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In comparison to GER, how hard is Greek? | ||
Tags: Greek | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4849 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes  | Message 1 of 4 21 October 2012 at 3:14am | IP Logged |
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I've been asking myself just how much more difficult is Greek in comparison to German..is it just as tough as a Slavic language?
I know it has perfective and imperfective, how difficult are they? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 2 of 4 21 October 2012 at 1:15pm | IP Logged |
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Ancient Greek (in all its forms from Mycenean to Koiné) had an insane amount of morphology, but that has been cut down to size in modern Dhimotiki - with your background in Portuguese that wouldn't be a showstopper. The ortography has also been simplified: there is only one accent (and accents are always written in printed materials), so the main remaining problems is that several vowels can be spelled in different ways. And you can learn the alphabet in a few hours time if you do it in a systematic fashion.
It is true that the past aorist to some extent functions like a perfect and the past built on the present stem as an imperfect (which means that your Portuguese will be a useful background). In Bulgarian it seems that they operate with both the perfective/imperfective aspects AND an aorist, but I have never really understood the difference - I haven't studied that language in detail. For Greek the main difference from Portuguese and English is that the infinitive has been dropped which leads to a number of consequences in sentence construction. Furthermore the future and the subjunctive forms are formed with particles in front of verbal forms mainly, but not exclusively built on the aorist stem. But its not hard to adapt to that scheme. For me the really hard thing has been to remember where the stress should be in Greek words - and you can't cheat, not even in writing, because you have to write the article. For a long time I followed the following rule: the accent must be on on of the last three syllables, and I'm always guessing at the wrong one - which leaves two possibilities. It took time and hard labour to (more or less) adapt to the Greek way of putting accents.. Edited by Iversen on 21 October 2012 at 10:22pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4849 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes | Message 3 of 4 21 October 2012 at 5:22pm | IP Logged |
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It's astonishing how much you know, really impressive.
I'm afraid of starting to learn Greek and Swedish because I already want to do other things in life (outside my house), learning these languages would be mostly for reading and listening (I don't really care about the language I use to talk to people, the subject is what matters), I fear it would take too long but I just love Norse and Greek mythologies. The thing is that Russian is in my target list and I want to become definitely fluent (reading and listening) and I know it's gonna take a long a** time. Lust is freaking killing me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 4 of 4 22 October 2012 at 9:49am | IP Logged |
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Greek Mythology? Then the logical language for you wouldn't be Dhimotiki, but Homeric and Classical Greek, and that's a totally different ballgame - much, much harder! I would suggest that you then find a native Greek person with an interest in mythology and history and ask that person whether the 'spirit' of the old texts is preserved in translations into modern Greek. I can't judge that because I haven't studied Ancient Greek (yet). But I know a parallel, namely Old Norse (and Modern Icelandic) versus Danish, and I am not particularly happy about the translations into Danish - they are insipid and 'history-less' (and often not even precise).
Btw. I have often wondered why operalovers don't get sick when the operahouses stage operas from past centuries as if everything took place in a bombed house in Germany after the second worldwar, with everybody clad in dirty and ragged business suits. How come that a whole pretended artform fell victim to that abysmal historyless ideology? Luckily I'm immune because I stick to the ouvertures and orchestral suites. But I'm not immune to the difference between a translation into a modern language and the genuine flavour of the work as it was written centuries ago, and one day I certainly will find time to learn to read the Iliad in Homeric Greek. Edited by Iversen on 22 October 2012 at 9:52am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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