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THE INTRODUCTION OF GREEK INTO ENGLISH SCHOOLS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2014
Extract
At the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, knowledge of ancient Greek for most educated Englishmen was something one could aspire to but not necessarily attain. Greek was learnt for reading alone and so less time was spent on its study than Latin, which at this period was learnt also for conversation: this might explain why today, Greek remains a second language in schools, to be learnt after Latin. Even in continental Europe, for one as learned as Erasmus, difficulties could be encountered in the study of the new language. ‘My Greek studies are almost too much for my courage’, he wrote in 1500, ‘while I have not the means of purchasing books nor the help of a master’. What Erasmus lacked – namely a teacher and reading material necessary to learn from – was paralleled across Europe, but nowhere more so than in English schools in the mid-sixteenth century. Without these, the schools in England also found it hard to introduce and maintain Greek in the classroom.
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References
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30 E.g. ἀλίβαντας, f. 5.
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