Reference Liddell and Scott: An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (1889). v0.1 20 Aug 2010

[Rosen]

This is a dictionary for ancient Greek. I downloaded it from the Perseus Project (here), and added lots of inflections so that many words can be looked up directly from a text. It's still a work in progress, but I'm posting it now because I'd like to know whether it functions on anyone's device. It works for me in Mobipocket Reader for PC, but not on my Cybook (I can browse, but searching doesn't work).

Greek is encoded as unicode, and you'll need a font with support for polytonic Greek (such as Gentium).

This work is in the Canadian public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. It may still be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[pufff]

Hello! I am teaching myself Ancient Greek (still at the very beginning of the process) and thought I would look at this. I added it via Calibre and tried to view it and I could not. It wouldn't convert into epub either. Odyssey worked beautifully and I can read it on my iphone - well at least I could if I understood a word is says....

[Rosen]

Hi pufff!
Thanks for the feedback. Can you tell me which device you tried to view it on? I just opened it in Calibre's viewer; the program had to think for ten minutes, but then it worked.
Since you have an iphone, the Lexiphanes app might satisfy your Greek dictionary needs. Haven't tried it myself, but it looks promising.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pufff

Hello! I am teaching myself Ancient Greek (still at the very beginning of the process) and thought I would look at this. I added it via Calibre and tried to view it and I could not. It wouldn't convert into epub either. Odyssey worked beautifully and I can read it on my iphone - well at least I could if I understood a word is says....

Liddell and Scott is not just "a" dictionary of ancient Greek, it is the dictionary of ancient Greek, but this particular edition of it - the full version - is not suitable for use by a beginner.

I'd strongly suggest that you buy a copy of what's generally called the "Middle Liddell", more formally "An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon" (again by Liddell and Scott). It will take you from the beginner's stage of the language to quite advanced reading. This complete L&S (this book) is pretty much useless for a learner - you'll get bogged down in all the variations in different dialects of Greek and won't actually be able to look anything up.

Note, by the way, that a Greek dictionary is usually called a "lexicon" - the Greek word - rather than a "dictionary" (the Latin equivalent).

[Rosen]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Liddell and Scott is not just "a" dictionary of ancient Greek, it is the dictionary of ancient Greek, but this particular edition of it - the full version - is not suitable for use by a beginner.

Just to clarify: the dictionary/lexicon I have posted here is the Middle Liddell, not the full L&S. (The iphone app I mentioned, on the other hand, contains the full L&S [a.k.a. the LSJ], along with a lexicon of Homeric Greek.) I agree with HarryT that the Middle Liddell is more suitable for a learner. I also thought the Middle Liddell would be more useful on an ebook reader, which is why I've been working on adapting it rather than the LSJ.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rosen

Just to clarify: the dictionary/lexicon I have posted here is the Middle Liddell, not the full L&S.

Ah - thank you for clarifying that. That makes it much more useful!

[pufff]

I have it open on my iphone now! I was simply being impatient - over an hour to convert to epub - but it's done now. Thanks!

[Rosen]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Ah - thank you for clarifying that. That makes it much more useful!

On the utility front, maybe I should emphasize the point about inflections. I've incorporated a quite comprehensive list of inflected forms into this dictionary: so for example, if you click on the first word in the Odyssey, 'andra', mobipocket reader will take you to the definition of 'anêr'. Similarly, the second word of the Odyssey, 'moi', is recognized as a form of 'egô'; and so forth. There are still some glitches to work out here (variations in accentuation, capitalization, etc., plus a hundred-odd headwords that exceed mobipocket's limit of 255 inflected forms). If there's interest, I will address these issues and post an improved version.