What sort of Greek should you learn? What dialect does this textbook teach? What if I want to do X? or Y? All such questions preoccupy a certain segment of learners, and a certain segment of teachers too. In this post I share a few reflections on the issue of
Today I'm excited to let you know that I am releasing into the wild "LGPSI 2.0" chapters 1-10. LGPSI Vol 1: μῦθος τῆς Ἀντιοχείᾱς I know lots of people want there to be an LGPSI, really an Ørberg-type and Ørberg-level text for
Reading Greek Deeply, Kevin Grasso, De Gruter Brill, 2nd Nov 2026. Kevin Grasso begins his new Greek grammar with an apology, in both senses, for yet another Greek grammar. I don't think he needs to apologise, especially when I was asked recently whether any published textbook supports my
This last semester I taught a "proper" introduction to NT Greek class for the first time in years. It was "Greek 2", and it was designed to cover the second half of Duff's textbook. I don't normally teach "new testament Greek&
Hi all, I try to keep this site relatively uncluttered with announcements about courses, but it's also the most efficient way to communicate some of these details. My next round of classes starts next week. There are still places in quite a few classes. Let me draw your
When is a not a not and when is a not not a not I wanted to call today's post this, but I knew I would regret that when searching for my own post in 3 years' time. Specifically, what do you make of 'double'
Just putting it out there. I will never cease to be amazed at how committed many people are to the Grammar-Translation method. Here I want to succinctly (re-)state the case for why this method is fundamentally flawed. To do so, let's look briefly at two things:
I'm very pleased to let you know about my slate of classes planned for the final term of 2026, starting in October. I'll be running two of my introductory Athenaze courses: 102 and 103, covering chs 9-16 and 17-24 respectively. I will run a
Several weeks ago I came across Francesco Felici's doctoral dissertation on teaching Old Irish as a living language. I wrote a little bit about it here, and some other thoughts here, and probably some more to come in a subsequent post or two (the other chapters of his
Again at the recently held TCLS2026 I heard my friend and colleague in language teaching, Carla Hurt, address almost the above topic. Her topic was slightly different, because it focused on the question of Australian Aboriginal Languages. I thoroughly enjoyed Hurt's presentation, and appreciated how she sought to
I recently attended the bi-annual Teaching Classical Languages Symposium here in Sydney. I don't have a single post abut the TCLS overall, and so I'll say a bit about it here by way of introduction. TCLS has been running for 8 years now, I believe,
People have mostly stopped asking me about LGPSI, which I suppose is nice in one way, though a bit concerning in another. Well, I have mostly good news about what's happening with it. But if you don't know what LGPSI even is, go here. Firstly, I
I long ago grew pretty tired of the pronunciation wars over Ancient Greek. I have opinions, have read a bunch of the literature, and have made my piece with how I currently pronounce Greek in different contexts. This doesn't mean I don't care about it, but
I'm running lots of calculations these days, you might notice. Some of that is driven by projects I'm working on, some of it is me being curious. I'm also back into reading a lot more SLA literature than in recent years. You might be
Lately I've been thinking a lot about the need for extensive reading, and how that's challenging for Ancient Greek, but also very necessary. In particular, the question I've been asking, or set of questions, looks like the following: 1. How many 'words'
I am sure that I have posted this before, but I have found myself re-referencing it several times in the past couple of weeks, and so I had to go digging to find what I had in mind. Now, at least, I can just search my own website. Back
If you are fortunate enough to have any of our excellent merch, you might notice that it has an 'established' date of 2016. That was me trying to retroactively figure out when I started teaching online. But actually on May 1st, 2015, I received a polite email inquiry
I have just been reading the amazing and intriguing doctoral dissertation by Francesco Felici, entitled "Now You’re Talking... Old Irish Towards a conversational approach to teaching Old Irish", and I want to share both the dissertation, and some related thoughts. The thesis itself is fascinating because it
In today's post I want to muse a little about the practice of using grammar-translation as a 'fall-back' position for when some type of communicative teaching 'isn't working'. I mean that in two different ways, and I think teasing out
As I wrote very briefly last week, I've moved thepatrologist over to a new site. In this post I want to talk about where we've come from, then very briefly about why the move, and then about where to find things that have gone missing, and
What does language exist for? Why learn languages? The answers to both of these questions are tied together: communication. Language exists fort he purpose of communication. That is, you and I as sentient beings share something, and we express and exchange meaning through the means of language. So the why
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This is The Patrologist, the new but old site by Seumas Macdonald. I have a bit of tidying to do and making things more functional, but you can look forward to posts on language acquisition, ancient Greek and Latin, classics and patristics, and similar related topics. In the meantime you
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Even as I wrote my last post, I considered complicating the metaphor I borrowed from Keeline: If you are working in a factory, you would be foolish not to use a forklift to lift things. If you are working out in a gym, you would be foolish to use a
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(This was originally posted to my substack. But I think it's such an important piece, and it crosses the divide between my two blogging spaces, that I am reposting it here) The university sector is in crisis, humanities are under threat, AI is killing our ability to think,