Good books to learn Ancient Greek.

[Mattymoo]

Hello everyone i have been told that the Athenaze books are very good for teaching yourself Ancient Greek and also the Betts teach yourself series too. Could anyone help me with this as i would be very grateful for any input. Matt.

[billberg23]

Athenaze is pretty good for a modern textbook — at least it doesn't treat Greek almost as a mathematical puzzle to be worked out painfully by the student, the way so many of them do.
If you want to learn Greek from someone who understood it as a living, spoken language, try old J. T. Allen, A First Year of Greek.  It's a free download from Google at http://books.google.com/books?id=whMTAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Allen,+A+First+Year+of+Greek&source=bl&ots=aYShOzISa3&sig=Kf4XCBQtXTlACXUSLrDVN8w5pHg&hl=en&ei=50anTL-LLpDSsAOZ5az9DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false.                   

[Mattymoo]

Thanks i will take a look at that. Matt.