Ebook: Understanding language: a guide for beginning students of Greek and Latin

Getting started. Learning a foreign language: the bad news and the good news -- Studying a dead language: why bother? -- Building blocks of language -- Nouns and the words that go with them. Expressing the relations between nouns -- Adjectives, articles, and pronouns -- Verbs: the heart of communication. What do verbs do? -- Finite verb forms: a closer look at tense and mood -- Special (non-finite) verbal forms: infinitives and participles -- Looking at sentences as a whole -- Words, phrases, clauses: putting them together -- Reading a Greek or Latin sentence: some suggestions.;"Understanding Language includes major sections on the noun and verb systems of the classical languages. In both cases, the book deals first with function (what nouns and verbs must do) and then explains how the forms of Greek and Latin achieve the needed functions. As a result, the book helps to make the hard tasks of memorizing forms and learning syntax easier and more enjoyable. Students gain a broad understanding of the way the classical languages work before they begin the details. This book gives students some of the conceptual benefits of studying two closely related languages, even if they are studying only one of them. Students do not need to be studying both Latin and Greek (or even to know the Greek alphabet) in order to profit from this book. Teachers may choose to have students read the entire book at the beginning of their study or to read sections at various points in the first year."