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TAC 2013 Team Sparta’s Greek Team Thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 65 of 231 20 December 2012 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
To be honest, I didn't actually know the answer to this question -- it was just one of those things that I say "because it sounds right" -- so I did some quick research. It appears that "που" is a more colloquial conjunction which can sometimes replace more formal constructions using "να", "ο οποίος", "ότι", and so forth. So I apologize for that -- I unwittingly started you off with some colloquial, non-stardard Greek! I believe the proper construction with "ελπίζω" should actually use either "ότι" or "να", depending on the tense that follows. I hope that helps a bit! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5833 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 66 of 231 20 December 2012 at 11:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I see, so is this sentence correct?: Δεν έχω πάει ποτέ στην Ελλάδα, αλλά ελπίζω να πάω εκεί σύντομα.
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 67 of 231 20 December 2012 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
Ναι, ακριβώς! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Saga Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4365 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Greek | Message 68 of 231 20 December 2012 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Γεια σας, Crush, stelingo and ellasevia! It's great to see that our little team is
still growing and that we are not only beginners anymore :) @ellasevia: I didn't understand everything you wrote, because I didn't know some of the more important words, but I got the gist of it without reading the translation. If it isn't too much work for you, could you occasionally write some sentences like that in your posts? I think, it's a great practice for those of us who already know some Greek. And for our total beginners, who don't understand more than a couple of words now, it might be interesting later on when they can look back and see what progress they've made. I consider myself to be quite good at spelling words, at least in German and English. But Greek is a different matter altogether. Their usage of 5 different writings for the i-sound (ι, η, υ, οι, ει), two for the e-sound (ε, αι) and two for the o-sound (ο, ω) really make things complicated. Especially, when using the wrong letter can change the meaning, as in ακριβώς (right, exactly) and ακριβός (expensive). For some cases there are rules, but for others it seems arbitrary which letter is used, although there might be some linguistic and/or historical background which the average learner doesn't recognize right away. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 69 of 231 20 December 2012 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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ellasevia, thanks for being our Godfather. As a complete beginner I do not have any questions to you for the time being, but as I progress I am sure your input will be of great help to me, especially when I painfully start to construct sentences in writing.
Stelingo, thanks for the recommendations. The grammar definitely looks interesting. 300 pounds for a dictionary? Is it covered with the Golden Fleece? LanguageSponge, your list of Greek roots in English is interesting. If you really start thinking about it, not only English but most Germanic and Romance languages have lots of words coming from Greek, not least things related to science, philosophy, art and medicine, and that many of those words or their roots are still living in modern Greek. One must be aware of misinterpretations though. An anecdote: In Crete last summer, I overheard someone using the word χρήση (xrisi) several times in a conversation. With my zero knowledge of the language, I thought they were talking about the economic crisis, which has hit Greek hard. It was only afterwards I discovered that it actually means "usage" or "practice"! So he was proably talking about something completely different. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 70 of 231 21 December 2012 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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One minuscule comment from a non-member of your team:
-ώς is a common ending af adverbs, -ός of adjectives. And because the modern homonyms were pronounced differently in the old days we sometimes can get a hint of the correct wowel in a word by looking at a loanword. So a few rules of thumbs and some knowledge of Greek loanwords can help you to make correct guesses about the spelling in Modern Greek. But you can also use the old values of the vowels when you memorize words. For instance it helps to 'think /e/' when you deal with a word with a η, /i/ (as a short English ee) when you see a ι and the sound written as ü in German, u in French and y in Danish when you try to memorize a word with υ. It is of course important that you don't let the reference to old pronunciations influence the way you pronounce modern Greek, but for me those associations help me to remember where to use η, ι and υ in the modern language. Edited by Iversen on 21 December 2012 at 1:12am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 71 of 231 21 December 2012 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Iversen, a useful reminder. As I believe I mentioned elsewhere, I did some classical Greek at university, and although very little of it still sticks in memory, I do remember the pronunciation of these different vowels as well as the diptongs, so I'll try to make use of your advice.
I also remember our teacher insisting on us making a clear difference between the long and short vowels when we where reciting poetry or tragedy, and adapting the rythm to the hexameter or the iambic trimeter. Modern Greek seems pretty easy compared to that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 72 of 231 21 December 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Remember we talked about writing here on our team thread or in a separate thread about what we found funny, difficult or interesting as we learned the language? I suggest we call it “My Greek Discovery of the Day” – and it can be anything from a single word or expression that we have just learned (or a new letter in the alphabet, for some of us) – to a full blown lesson, the days you feel for it. It is obviously not something we would do every day, but whenever we had something we wanted to share, we could do it here.
Since I had a go at learning the Greek alphabet and the first lesson of Assimil Greek today – I’ll start the ball – and write what will presumably be the longest “Discovery of the Day “ piece I’ll ever write. Cristina’s Greek Discovery of the Day – December 20th 2012. I started up with the alphabet today, thinking optimistically that it would all come back to me in a flash once I sat down with it. Not. Some of the letters, in particular the ones that are the same as in Russian are easy, but the more unfamiliar ones felt like I had to bring them back from the third attic of my brain, all covered in dust and cobwebs. Well, I have got 10 days before the year starts, so I should have nailed the bascis by then, and all the rest of the year to improve. Does Greek by the way not have a proper d as in David or g as in Gatwick? All I found was a d like in English “that”, and a g which sounds like something between a Spanish g and a French r. Weird. Beautiful and enchanting, but weird. One thing I like though, is that whenever I do not know how to pronounce something I pretend it is Spanish. It won’t be completely right, but it is better than if I pretend it is Norwegian. Since my brain has decided that Russian and Greek are closely related, I also occasionally end up with a Russian accent. I must be the only Norwegian around who will speak Greek with a Spanish/Russian accent (or are you with me there, Ogrim)? I have not found any sounds I cannot pronounce at all (I think) though the aforementioned Greek g may prove to be a bit tricky. As for punctuation, I still find it odd that they use semi colon as an interrogation mark. I remember having to ask ellasevia about that the last time I made an attempt to learn Greek. Lesson one in the Assimil book was – strange. In most books, they start with greetings, or possibly some individual words. Easy stuff Here they went straight into a dialogue, which among other things consisted of a five syllable word. Those are a lot of syllables for a beginner. The word was συμπαθηtικος, and it was almost impossible to get my head around the pronunciation with the mp becoming b plus the extra syllable. In the end I had to pretend that I had the cold of the decade, to be able to get it right. Then of course we had the explanation of the negation δεν keeping or losing its n at the end depending on the following letter. With the additional explanation that most Greeks did not worry about it, and just pronounced it anyway. Those of you who actually know some Greek - can I then just say δεν all the time and not worry about the rule? A funny thing is that they use the definite article in front of given names – funny to me because we have the same feature in certain Norwegian dialects (Sitter her på trappa, venter på a Marta/ N’Rune ville itte gjera det). Aloysius, do you have that in Swedish as well? I have heard it dialectically also used in Andalucia, in Spain on very rare occasions, but never ever as part of the standard language. The minimal use of personal pronouns is like is Spanish, so that is pretty familiar, and the freedom of word order seems to resemble Russian. What I have never seen in any language though is an ι without the dot (i). Does anyone know the origin or reason for that? I am using the French version of Assimil, and I suspect it makes my life slightly easier from a Norwegian perspective. Trying to figure out how to pronounce a language based on English pronunciation rules always messes with my head. Otherwise I tried to copy the first lesson by hand, and realized that my Greek handwritten s, looks like my Russian handwritten b. And they are so not supposed to do that. Well, I guess I’ll be able to look back at this in a year and laugh at how easy it really is. When I listened to the first lesson of Russian Pimsleur I could not believe I was ever going to be able to understand, much less say those words. And now I think it is so easy and slow, that I cannot stand to listen to it. I actually find some comfort in that.:-) Edit: We have not made a decision as to whether we should do it in this thread or in a separate thread - I believe I have seen one vote for each solution - but if we decide to create a separate thread I can just move it. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 21 December 2012 at 5:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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