Koine Greek Verbal System

Is there any merit, for non-native students of Greek, in using SMG pronunciation for Koine or AG texts, vs one of the many "reconstructed" systems?

I would recommend against using a Modern Greek pronunciation.In Modern Greek, the letters/diphtongs “η” “ι” “οι” “υ” “ει” “ηι” and “υι” are all pronounced the same: as”ι”. This, in my mind, makes learning the spellings and pronunciations markedly harder. In Ancient Greek many verb tenses and moods are distinguished by changes in these particular sounds, and pronouncing them all similarly would, in my opinion, make understanding alot more difficult. Additionally, many consonant sounds (β, γ, δ) have shifted alot.I would use Erasmus’ Greek pronunciation. I think it differentiates sounds sufficiently for understanding Ancient Greek grammar, is not too difficult to pronounce and relatively authetic, and is widely used.

What are common sentence structures used in Koine Greek?

Sentences in Koine Greek (like Modern Greek) are generally S-V-O, that is first the subject then verb then object.However, they don’t have to be. Since nouns, verbs and adjectives all have inflections, the sentence order can be done in any order and still make sense. Sometimes a word may come out of order to emphasize that word, but that is a matter of interpretation, especially with written Greek (as opposed to hearing it in spoken Greek).The Koine Greek in the New Testament may sometimes start with the verb, especially if it is translating or paraphrasing Hebrew and follow its sentence structure.Questions in Koine, as well as negative statements and commands, often put the verb first.There’s also the “(almost) never-ending sentence” in Koine Greek. It may start with “kai” (and) then insert a phrase or sentence, then it inserts another “kai”, then repeats the pattern, et cetera, et cetera. Paul’s letters have some very lengthy sentences in Koine Greek with this sentence construction.The key to understanding a sentence in Koine, though, isn’t the word order as much as it is knowing the inflections of the words used.

If you know Latin, is it easy to learn Ancient Greek (or vice versa)?

Easy, not particularly. If you have experience learning one classical Indo-European language, you will find it easier to pick up a second one. It doesn’t have to be Greek and Latin — though these are the most widely studied classical languages in the west. I imagine you would get the same benefit from learning another classical Indo-European language like Sanskrit as well.Knowing another classical language acquaints you with the sort of grammatical concepts common to most classical (and some modern) Indo-European languages. The classical languages in this group tend to have more highly inflected substantive and verb systems. Some modern European languages, like Spanish, for example, have rather highly inflected verb systems — though the verb systems of the classical languages are usually far more highly inflected even than Spanish. Spanish, however, like many — though not all — modern European languages, has a very simple noun/adjective/pronoun inflection system — generally you just need to account for masculine/feminine and singular/plural (though the pronouns retain some vestiges of the old case system — as do the pronouns in English). Not so for their classical antecedents — you’re going to have to memorize a bunch of noun endings and learn their grammatical function as well as a highly inflected verb system.So knowing Latin, when I learned Ancient Greek, I did not have to wrap my head around using inflections with nouns to denote grammatical role as opposed to word order — this is often what Latin students find most challenging. I also understood the verbal system categories — mood, tense, person, number, voice, aspect, etc.None of that made memorizing all the details in Greek easier — other than being used to memorizing such things. There is, of course, some vocabulary crossover between the languages though it is not usually as obvious Greek-to-English as Latin-to-English is.So, conceptually, your second classical language will be easier assuming you grokked the grammar of the first one. That does not mean, however, that it will immediately be easy to memorize all the vocabulary and grammatical forms — it’s a lot of work — often tedious.

Should I study Latin or Greek if I study the classics?

I am wondering that you have to choose; to understand classics, you will need both. Greek is more important, particularly in the areas of science, philosophy, mathematics, drama. For politics, law and history, Latin is important, but in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, Greek was the language of that as well.I am not sure which language is easier to learn. But the usual textbooks and curricula assume that you start with Latin and take up Greek second (except, so I think, those that are in use in Greece). So the introductory lessons will be faster-paced in Greek than in Latin.Judith Meyer mentions the classical Greek dialects. Well, most literature is in Attic (the Athens dialect) anyway and the later Koine, which is just like Attic. In a slightly advanced state of your studies, you will read works of Herodotus, which are written in Ionian - that is close enough to Attic to be well accessible at that state. Archimedes wrote in Doric, that's slightly peculiar, but not a huge challenge. The archaic Greek of Homer needs some adaptation on the side of the reader. Difficulties will usually not come from the dialects but from the complex (often deliberately complex) language of some authors - but that applies to both Greek and Latin, I'd say Latin even more so than Greek.Both languages have rich inflection; Latin sentences tend to be longer and on average more complicated (as I said, depending on the author). Classical Greek has a confusing verbal system with zillions of principal forms to memorize, many exceptions etc. So has Latin, but Greek is much worse.Personally, I feel that Greek is a nicer language. (Perhaps because in a few aspects like use of particles it feels closer to my native language German).My recommendation: Start with Latin.

Which sounded cooler, ancient Latin or ancient Greek?

Definitely Greek.Latin authors, like Cicero and other, were always complaining about how Latin sound dull with respect to Greek.Even at school, Latin seemed a down to earth language, with a comprehensive set of rules and a quite regular verbs. In the opposite, Greek had a wild verb system, few rules, but you have to feel much more the language. And it’s way better for explaining abstract ideas.I don’t know if Greek made the Greek philosopher possible, or the other way round.