Cover Image: The Ingenious Language

The Ingenious Language

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Member Reviews

A nice collection of essays on an authors life-long love of Ancient Greek. I studied Latin, never Greek, and am married to a modern Greek speaker so I got a lot from this. The chapter on the "duo" particularly spoke to me.

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The author must change the part saying no need to know anything about Greek language. Anyone who wants to read this book must know a bit of this language.

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A few other reviewers have mentioned the fact that the book's blurb about "no previous knowledge of Ancient Greek needed" is misleading, and indeed it was quite daunting at first to face strings of Ancient Greek words that I don't know how to read (It's all Greek to me!). Fortunately, I didn't give up reading this book midway, because there are a lot of good and interesting lessons about learning a second language in general. The grammatical explanations are fascinating. Over time, I even tried to decipher the Greek words on my own and it was thrilling when I figured out a word or two. At the very least, this book encouraged me to learn how to read Greek alphabet. :)

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An interesting book about the peculiarities of ancient Greek. Reading it brought back, as the author expects, many of the difficulties I had learning the language. It also importantly, caused me to think, not only about the idiosyncrasies of Greek but also about language and how it developed.

A very interesting book.

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I haven't studied ancient Greek and the blurb suggested that this wouldn't be a barrier to me in reading the book. Unfortunately I found this book relies on some level of knowledge of the language so was quite inaccessible to me. I would recommend it to those who have some knowledge.

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I requested this book as I'm interested in Greek language and culture. Based on the book description, I figured it was going to be a look at some interesting ways the language has shaped culture through the ages, and I was sold by the disclaimer that said "no knowledge of Greek is required." I have to warn any prospective readers of this book that I found that to be a bit misleading, as the Greek language figures prominently and often in the text. The author does well to show why she's so passionate about the language, and many of the anecdotes are interesting. This would be a lovely addition to any student studying Ancient Greek in school, but for the layperson with very little exposure to the language, I found it to be a miss.

**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Europa Editions.**

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