From: "tkelly" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL James Hoch Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 08:43:01 -0700 Good Day All: The Hoch's publication is available from the Oriental Institute. URL: https://oi.uchicago.edu/order/suq/products/egypt_langlit.html Tom Kelly ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:33:45 +0200 From: Michele Moglia To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL James Hoch Hi Gilbert, For anyone looking for the book, it's available. I bought my copy of Hoch's book last month from Barnes&Noble, now there is out of stock, may be mine was the last one. But the book it's available on Amazon and in other on-line libraries. Michele ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 12:51:24 +0100 From: lucaslavia To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL James Hoch Hi, if theres any way of u posting the exercises or finding them online i would be willing to work on a key, i need the practice and it would be something to do. i've just finished Gardiner's exercises and although his grammar is the definitive guide, it is a bit dated so consequently the translations of his exercises are as well. Perhaps Hoch's could prove more interesting. Luke ============================================================================== From: "Robert Buchanan" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL James Hoch Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:16:46 -0400 (EDT) Great to see the group come to life. So I pose a question - What background, other than a desire to learn the language, would a person really need to learn the language? Or do the texts mentioned assume no other language ability and start from that point (ie very basic)? THX RHB ============================================================================== From: "gilbert" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL James Hoch Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2008 03:39:20 +0800 Thanks to everybody who replied to my message. Maybe I wasn't clear: I do have James Hoch's book and have started studying it after having done Allen's up to lesson 21 inclusive. Luke, half of the exercises have the answers at the back, not all of them. The reason why I started Hoch and postponed finishing Allen to later is that I do find his approach interesting. Somehow it's bringing a certain life into AE that I seem to have - temporarily? -lost by concentrating on Allen. Maybe through working with Hoch, I'll find the drive again to finish Allen's work. If the book is widely available, I would be interested in comparing the answers to the exercises with others who are working on them. Gilbert ============================================================================== From: "KMOTC" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL James Hoch's Key and STUDY GROUPS Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 15:04:53 -0500 m Htp all, I have the key to Hoch's exercises, but I have no idea how I got them--someone sent them to me at one time, but I am not sure if I should share them on a forum or not. The document came to me as an old (1995) forwarded email from Dr. Hoch to someone else. I used the email address listed to post Dr. Hoch and ask for permission to put the document up in the files at AEL and GlyphStudy. My email has not bounced back so far, so let's wait and see if he responds. Perhaps he's listening here? And for those looking for a study group--GlyphStudy has students working in Kamrin's fundamentals book and Allen's grammar. A new Allen section is also slated to begin next year -probably in the spring. We are also open to new study sections at any time, assuming we can get a volunteer moderator to run it. So if there is interest in doing a Hoch study group, GlyphStudy can more than accommodate the traffic and interest. let me know best, Karen the moderator at GlyphStudy > > Hi, if theres any way of u posting the exercises or finding them online i > would be willing to work on a key, i need the practice and it would be > something to do. i've just finished Gardiner's exercises and although his > grammar is the definitive guide, it is a bit dated so consequently the > translations of his exercises are as well. Perhaps Hoch's could prove more > interesting. > Luke ============================================================================== From: "A.K. Eyma" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: AEL re: James Hoch's Key and STUDY GROUPS Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2008 12:03:17 +0200 Hoch posted the key to his exercises on a forum and it's still up at: http://www.newton.ac.uk/egypt/ad/hoch Please note there is since long an AEL/EEF FAQ about such resource issues: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/glyphs.html http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/glyphs2.html So no need to reinvent the wheel there either, it seems to me. kind regards, Aayko Eyma ============================================================================== From: "tkelly" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL re: James Hoch's Key and STUDY GROUPS Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2008 08:48:30 -0700 A personal view about the limitations the Hoch and Allen Egyptian grammar publications: The problem with the published answers to Hoch's Middle Egyptian Grammar exercises is that they do not provide answers to all of the exercises. Hoch implies that his publication is to be used in a formal class environment where a qualified instructor can provide the answers to the unpublished exercises. This limits the value of Hoch to the "do it your self students" of the ancient Egyptian language. Allen text book has published answers to all of its exercises. However, both Hoch and Allen could learn a lesson from Gardiner and Kamin. The Gardiner and Kamin publications are student friendly. It is easy to read the presented material because of the line spacing. Print size is also a problem with the Allen publication. My personal opinion is that the Kamrin publication, which is not error free, produces a psychology that motivates the student, for some unknown reason, to seek answers from other published sources which makes it fun to accomplish the exercises in her book. Kamrin favors the middle eastern edition of her Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A practical guide, as the student feels more comfortable marking the exercise answers and recording personal remarks in the document. I know, for some strange reason, I do not care to mark up my Abrams published copy of her text book. Best to all, Tom Kelly ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 08:43:04 +0000 (GMT) From: Ruggero Pucci Subject: AEL Allen's Grammar opinion To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Hello to everyone, I'd like to express a humble and personal opinion about Allen's Grammar. I have to confess that up to now that of Allen has been my Egyptian grammar reference book, along with Gardiner's grammar of course, and I find it, from the contents point of view, superb. Nevertheless, it is unquestionable that this book has three main problems (maybe there are more but I just like to emphasize the following ones) every student has to deal with. In this case, I must confirm what Tom Kelly and others have recently stressed , that is, that Allen's grammar is not necessarily student friendly, it is very difficult to be handled and the line spacing is overwhelming: a) Allen has compartmentalized excessively his lessons creating a complicated layout. Sometimes it seems as if every lesson were to be considered as an independent subject matter. This could create limitations to the self-teaching concept the author aims with his book at. To overcome this difficulty I did, and I'm still doing, a summary table of every single lesson - particularly the verbs patterns - and then I put them together, as a puzzle. Doing this way I was able of separating the extensive explanations from what I considered important to learn how to read hieroglyphs. b)The book is undoubtedly bulky. By the other hand we must considerer that we are not learning a recipe for an apple tart but a complicated language of an ancient extremely developed civilization which left an extraordinary legacy for humankind. Usually, I study at home or in a library and I try to focus on both learning the lessons and doing summary tables from which then I study again and again until I have mastered the subject. Of course an entire life is not sufficient to master ancient Egyptian. c)Finally, the line spacing in Allen's book is sometimes disheartening. This is true. I must confess that sometimes I felt as if this book was choking me. From this point of view Gardiner's grammar is easier to read and understand. What is helpful in Allen's text book is that he gives the answers to all of the exercises he proposes at the end of every single lesson. The essays that accompany the different matters give an additional vocabulary and extremely good introduction to the ancient Egyptian thought, religion and society. Best to all, Ruggero Pucci Milan, Italy ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:54:34 +0100 From: "Mark-Jan Nederhof" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL re: James Hoch's Key and STUDY GROUPS On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 4:48 PM, tkelly wrote: > > The problem with the published answers to Hoch's Middle Egyptian Grammar > exercises is that they do not provide answers to all of the exercises. If there is going to be a key to _all_ exercises, AND if Hoch has no objections, I would be willing to host the key on my web site, next to various other keys: http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~mjn/egyptian/grammars/ It would be a good occasion for me to finally study this grammar, after having had it lying on the shelf for ages. Mark-Jan ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 07:52:40 -0700 (PDT) From: Terrence Donnelly Subject: Re: AEL Allen's Grammar opinion To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Allen's book is more of a reference grammar than an actual textbook: each grammatical topic gets its own chapter, and is then covered fairly exhaustively in it. I compare it to Hoch's book, which is a true textbook, where each chapter covers several topics, and the topics go from easier at the beginning of the book to progressively more complicated. I have no experience with Gardiner's book. I began by reading Collier and Manley's book, then went through all of Hoch, and then started on Allen, which I got about 65% through. I keep intending to finish it, but so far that hasn't happened. -- Terry Donnelly ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 16:17:50 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Re: AEL re: James Hoch's Key and STUDY GROUPS From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Can someone clarify and contextualize for me where these grammars (Hoch and Allen) come from and what they do. What is the linguistic framework within which they are written? What kind of linguistic "grammar" is the model being followed? Are there linguistic constructs like 'category' or 'rule' or 'tree' or 'phrasal category' or 'embedding'? Are there grammars or treatments of parts of the Egyptian language that employ constructs known to be useful in related languages (other than Coptic)? For example, the related languages are root-based, but Egyptological treatments (and dictionaries) are not root-based. When will an approach to Egyptian grammar using such constructs be emerging, do you think? thanks Matthew ============================================================================== From: Rhio Barnhart To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Allen's Grammar opinion Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 14:53:55 -0700 I have been following this thread with great interest. I have very recently undertaken the study online with the Glyphstudy group using the Kamrin book. The group has some wonderful study aids available and the moderators are wonderful and helpful. I purchased all the other books as well, except for Hoch. The recent posts make me think it would be worth acquiring. I have not been diligent this summer as other things have co-opted my time, but I hope to get back at it as soon as our school year begins. I find the Kamrin book more than adequate as a "gentle" introduction and the format is excellent. A bit scattered at times. The font size in the Allen book is so tiny one needs a magnifying glass. Gardiner and Allen are both difficult for self-teaching. If I had more years left, I would probably enroll in a university level course. As it is, it is an extremely enjoyable world of study for me. I end up with endless questions and there is no one knowledgeable at my institution. For instance, who determined the transliteration of the biliterals? I found Champollion in facsimile on the web but, although my French reading is pretty good, it is still slow going. I have been reading Gardiner's "Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction". I realize that he is considered outdated, but he gives the hieroglyphs for names, place names and many other words and it is a great way to learn vocabulary. Even as a beginner, it is enjoyable to use what you learn and continually push the envelope. Mr. Pucci sums it up superbly, "By the other hand we must considerer that we are not learning a recipe for an apple tart but a complicated language of an ancient extremely developed civilization which left an extraordinary legacy for humankind." Onward and upward, RHB ==============================================================================