Matheson Collection > Greek through English

χ INTRODUCTION
ing inflexions given will be very slight. The Greek
words of the first few vocabularies are repeated in
English letters, so that the learner will insensibly grow
familiar with the alphabet without grinding it up
beforehand. Some English equivalent words in the
vocabularies on human physiology, science and diseases
may not be found in the talk of " the man in the
street " ; but now that the various branches of elemen-
tary science form part of the curriculum of schools
generally, it is assumed that the learner will know
pretty nearly all, and will seldom need to refer to an
English dictionary. The learner will not trouble him-
self with the accents (learners never do). They are
always given in the most elementary works of this kind,
because scholars demand it, and would unhesitatingly
damn a Greek book for beginners which omitted them ;
but, as a rule, our scholars pay no regard to them in their
own pronunciation of the language — though the modern
Greek does. They were not known to the Greeks of
the "golden age" of its literature, to whom it was their
native tongue (any more than we put accents on our
stressed syllables), but were invented by grammarians
of a later period to guide foreign learners in pronounc-
ing the language. In the case of a few words which
are spelt alike, but are distinguished by their accents,
it is convenient to know them ; but even here the
context will generally tell the learner which is intended,
as, for instance, thuinos " mind " and thumos " thyme "■ —
like our desert and desert. The only one in this book
in which you must note the difference is τί? interrogative
and Ti9 indefinite.
The learner will understand that Part I is but a
beginner's book, an introduction to the study of Greek.