I've barely covered 30 pages in Robertson's Big Grammar and I've already encountered quotes in Latin, German, French, and Classical Greek. There are even English words I've never seen before (sinuosities?). Here's what he's covered in only the first few pages:
- The debt we owe to Winer.
- Comparative philology revolutionized everything.
- Examples include the work of Grimm (Grimm's Law) and Verner (Verner's Law).
- Homer can no longer be thought of as the father of Greek.
- The Greeks were in Egypt long before Alexander arrived there.
- Vernacular Greek was unknown before the discovery of the Greek papyri in Egypt.
Here are a couple of classic quotes:
- "The N.T. Greek will no longer be despised as inferior or unclassical."
- " ... students are taught too much grammar and too little language."
- "The thing most lacking is the reading of the authors and, one may add, the study of the modern Greek."
- "In nothing has the tendency to specialize been carried further than in Greek grammatical research."
My copy of Robertson is falling part. Yes, the book is available as a PDF online, but I still prefer to touch real paper. This is a tough book to get through. But I can't put it down.
