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TAC 2013 Team Sparta’s Greek Team Thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5553 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 1 of 231 14 December 2012 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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To me it feels like only a few weeks ago that TAC 2011 was coming to an end and we were
all signing up for our new teams for TAC 2012. And now, here we are, having come full circle once again, and are now signing up for TAC 2013. It’s shaping up to be a really special one from where I’m standing with typically less popular languages like our own Greek, Welsh and even Breton getting a look in. In this thread the Greek Team, henceforth referred to as Team Sparta, will have a place to discuss our strategies for learning both Modern and Ancient Greek, share our successes and in true Spartan style, fight mercilessly against the difficulties and obstacles we face on our long journey together towards proficiency in the wonderful Greek language. Enthusiasts of both Modern Greek and any of the Ancient dialects are welcome although you should announce your intentions in the TAC Organisation and Sign- up Thread. As yet we are only a small team which leaves plenty of room in our little Greek corner for anyone else wishing to join our quest for Greek. The time is already very nearly upon us to start creating our logs for the upcoming new Challenge. Of course you can organise this however you see fit, but I personally prefer a clean slate every year. Once you have created your new log, please let me know here so that I can add a link to it in this post for easy reference. If you are able, I would also ask that you put a link to Team Sparta’s collective thread in your log so we and any other interested parties can find us with as little Spartan chaos as possible. At present we are a humble trio of merry language nerds striving for varying degrees of competence in the wonderful language of Modern Greek: LanguageSponge – Modern Greek, Russian and German LanguageSponge's Log Solfrid Cristin – Modern Greek, Russian, German, French, Italian. Solfrid Cristin's Log embici – Modern Greek. Also possibly French and Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Dutch or Esperanto embici's Log Ogrim: Modern Greek and Russian Ogrim's Log Saga: Modern Greek, Japanese and French Saga's Log Crush: Modern Greek, Mandarin Crush's Log stelingo: Modern Greek stelingo's Log aloysius: Modern Greek, Russian, Italian, French aloysius's Log ancpem1: Modern Greek and Russian ancpem1's Log It is time, fellow Spartans, to declare yourselves! Please write as long or as short an introduction to yourselves as you like, letting us and any other curious readers who may stop by know a little about you and your language history. In addition I challenge you to answer the none so trivial question, "What has drawn you to wonders of Greek?" We may be few here who follow the Quest for Greek, but such a trivial thing as numbers never frightened the Spartans. Just like the courageous if also crazy Spartans before us, in our quest for languages, we do not ask how many, but where they are! Edit: The Resources Post is post 36 which is on Page 5 Edited by LanguageSponge on 01 January 2013 at 9:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5343 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 2 of 231 14 December 2012 at 2:23am | IP Logged | ||
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It's wonderful to see a Greek team in the 2013 challenge as well as so many other new languages, and I wish you guys every success in your fun-filled odyssey! This is no ordinary TAC team you've formed here folks...THIS IS SPARTA!!! :D
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5553 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 3 of 231 14 December 2012 at 3:34am | IP Logged | ||
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I believe it is time for introductions!
So, my name is Jack and I mostly grew up in London although I spent some of my youth in Wales as my mother’s family is all Welsh. I’m twenty-two years old and am almost exclusively an Indo-European language nerd. Other than English, I grew up speaking Welsh which I have now all but lost, and someday the quest for Welsh will be reignited with great vigour. I started learning German at eight years old having met a German and I was fascinated by her and her foreignness. I subsequently discovered German and all the delights are bound to it. Through school I did widely varying amounts of French, German, Spanish, Latin and Attic Greek as well as teaching myself Russian before going off to university to study it. There I picked up Slovenian which I still keep up and occasionally use on trips to Slovenia, if only to talk to friends I made there and to order coffee and food. My passion for Greek began very early in life, in fact agonisingly close to the beginning of my life-long quest for German at the age of eight. My first contact with Greek that I remember was in Primary School at about six, where I met a girl whose family had moved from Crete. She moved away a few years later but in a completely freak coincidence I met her grandmother in Crete ten years later. She noticed we were from England and asked where we were from, and she started asking about where we went to school when I told her I was from a part of London she knew. When it started to dawn on me what was happening, I couldn’t believe my ears. Once we worked out what everything meant, my friend’s grandmother picked her up from school and we’ve been in contact ever since. As a result I know a little more Greek than your average Joe and the grammar, like the language as a whole, is like a long-lost brother or sister to me. My passion for Greek will easily be on par with German soon enough, and anyone who knows me a little knows that it is no easy feat to equal my obsession with German. We’ve been on holiday to some of the Greek Islands before, visiting Cephalonia, Crete, Mykonos, Santorini and Hydra. I also found that Limnos has a secret charm to it, as does Milos. If you are wondering where you have heard of Milos before, it is probably due to some very famous statues of Aphrodite, Asclepius, Poseidon and Apollo which all once resided on the island. The statue of Aphrodite is now housed in the Louvre in Paris, the statue of Poseidon in the British Museum in London and those of Asclepius and Apollo in Athens. I have also been to the Greek part of Cyprus twice as well as the Turkish part once. Absurdly enough I have only ever visited the Greek mainland once, when I visited Athens. I met a barman on the island of Cephalonia one year, when I was seventeen and about to go off to uni to study Russian, and we were both fascinated by each other. He was about sixty and loved all the old music I love. He asked me what I was interested in and of course I started talking, very reservedly at first, about languages. So he taught me to count a little and to order food and drink. We went to his bar every night we were there for the whole three weeks, and by the end I could confidently order everything we wanted. I promised him I’d go back one day, and I still intend to. As well as my travelling around Greek-speaking places I have a keen interest in military history. For my ninth birthday my dad bought me a computer game that was all to do with empire-building and my chosen civilisation was always the Ancient Greeks. They always fought very differently from their opponents and I loved their armour, their weapons and the way their military minds worked. I began researching Ancient Greece and discovered that it was a massive influence on human culture in general, discovering the Greek gods, its influence on a language called Latin I’d never heard of, I discovered Greek food and the alien alphabet. Years later I also discovered that the Cyrillic alphabet ultimately derives from Greek. So much we take for granted in life, we have the Greeks to thank for. So now I have the language to talk about. The language fascinates me. I wish it still had the verbal system of Attic Greek or the relatively complex cases that Russian still has, but I will settle for the remnants that still remain intact in Modern Greek because the rest of it is so enticing. I love listening to Greek and I love reading it. I have always said that Greek is the only script I can read that has not lost any of its wonder or beauty after being able to read it. Cyrillic is obviously somewhat similar to Greek but even the Greek letters that are recognisable from my Russian look prettier and altogether more exotic somehow than their Cyrillic equivalents. I cannot wait to get into Greek. I am very likely, while I am at work today, to be scribbling all the Greek words I can remember onto paper. My soul currently speaks German, but whoever said that the soul can’t share? Over the next little while I will be compiling a list of Little Challenges for us for Greek, much like the one I’ve been writing for the Russians at Team MIR. Presently I think we are all relative beginners in Greek if my memory serves, so I will only be writing a list of Beginner’s Challenges. Please let me know if I’m mistaken. I am very much looking forward to our quest for Greek together in Team Sparta! Here’s to a fantastic year studying Greek and all our other chosen languages! LanguageSponge Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 14 December 2012 at 3:43am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5553 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 4 of 231 14 December 2012 at 3:56am | IP Logged | ||
Hi Teango! Thanks for the words of encouragement, indeed, we have created something quite special here. We are no ordinary team, we are Sparta! Thanks for the wishes of good fortune. Rest assured I will be following you all closely over at the Celtic Team, and who knows, you may have an extra member in the form of a LanguageSponge next year, as I have little doubt that now the Celtic Team has established a pretty strong foothold in the TAC, I doubt very much that it will be going away again any time soon. As well as bringing my Welsh back from the brink of stone cold death, I have always wanted to try out Breton or Manx. If I decide to do Manx next year, we may well have a full Celtic reunion on our hands next year. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5121 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 231 14 December 2012 at 7:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, now that is a real introduction to the team and a presentation of yourself! Since I am as usual away
from home, my presentation will have to wait to the week end, but I am super excited to be on the team and really happy to get a chance to learn the most beautiful of all languages - Greek. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4426 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 6 of 231 14 December 2012 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi LanguageSponge and fellow Spartans.
Solfrid Cristin gently asked if I wanted to join the Greek team, and after giving it a thought I’ve decided to say yes. I have been putting off serious study of Greek for some time now, so joining a TAC team should hopefully give me a push in the right direction. A presentation is probably in order: I was born in Oslo, Norway, 48 years ago. My passion for languages began in school when I started learning German at the age of 12, and it really took off at when I started with French three years later. At the age of 17 I started studying Spanish on my own, and that was love at first sight. After school I had to do military service, and I got the chance to be introduced to Russian. (Yes, the army offered Russian courses, the USSR being the big enemy at the time.) University was a great time, I majored in Romance Philology so I dabbled in all the Romance languages, but with the main focus on Spanish and, a little bit less, Italian. I even have a university exam in Romontsch, with focus on the Sursilvan dialect. I also took Latin and a six-month intensive course in Ancient Greek. When I turned 30 I got a chance to work internationally, and I have lived outside Norway ever since, with seven years in Brussels (where I learnt some Dutch), a few years in London and a year in Spain until I finally ended up in Strasbourg, France, where I currently live. My daily working languages are English and French. For various reason language learning was put on the backburner for some years, until last year when I decided that I just had to take up Russian again. I had forgot almost everything from my spell back in the army, but especially since the beginning of this year I have made progress and come to love the language and its culture again. I am doing a Russian TAC but on an individual basis. To get to the point: Greek. It is not a new interest, I really enjoyed Ancient Greek, and as LanguageSponge points out, the Greek culture has formed Western civilization in so many ways, through philosophy, literature, science and art. In my student days I also had a look at modern Greek, and I was struck by how close the phonetics are to Spanish. However, my decision of learning it is from this year. I have been to Greece several times and to Cyprus once, but this summer, when we decided to go to Crete for a week, I decided that it would be a pity not to understand anything, so I got myself a Greek course and got started. It really opened my eyes to the beauty of the language, matched by the beauty of Crete and the delicious food I ate there. So next time I go I want to be able to say more than Γεια σας and ευχαριστώ. I am really a beginner, as it seems most of the team are, so hopefully we can all progress together and help each other reach our goals. I still very much have my main focus on Russian and I want to work hard on improving this language. However, adding Greek should hopefully not hinder me in reaching my Russian goals. I hope to be able to contribute actively to this team. Looking forward to getting started in 2013! αντίο Edit: Here is the link to my newly created log. Edited by Ogrim on 14 December 2012 at 2:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5553 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 7 of 231 14 December 2012 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Ogrim,
Welcome to Team Sparta! You've done some really interesting language-related things, I think. I've thought on and off about looking into philology but something else has always got in my way. Romansh is an interesting choice, I don't consciously know very much about it at all. Do you still remember very much? I would venture to guess that you no longer use it? I almost regret taking Slovenian in a way, because I knew I'd probably never use it after graduation - and I've almost been completely right so far. It's great that we all seem to be at the same sort of level in Greek so far. I think that if we are to really progress in Greek in the coming year, it would be a good idea to organise at least semi-regular Skype sessions where we can talk to each other and collaborate to solve any problems we might run into with Greek in general. I think it would be useful if we would all follow at least one common course so we all have a solid point of reference. Although I have never used it before for any language, and actually I haven't used a course to learn a language for years, Team MIR suggested using Assimil for Russian; what do you all think to using Assimil Greek? Does anyone have any better suggestions? Which version would be best? As much as I would like to contribute with this part, I am not really able to give any kind of useful contribution. I am also now considering going home for Christmas so if I do, I will go to London and pick up whatever Greek materials I can find there. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5121 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 231 14 December 2012 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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A big welcome from me too, Ogrim! I think Assimil Greek is a wonderful idea. It has enough material that it
covers both the beginner Greek and the intermediate for those who need that. As for Skype sessions I am all in, even though they will probably mean that the rest of you speak Greek and I smile enthusiastically in Greek :-). I know literally nothing (ok. maybe 5 words). Looking forward to learning more though! Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 14 December 2012 at 4:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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