Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/282

 260 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. popular songs and fairy tales. Finally read comedies which really have been played." I myself had followed a similar course when I un- dertook to learn the living Greek, and I gave some of my correspondents the advice to do like- wise. I recommend the reading of children's stories, above all of Bikelas' beautiful Greek translation of "Andersen's Fairy Tales." The most essential, however, is to speak with Greeks and hear Greeks speak among themselves. Dr. Engel says: "Whoever has learned old Greek will need not much more than to learn some additional few hundred new words. This is rather easy work, since the roots of these words are old Greek." He says further that a foreigner of classical education thus prepared will understand the Greeks in Greece, and the Greeks will understand him, provided he has the right pronunciation. To this one might say : there exists in reality no new Greek. Many words which deviate from the literary language of the classical period are as old as the words of the same meaning in the classics, although we cannot find them in our school dictionary. The methods of learning Greek or any lan- guage which Dr. Engel, myself, and perhaps