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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Polyphemes Bilingual Hexaglot Groupie Virgin Islands Joined 6138 days ago 48 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: German*, Dutch*, English, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Bulgarian, Greek | Message 1 of 7 20 September 2007 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
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Hello,
maybe some of you have read my entry in the "New members" part of this forum. I have recently moved to Athens and am now in the process of learning Greek. Being of Greek descent and having once spoken Greek fluently, I felt rather ashamed as I arrived here for I was not able to converse with people in the tongue that had once been my own. This shyness lasted and, paradoxically, I was afraid for the first two weeks to even touch a Greek text book. After some two weeks here (I arrived here 28th August 2007), I finally got myself to go to the big English language bookstore in Athens, Eleftheroudakis. Previously, I had learnt every language I had acquired through language courses from German, so I had very little experience with language courses using English. (This is not entirely true, I just realize, I've studied Thai extremely briefly using Teach Yourself) I finally picked Teach Yourself, as I thought it would be a good course to start a language with. I was a bit lazy when starting out, but now I am learning every day. Before, there were still gaps, and I would sometimes not study for a couple of days, but on the other hand, I really experienced loads of other interesting things. Now I'm basically learning every day, but only since 3-4 days ;). I manage to get through one unit a day, I'd say I approximately spend about 2 hours a day on the course, mostly a bit less, however. I had known the alphabet before, and knowing it with all the extravagant vowel and consonant combination only required an hour of studying. I manage to read pretty well now, though not as fast as I would like to. Teach Yourself uses a fairly easy approach to learning Greek. This, however, is not always met with much joy by me, as I do find the course's pace rather slow at times. Plus, some things I find quite redundant, like putting every conjugated verb form that appears in the dialogue in the vocabulary list. Now, I just tend to write down words I really don't know, as this works much better than just repeating words you know full well - not to mention repeating various conjugations without any particular order. I miss some grammar, though. It isn't really explained in the units, but you can look some of it up in the appendix of the text book. As I want to know the language well enough to be able to some day read books in it, I bought an extra grammar book (even in German). It teaches the "official grammar" as propagated by the Government. After 3-4 days, I now converse with my land lord in Greek - though the conversations are as simple as it gets. Speaking it from an early stage, however, really stimulates growth, I feel. I no longer automatically switch to English when I'm leaving the house. The TY course comes with two cd's. The Greek spoken on the cd is good, though I think the dialogues at the beginning rather slow, even for beginers. Some of the dialogues are funny, however. This I find a good way of memorizing this, as we are likely to memorize what we perceive as funny. Language immersion is fairly possible here, as I live in Athens. I just have to go out of the house to hear the language, see its culture and speakers all around me. Greek radio, TV hopefully will do the rest. Thus, so far I know a good deal of the basics, can read it quite easily. Pronunciation wasn't really an issue, I know the sound of the language just too well, I just have forgotten the words (like I said, I was fluent as a child). My ultimate goal is to be able to read (Modern) Greek books. When I feel I have mastered Modern Greek well enough, I am definitely going to learn Ancient Greek, as I am a real fan of the Classics. Getting into "Katharevousa" might be very interesting, as well - my landlord actually speaks it. I feel this is enough for a first post. I will try and keep it updated, more so if there seems to be an interest in this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Polyphemes Bilingual Hexaglot Groupie Virgin Islands Joined 6138 days ago 48 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German*, Dutch*, English, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Bulgarian, Greek | Message 2 of 7 23 September 2007 at 1:44am | IP Logged |
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I will be starting again tomorrow because I have been rather busy these days.
After reading the forum all night (literally) and getting a headache from all those different opinions, I have decided it's best to just sort things out myself. I will adapt a certain method and see what its benefits are. So for now I am trying to do one hour of Greek a day (I am rather busy), on Friday I will study two hours. On Sunday, I will if it was helpful. I will be using Teach Yourself Greek as well as one Greek grammar book. The plan is to do 20 min of "shadowing" (something I first learnt of in this forum and which sounds interesting), 20 min of grammar (drills) and 20 minutes of reading (especially to get acquainted with the script). At the end of the day I will rehearse the new vocabulary. And because I am living in Greece, I will watch some Greek tv while I am having lunch/supper. So this is the plan for that specific week. I also do not want to linger too long on the internet all the time, so the next time you'll hear of me will probably be Sunday. If you have any suggestions, tips or comments don't hesitate to write them in your reply to this post. Michael 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6143 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 3 of 7 23 September 2007 at 1:54am | IP Logged |
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Someone posted a link to Mango http://www.trymango.com/ in another thread recently. I've been trying it out a bit
for German. It is free, it is good, it has a section on Greek. I cannot comment on the quality of the Greek section, it is Greek to me after all, but the German lessons are helpful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JWC Groupie United States Joined 6947 days ago 69 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 7 23 September 2007 at 11:27am | IP Logged |
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I recommend combining the FSI Greek program found for free at http://fsi-language-courses.com with a modern Greek grammar book or textbook.
There are some archaisms in FSI Greek (which was prepared as the Greek nation was in the process of shifting "officially" from formal, stilted katharevousa to the popularly spoken demotic Greek. The course is sort of a half-way point, teaching demotic forms but ending the last third of the course with katharevousa. Nevertheless, I do not know of any other Greek course with as heavy emphasis in drilling. It is a good way to learn to spit out irregular aorist tenses, subjunctive clauses, and other aspects of grammar that come naturally only with heavy drilling. Also, if you run into older people, they may use more archaic forms of Greek, while conservative newspapers, articles or books written more than about 30 years ago, and church publications often use the more formal katharevousa Greek. The FSI Greek course uses the old accenting system (which was a holdover from B.C. Attic Greek that predates the koine of the New Testament), but that really makes no difference. Today, the Greek accent does not change pronunciation of a vowel but simply denotes which syllable to stress in a word. For the modern spelling convention, you would accent syllables at the same location as the older accents in the FSI text, but you would simply substitute the acute accent (i.e., the sort of accent mark one sees in Spanish) for any grave or circumflex accents. One simple substitution, and you have automatically updated all of the accent marks. I took 1 1/2 years of modern demotic Greek and I can tell you the FSI material was very usable in comparison. You would want a modern introduction to Greek textbook to work through in written form to acquire grammar so that you use uniform endings, but the differences are minor enough that you can use FSI Greek and then adopt the modern textbook where the differences diverge. As one example, FSI Greek might say "eisthe" where modern demotic Greek would pronounce the word, "eiste". In actual practice, however, you will meet Greeks who say the word both ways (i.e., a variation in pronouncing a consonant as an aspirant th or a smoot t). So using a modern textbook, adopting the usage "eiste", but recognizing and pronouncing "eiste" when running through FSI drills, will not really throw you off and will enable you to encounter dialectical variation in Greek spoken and written texts with less confusion than if you only used a modern demotic Greek course. The real advantage to FSI (as supplemented and corrected by a second, modern textbook), is that it will teach you to speak by reflex a language that is very hard for English speakers to use without great concentration. Very few courses emphasize heavy drills in conjugations and inflected nouns (which Greek has). After 1 1/2 years of modern Greek completed some 4 years ago, I was able to read and write quite a bit and could pronounce Greek relatively well, but I have not really practed much since then and have forgotten much. I can speak a tiny bit though I recognize more in writing. What little I can speak, however, comes from doing about 10 of the 75 FSI Greek units and not from my modern Greek classes. The dialogues I was drilled in as I dabbled with FSI on the side still allow me to comment on restaurants, ask for directions, etc. In summary, I recommend using FSI Greek with another modern coursebook or reference grammar (and not by itself), but I think you will get far more progress by using both sources than simply by using a modern course alone. This comes from experience--I have seen many people use a modern Greek course but have an almost complete functional inability to speak conversationally, for what it is worth. --JWC 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7037 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 5 of 7 23 September 2007 at 9:25pm | IP Logged |
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I'm not sure if you've seen the Krypos Greek Course, but it's a free online course for Greek. I haven't used it but I've heard some good things about it. Edited by Darobat on 23 September 2007 at 9:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Polyphemes Bilingual Hexaglot Groupie Virgin Islands Joined 6138 days ago 48 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German*, Dutch*, English, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Bulgarian, Greek | Message 6 of 7 24 September 2007 at 7:58am | IP Logged |
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Hi,
first, I'd like to thank Jimbo. The Mango course does sound interesting and looks helpful. Although, when I started to have a look at the German version (I am a native speaker) to scroll it for inaccuracy or mistakes, I found a mistake on 4 out of 5 slides I glanced at. Not always big ones, but they're there. However, since the course is free, you can't expect too much and we should be grateful it is there - especially me, as I really don't have that amount of money to buy "fancy" learning materials. What I am saying is "beware" and compare. What I like about it is the sheer amount of lessons including audio. FSI looks interesting, though I haven't looked into it as much as the other one (Mango) because audio on this computer still doesn't work (!). Today or tomorrow this will be fixed, hopefully. As for the Kypros course, I had discovered it already but I appreciate you pointing it out to me. I am amazed at the vast possibilities of (free) language learning on the internet. Edited by Polyphemes on 25 September 2007 at 12:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Polyphemes Bilingual Hexaglot Groupie Virgin Islands Joined 6138 days ago 48 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German*, Dutch*, English, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Bulgarian, Greek | Message 7 of 7 02 October 2007 at 12:55pm | IP Logged |
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Sorry, didn't post here on Sunday, have been a bit busy plus a bit ill... I will post something next Sunday, I will hope to have made some progress then.
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