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TAC 2013 Team Sparta’s Greek Team Thread

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
231 messages over 29 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 10 ... 28 29 Next >>
ellasevia
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 Message 73 of 231
21 December 2012 at 5:54pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
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.

No, at least not in the form of it's own letter. Those sounds do exist in Greek, but you have to write them as ντ and γκ, just like how μπ is pronounced like /b/.

Solfrid Cristin wrote:
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.

That should actually work well. When they've heard me speaking it, some people have commented that they think Greek sounds a lot like European Spanish.

Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Those of you who actually know some Greek - can I then just say δεν all the time and not worry about the rule?

You definitely can. A lot of Greeks don't know the rule and don't bother to distinguish between δεν and δε, at least not in writing. It will just look a bit odd to people who do know the rule.
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LanguageSponge
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 Message 74 of 231
21 December 2012 at 6:30pm | IP Logged 
Unfortunately I won't get my hands on my Griechisch Ohne Mühe until I get home to London
on Christmas Eve, but I am ready to share one thing I personally find weird, and that I
mentioned in an earlier post. That is that β is pronounced like an English V in Modern
Greek. This messes with my head sometimes and at the moment I pronounce words like
βιολογία, βιογραφία and βιβλιοθήκη with the English B sound, in accordance with older
varieties of Greek pronunciation, instead of the modern way. This is probably slanderous
for any Greek so I need to get out that habit right now.

Jack
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Solfrid Cristin
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 Message 75 of 231
21 December 2012 at 7:14pm | IP Logged 
LanguageSponge wrote:
Unfortunately I won't get my hands on my Griechisch Ohne Mühe until I get home to London
on Christmas Eve, but I am ready to share one thing I personally find weird, and that I
mentioned in an earlier post. That is that β is pronounced like an English V in Modern
Greek. This messes with my head sometimes and at the moment I pronounce words like
βιολογία, βιογραφία and βιβλιοθήκη with the English B sound, in accordance with older
varieties of Greek pronunciation, instead of the modern way. This is probably slanderous
for any Greek so I need to get out that habit right now.

Jack


That sometimes happens in Russian too as you know, so I am trying to get used to it. And after Spanish where b and v are practically considered the same letter, and it is only the position in the word that decides whether it is pronounced like a b or a sort of v, nothing surprises me in that department.
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tarvos
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 Message 76 of 231
21 December 2012 at 7:21pm | IP Logged 
Russian has its own letter b though. Greek requires two.
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Solfrid Cristin
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 Message 77 of 231
21 December 2012 at 7:26pm | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
Russian has its own letter b though. Greek requires two.


You are so right. I should be more specific. What I meant was that sometimes there are words that you would expect to be pronounced with a b, but which are pronounced with a V, because they have kept the b in spelling, and are then, according to Russian pronunciation rules pronounced with a v.
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tarvos
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 Message 78 of 231
21 December 2012 at 7:30pm | IP Logged 
As a b? Can you give examples? V sometimes goes to f at the end of a word (кровь),
Ботвинников), but I cannot for the life of me think of a situation where a v is
pronounced as a b in Russian.

Edited by tarvos on 21 December 2012 at 7:31pm

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Kerrie
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 Message 79 of 231
21 December 2012 at 7:56pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
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.


When I come across stuff like that, I listen to the word in Audacity. It's an audio editing program. You can highlight a selection (word, sentence, whatever), and listen to it as many times as you want to. It helps to get all the sounds *and* the rhythm right.
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Ogrim
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 Message 80 of 231
21 December 2012 at 9:08pm | IP Logged 
Cristina, I totally concur as regards Greek and Spanish, and I'll probably speek Greek with a Spanish accent as well to begin with. More uncertain about the similarity with Russian, although I have noticed that I need to take care not to let the vowel reduction rules in Russian influence my pronunication in Greek!

By the way, I bought my Assimil Le Nouveau Grec today with the mp3 disc, and had a first look at it. The first lesson coincides with yours, Cristina. In my own log I will make a comparison between Assimil and Langenscheidt once I have time to do so. My first remark is that the audio for the first lesson is excrutiatingly slow. Although I appreciate a soft introduction, I do prefer a slightly more natural speak pattern, even from the start.

I'm off to finish packing my suitcase, tomorrow I am travelling, and I am not sure when I will be back on HTLAL. The next week will be dedicated to family and friends in my home country (and hopefully to lots of language learning). Happy Holidays to all my Spartan team mates.


Edited by Ogrim on 21 December 2012 at 9:10pm



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