure how to translate accurately. I am excited to see how people approach translating them!
I am familiar with the Chinese mini stories, I thought about translating them, there seemed to be just a few too many concepts that I wasn’t quite sure how to translate accurately without diverging too much from the NT subset of koine greek. I am excited to see how people approach translating them!