What advice would you give to someone wanting to learn to speak Greek?
Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at
6:43 pm
I have always been intrested in ancient Greek mythology and history ever since I was a young child. Someday I want to travel there but I'd like to know the language. There are no Greek langauge classes around me because I live in a rural area so I will have to teach myself. What kinds of materials should I use to teach myself?
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Tagged with: ancient greek mythology • intrested • rural area
Filed under: Greek - Written and Spoken
I am glad to know that you wish to learn Greek Language. Though you are interested in ancient Greek mythology and history, it does not necessarily mean that you "must" learn Old Greek, or New Testament Greek. Furthermore, you will certainly find much more resources on the subject in English then in Greek (strange but true). If you "insist" on learning it I may suggest to look up for one of the books published by Teach Yourself Books. Excellent ones, all of them.
Since you mentioned that you would like to travel, you’d need not Old Greek, that’s for sure. Modern Greek is a language very hard and difficult to learn (as compared to Old Greek which is – in UK and US – pronounced as if it were English, stupid but true) mostly because you’ll have to learn how to SAY something and SPEAK it, actually.
Teach Yourself Books may help but not very much. There is an enormous community on the web (www.orkut.com) with people you may find willing to help any moment and you should also take a look at some/all of the following links:
http://www.geocities.com/yioulepp/LearningModernGreek.htm
http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html
And this one is my favorite, though I am not a Cypriot:
http://www.kypros.org/.
Here, you may find an excellent dictionary:
http://www.in.gr/dictionary/lookup.asp?Word=luck
…and here, just fa air (but unreliable) on line translator:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr
In case you need further advices, write a message to me, but I think that it will be far more useful to find somebody a bit closer then just one phn call away to help you.
God Bless You and Good Luck – Καλή τύχη (Kah-lee tee-hee)
First, you’ll need to pick WHICH "Greek" to study. Ancient Greek is not spoken in Greece. Likewise, not all pre-modern forms of Greek are the same, either. I suggest doing a Google search for the kind of Greek you want to learn plus the word "lessons". That could get you started.
Start off on the internet leaning the alphabet, sounds grammar… all the basics. The order a copy of one of those Rosetta stone discs and practice it a lot! Just don’t give up. I learned Russian using that and can almost fluently speak it. I help our foriegn exchange student out a lot.
Well, if you can wait a semester, I can teach you some. I am taking an Ancient Greek course starting in January, and maybe I can pass some of my knowledge onto you.