If you are using the second edition of Introduction to Attic Greek (2013), please visit the updated version of these modules at atticgreek.org.
Introduction | Description of Modules | Fonts and Browser Settings | Known Problems | Credits
Ancient Greek Tutorials, by Donald J. Mastronarde with the assistance of the Berkeley Language Center of the University of California, Berkeley.
©1999-2005 The Regents of the University of California.
This site is made available to all users by the courtesy of the University of California Press. Although much of it is based on a specific textbook for ancient Greek (see under Credits), the tutorials should be helpful to anyone learning ancient Greek from any textbook.
Since the Berkeley Language Center is ceasing media duplication, it is no longer possible to order a CD-ROm of these tutorials. Instead, as of September 2009, for users who want to use the tutorials without being connected to the internet, Release 1.5 has been prepared as a ZIP archive that may be downloaded. The archive is about 20MB and will expand to over 50MB on your computer. To download, click here.
About the two versions:As of January 15, 2013, only the Unicode version is hosted here, and this site is tailored to the first edition of the textbook. The older (pre-Unicode, GreekKeys) version has been removed. If you are using the second edition of the textbook, then you should go to the revised version of this site, located at http://atticgreek.org.
Pronunciation Guide provides information and examples for the pronunciation of the sounds of ancient Attic Greek. Text-based in Unicode version, image-based in GreekKeys version. Sounds are embedded and preloaded in Unicode version, individually downloaded in older version.
Pronunciation Practice provides examples of pronunciation of over 100 basic Greek words (taken from the early chapters of the textbook referred to under Credits below). Text-based in Unicode version, image-based in GreekKeys version. Sounds are embedded and preloaded in Unicode version, individually downloaded in older version.
Accentuation Tutorial presents information and examples to help in the understanding and mastery of the accentuation system of ancient Attic Greek. Text-based in Unicode version, image-based in GreekKeys version.
Accentuation Practice presents interactive exercises to test and develop mastery of the accentuation system of ancient Attic Greek. Identical in both versions, with image-based Greek in the exercises.
Principal Parts presents various drills for principal parts (the full set of principal parts of over 250 verbs in the textbook are available; random drills and drills by alphabetic set and verb type set are also available). Identical in both versions, with image-based Greek.
Vocabulary presents over 1000 basic words of Greek vocabulary, with choice of mode of action (study mode or drill mode, Greek to English or English to Greek) and drill by alphabetic and random sets as well as by units. Text-based in Unicode and GreekKeys versions.
Verb Drill presents Greek verb forms for identification. There are about 1500 verb forms in the database. In addition to drill by unit (matched to the book, but providing more forms than in the Exercises), drill by random set and drill by sets defined by type of form are available. Text-based in Unicode and GreekKeys versions.
Noun Drill is a shorthand name for a declensional drill including forms of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. There are about 900 forms in the database. In addition to drill by unit (matched to the book, but providing more forms than in the Exercises), drill by random set and drill by sets defined by type of form are available. Text-based in Unicode and GreekKeys versions.
English-Greek provides drill in composing Greek inflectional forms, using an on-screen keyboard (or in the Unicode version, there is an option of direct input from the user's physical keyboard). There are over 800 forms available. Some of the items correspond to similar exercises in the book, but there are also many forms not in the printed exercises. Two modes of drill are available. In the more elementary mode, the user's entry is corrected letter by letter, and it is not possible to go on to the subsequent letter until the current letter is correct. In the more challenging mode, the user enters the whole answer and then asks to be checked; if the answer is wrong, some guidance is given as to the error and the user can try to fix the answer or ask to see the answer. Text-based in Unicode version and in GreekKeys versions.
Paradigms presents verb paradigms and noun, adjective, and pronoun paradigms. Text-based in Unicode version (html), image-based in GreekKeys version (PDF).
Introduction | Description of Modules | Fonts and Browser Settings | Known Problems | Credits
This page links to the modules that use Unicode Greek fonts; if you have an older browser or operating system incapable of using Unicode fonts, switch to the GreekKeys version.
You may view and use these modules on a Macintosh or Windows computer with most recent versions of major browsers. The screens are designed to be viewed in a window of the size 650x450 or larger. In some modules you may need to adjust the font size.
Many recent browsers come correctly configured by default to use these documents. For correct display and operation of some modules, you must use a browser capable of displaying frames and of playing QuickTime files (suffix .mov or .MOV), and it must have Javascript enabled. Display of images must be enabled. For fuller information on which browsers work with which modules and for instructions on configuring your browser (esp. to hear sounds or see Greek), see the browser instructions. To play the sounds, you should have an up-to-date version of QuickTime or the QuickTime Plug-in in the Plug-ins folder of your browser. You may obtain the QuickTime plug-in by using the installer for the free QuickTime Player from Apple, available for both platforms at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/. On some Windows systems, some browsers may work adequately with Windows Media Player instead, if set up so that .mov files are directed to WMP.
The Unicode versions are recommended for those with modern computers running Mac OS X (10.2.x or later) or Windows XP or Windows 2000. The fonts designated in the html code are: New Athena Unicode (free for Mac OS X or Windows: available by download ); Lucida Grande (Mac OS X only, supplied with 10.2.x and later by default; the font of the same name in 10.1.x is not adequate); Cardo (free download for either platform); Palatino Linotype (Windows only, as supplied with Windows 2000 or XP); Athena Unicode (freeware for either platform); Arial (Windows only, as supplied with MS Office 2000). Modern versions of Windows and Mac OS X come with system fonts that may display the Greek adequately even if you do not have one of the named fonts, but you may need to set the preferences in your browser to use one of the suitable fonts so that you do not see two fonts mixed in one Greek word (caused when the default font can support monotonic Greek, but not polytonic Greek).
Introduction | Description of Modules | Fonts and Browser Settings | Known Problems | Credits
If the choices in any left panel are badly displayed or the drill item is overrunning the space of the frame in which it is shown, it is necessary to adjust (reduce) the font size of the browser display. Look under the View menu for a command that increases or decreases the font size. In some browsers, the command will affect all frames of the browser window at once; in others, you will need to click in a particular frame and then use the font-adjustment command to have effect on that frame.
The Unicode version with embedded sounds works in almost all recent browsers for Mac OS X and Windows XP. Use the latest available version of Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer for Windows.
The older version (image-based, with non-embedded sounds) may work on the major browsers for Windows. In Mac OS X, however, there are many problems in most browsers, and the newer version should be used instead.
In the older version, loading of individual sounds over a modem connection may be intolerably slow, if successful at all. The choice to hear both voices will not work if you have a slow connection, and even on a fast connection you may hear only one sound.
If you have QuickTime installed or recently upgraded your QuickTime and you are not hearing sounds, check to see whether you have two versions of the plug-in present at the same time. Having two versions at the same time may prevent QuickTime from working within the browser.
Some browsers will open a small player window, and you may be required to click on the play button to hear the sound. Look for a setting that makes the sound play as soon as loaded without an additional click.
Users of Internet Explorer for Windows 4.x or 5.0 may be unable to use the Principal Parts drill effectively because of a bug in IE. The bug has been fixed in IE 5.5 and higher. This bug did not affect Netscape for Windows or any browser for MacOS.
When using the Principal Parts Drill with a Netscape browser, please resize your window to the needed size before beginning a drill or as soon as you begin, since resizing during a drill will reset the drill in a Netscape browser.
The Vocabulary drills use multiple external javascript files and some browsers have some difficulty loading these properly. In older versions of Netscape for Mac, the problem is intermittent, and is normally solved by reloading the page. In IE 5.5 for Windows, the workaround inserts alert dialogue commands in the files: as a result, the user needs to dismiss several alerts during the loading process. This does not occur in IE 6 for Windows.
With Netscape 6.2 for Mac, the random Vocabulary drills do not work, although the other three types of drill do. All types work with Netscape 7 and Mozilla 1.
When using the Vocabulary drill, Verb Drill, or Noun Drill with a Netscape browser, please resize your window to the needed size (to see all portions of the main frame) before beginning a drill or as soon as you begin, since resizing during a drill will reset the drill in a Netscape browser.
Two problems that became evident with the release of Mac OS Tiger (10.4) and with changes in GreekKeys Unicode input in version 2 (affecting the vowels with acute accents) have been corrected in July 2005. The text input box in the Unicode input type of drill is not high enough if New Athena Unicode or Cardo is the first specified font available on one's system. Now the coding on these two pages gives precedence to Lucida Grande, to that Mac users will see the Greek properly on these pages. The correction routine now recognizes the equivalence of, for example, alpha with tonos/acute from the Greek and Coptic Block and alpha with acute in the Greek Extended block, so users will get a correct response whether their input scheme uses the former or the latter (which is now deprecated).
Introduction | Description of Modules | Fonts and Browser Settings | Known Problems | Credits
Some modules initially prepared with the assistance of Imre Galambos of the Berkeley Language Center. Voices in the Pronunciation Guide and Pronunciation Practice are Donald Mastronarde and Sarah Stroup, recorded by Alexander Prisadsky of the Berkeley Language Center.
Material in this site is based on Donald J. Mastronarde, Introduction to Attic Greek, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993, and on software (for MacOS only) Introduction to Attic Greek: An Electronic Workbook, by Donald J. Mastronarde with technical assistance from Jeff Rusch and Ken Lau, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995 (created with the assistance of the Instructional Technology Program of the University of California, Berkeley)--now obsolete and superseded by this html-javascript version.
For information about the book, click on the title or contact the press (for U.S. and Canada orders) at 1-800-777-4726, FAX 1-800-999-1958, California-Princeton Fulfillment Services, 1445 Lower Ferry Road, Ewing NJ 08618.
This site was developed on Macintosh computers running OS 8.6-9.2 and OS X, using BBEdit from Barebones Software for html and javascript editing, Microsoft Word 1998 and 2001 with Adobe Acrobat 5.0 for production of PDF paradigms, Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and 7.0 and Adobe ImageReady 2.0 and 7.0 for graphics, SuperCard 2.5 and 3.6 for extraction and manipulation of data already present in the Electronic Workbook, and TextEdit for part of the conversion from GreekKeys data to Unicode data.
Introduction | Description of Modules | Fonts and Browser Settings | Known Problems | Credits
This page was revised on September 22, 2009.