I love the style of writing even if I don’t know ancient greek at all and had not really thought of being interested in it.

Interesting book, skim some parts... ( )

Un livre incroyable qui donne envie d'apprendre le grec ancien !!! ( )

I was Greek major in college, so I was excited to hear about this book. It's a bit uneven, some of which may be because it was written in Italian and translated into English. Some of the prose in jaunty and doesn't always make perfect sense. Because she often compares Greek to Italian, which is different from English, her discussion of verb aspect with the aorist gets very muddled, I believe because Italian does not have a present progressive the way English does. The same with the optative mood; she could have gone into the different uses of "may", "might", "would", "should", "can" and "could" in English to explain the mood to us, but nothing. The discussion of gender is also a bit flat, as native English speakers often don't understand what it is, whereas Italians have a different experience with it. But the author has a quirky style and a lot of personality combined with very deep knowledge and passion, plus an understanding that the Greek bug does not bite the vast majority of people who are forced to take it in high school or college. While I didn't completely understand her explanations of the aorist or the optative, I learned some things that my professors never tried to explain, not to mention her useful histories of the dialects, including Koine and how it meant the death of Greek in many ways despite its traveling very far and wide. I wish I knew of a book written in English that expounded many of these things and had such a playful attitude at the same time- it would be a great thing to give to young students (and maybe there is such a book in English, but I've never heard of it). It was a quick read, however, so if you love Greek (or Latin), I recommend it. If you don't know Greek or other inflected languages, then you might find it very confusing (did I just use an optative?). ( )

Classics professor Marcolongo waxes enthusiastic about ancient Greek as a language, how it works, what's cool about it, how it differs from other languages. Reading this was by turns fascinating and a slog. Some of it went completely over my head (aspect) while some of it made me go "Neat!" (the dual). Some of it was hard to follow for someone not familiar with the Greek alphabet (any discussion of how stems change, for instance--I could follow that about a language that uses our alphabet, because at least I'd some sense of what I'm looking at), and some of it I think was lost in translation (the book was translated from Italian). Oh well. At least I learned a couple of things I didn't know before. ( )

Nell’epoca dei tweet, dei k, degli fb, la riscoperta del valore della lingua, come risorsa culturale, è quasi di moda. E in questa scia si muove questo intelligente libro della Marcolongo che ci riporta sui banchi di scuola, quando il greco era un mistero da svelare. E così tra aoristi, duali, costruzioni lessicali perfette con accenti toni e acuti, la Marcolongo propone un ritorno al passato, o forse ad un futuro, quello in cui ogni serio studente del liceo classico pensa di riprendere in mano una buona grammatica di greco e, addirittura, di dissotterrare il Rocci. Raccontare la bellezza infinita di una lingua semplice e complessa allo stesso tempo in poche pagine non è semplice. E anche la Marcolongo a volte, onestamente, si perde e cincischia; per carità non è un manuale, ma una sorta di diario di una ragazza che è rimasta affascinata da una lingua. Però proprio il rigore e la flessibilità di quella lingua, probabilmente, sono gli elementi che richiedono maggiore rispetto. Ciò detto il libro si legge che è una favola, sarà la nostalgia per gli ottativi e per i periodi ipotetici che rende il lettore buono buono. ( )