A language learners’ forum

Tristano wrote:Well Romanian sounds like a drunk Italian dialect with random slavic words Beautiful language too though. I can certainly understand it much more than Greek or Bulgarian.

Yeah it's a fascinating language I find it funny that whenever I can't place what language someone is speaking, it always ends up being Romanian!

Thala wrote:Hi there! Thank you and good luck to you too How long have you been learning Greek?

I've been learning Greek on and off for a few years, with lots of breaks and failstarts though, so it's hard to measure. I've only really decided to stick to it one year ago, so I'm not as far into the language as I would have liked to be

lildreamsnatcher wrote:

Thala wrote:Hi there! Thank you and good luck to you too How long have you been learning Greek?

I've been learning Greek on and off for a few years, with lots of breaks and failstarts though, so it's hard to measure. I've only really decided to stick to it one year ago, so I'm not as far into the language as I would have liked to be

Ah, how much would you say you can understand, spoken and written Greek? Are you finding similarities between Polish and Greek? Seems like there wouldn't be any, but you never know! I love comparing Polish and Bulgarian with my Polish friends

Thala wrote:Ah, how much would you say you can understand, spoken and written Greek? Are you finding similarities between Polish and Greek? Seems like there wouldn't be any, but you never know! I love comparing Polish and Bulgarian with my Polish friends

I definitely understand less of spoken Greek than the written one, but I find that's the issue I have with any language. It also really depends on the text/audio itself, just how advanced it is. At the moment I'm reading YA books just fine, watching movies with Greek dub is also going okayish, but I think I get most out of the context itself, anyway.

Actually, I think that there's lots of similarities between Polish and Greek! The word order, the flexibility, the word contruction... even phonology can be similar (that's what I've discovered recently while creating linkwords). I haven't really had any problems with Greek grammar while learning it, so I was really surprised when some people mentioned that Greek is very hard, but I guess that being a native Polish speaker gives me some kind of an advantage. My only big issue is that Greek people speak really fast and the prononciation can be tricky.

Funny thing about Bulgarian is that the person who tought me Greek at the uni was actually a native Bulgarian speaker! Her Polish was so spot on and flawless that at first I didn't realize that, and I don't think I would have if she hadn't mention it herself (she also saw some similarities between those three languages and so she gave us a few examples in that regard). Her Greek was also amazing. I guess she was just an amazing person in general? Definitely an inspiration!

lildreamsnatcher wrote:I definitely understand less of spoken Greek than the written one, but I find that's the issue I have with any language. It also really depends on the text/audio itself, just how advanced it is. At the moment I'm reading YA books just fine, watching movies with Greek dub is also going okayish, but I think I get most out of the context itself, anyway.

Actually, I think that there's lots of similarities between Polish and Greek! The word order, the flexibility, the word contruction... even phonology can be similar (that's what I've discovered recently while creating linkwords). I haven't really had any problems with Greek grammar while learning it, so I was really surprised when some people mentioned that Greek is very hard, but I guess that being a native Polish speaker gives me some kind of an advantage. My only big issue is that Greek people speak really fast and the prononciation can be tricky.

That's pretty cool, considering the countries are so far away! I haven't had any issue with Greek grammar either, and I've actually found supposedly easier languages more difficult to learn. I think being a native speaker of any other language is an advantage, you can draw similarities from both types of languages.

lildreamsnatcher wrote:Funny thing about Bulgarian is that the person who tought me Greek at the uni was actually a native Bulgarian speaker! Her Polish was so spot on and flawless that at first I didn't realize that, and I don't think I would have if she hadn't mention it herself (she also saw some similarities between those three languages and so she gave us a few examples in that regard). Her Greek was also amazing. I guess she was just an amazing person in general? Definitely an inspiration!

I find my Bulgarian friends are amazing at foreign languages, especially the pronunciation. I think it must be because Bulgarian isn't a soft language, so it's not difficult to sound native when speaking other languages (if that makes sense at all... for example, speakers of soft languages like English or French have a tough time with accents). We have quite a lot of 'sh' sounds in Bulgarian too so maybe that helps with Polish

Though one Bulgarian disadvantage is we don't have cases, and a lot of other languages do. It was super hard for me to grasp the concept of cases at first, given that English doesn't have them either

Making my way through Teach Yourself Greek quite quickly, about a unit a day. Listening to music in between, maybe I need to start listening to some Greek podcasts. And I should get back to Language Transfer.

Enjoying my obsession with Greek and counting down the days till my trip back... about 60 days left now!

Γεια σας! Με λένε Θαλα και μαθαίνω Ελληνικά. Μένω στην Αγγλία αλλά είμαι από τη Βουλγαρία. Δεν καταλαβαίνω πολλά ακόμα!

Was quite busy this week so I leaned did more Language Transfer episodes and watched Greek YouTubers.

I'm having a lot of fun with discovering similarities between Bulgarian and Greek. There aren't too many but occasionally I'll Google Translate a word and see that they're almost identical:

For example, φτηνός (ftinós) means cheap and ευτελής (eftelís) means tacky. In Bulgarian, cheap is евтино (evtino). Like a mix between the two!

I've also discovered a new method of finding articles to read which is Googling a phrase I understand and reading an article that comes up. That way it'll include terms I know to guide me through it. For example today I googled "Γιατί είμαι κουρασμένη" and came across an article about reasons I could be tired. Useful and in Greek!

Netflix has a very small collection of Greek (dubbed or not) content, and most of it is children's cartoons. Nevertheless, I settled on watching "The Emoji Movie" yesterday and it was actually pretty cool watching it in Greek haha. 'Ελα τώρα is now ingrained in my mind.

I now have other cinematic masterpieces to look forward to like Bee Movie and Barbie. Jokes aside, cartoons are probably a great way to learn as a beginner.

Also spoke some Greek to my parents and my mum is reminiscing about how she took Greek lessons at my age. Funny how life can end up repeating itself through generations!

Thala wrote:Netflix has a very small collection of Greek (dubbed or not) content, and most of it is children's cartoons.

What I really enjoy are Greek crime series (like this one: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1360076/): they are highly addictive and feature repetitive language.

When I visited Greece last year, people at restaurants would usually switch to English, while booksellers would show more patience and allow me to formulate my thoughts. My books-related vocabulary is better than my ability to name different types of food in any of my languages including my native one anyway .

Theodisce wrote:

Thala wrote:Netflix has a very small collection of Greek (dubbed or not) content, and most of it is children's cartoons.

What I really enjoy are Greek crime series (like this one: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1360076/): they are highly addictive and feature repetitive language.

When I visited Greece last year, people at restaurants would usually switch to English, while booksellers would show more patience and allow me to formulate my thoughts. My books-related vocabulary is better than my ability to name different types of food in any of my languages including my native one anyway .

Oo, those do look interesting. I'm a sucker for foreign TV The only issue is subtitles (hence why I went for Netflix) but Greek is easy to listen to and there are SO MANY shows on YouTube so maybe I'll try it...

And yes, I noticed the restaurant thing too! Maybe they're trying to make orders quickly hence why they switch to English. I went on a horse ride in Greece and the owners happily taught me some Greek over the course of two hours, I guess because we weren't rushing anywhere