Modern Greek: avalon

[avalon]

Hello all,

I will say right off the bat that this log might not last long. I tried keeping one many years ago at the old HTLAL site, and I found it terribly distracting: I ended up spending far too many hours browsing through countless HTLAL threads when I should have been studying or practicing my target languages!

I'm certified A1 in Greek: I took the Ellinomatheia exam in May at the University of Michigan and scored an άριστα (excellent/superior) on each of the four sections (reading, writing, listening, speaking). I intend to take the A2 exam this coming May but I feel like I'm racing against the clock, for I had abandoned my Greek from approximately mid-May to mid-October! Shame on me.

As for resources, I've worked through most of the classic Teach Yourself Modern Greek -- the 1962 edition with the yellow and blue dust jacket. I'm old school, and I like my resources to be as well . For A1 test preparation, I've worked through much of Κλικ στα Ελληνικά: επίπεδα Α1 & Α2 (Click on Greek: Levels A1 & A2), published in Thessaloniki. It's 100% in Greek, which is a hassle, and each page is plagued with tons of color photos, distracting doodads, and exercises of dubious utility -- just like most modern language textbooks! But this text was a necessary evil, I think, since it's aimed squarely at Ellinomatheia test-takers. I'm in the process of reviewing and finishing it, while simultaneously and rather slowly working through Ελληνικά για σας Α2 (Greek For You A2), by Neohel Publications. Thanks entirely to fellow learner Zelda (zjones), I've discovered some inexpensive easy reader apps, and I've begun reading Ξενοδοχείο Ατλαντίς, παρακαλώ (Hotel Atlantis, please) which is proving quite fruitful.

I feel like verb forms are swimming around in my head, so one immediate goal is to work on getting them nailed down. When I see a sentence like Μη σβύσεις το φως (Don't turn off the light), I struggle to recognize if the verb is present, indefinite/subjunctive, or what, thanks to verbs' shifting stems.

Thanks for reading this far, and we'll see how long this thing lasts!

[zjones]

Yay, glad to see your log here! I'm looking forward to following your progress.

How do you like Greek for You A2? I have a soft spot for graded textbooks and self-learning materials, but they also tend to be very expensive.

I see also that you used a very old book to learn Greek -- did you find that it taught any obsolete language? I know that they used to speak Kathaverousa (?) in Greek until the 70's or so. I think the official language is now Demotic Greek, but I might be remembering it wrong.

[avalon]

@zjones: I'm digging the Greek For You book so far. On balance I'm pleased with it, as far as modern textbooks go. So far I prefer it to Κλικ στα Ελληνικά by a large margin. I'd be happy to send you a pic of example pages of any resources I have, should you be interested. Just let me know. And I'm not aware of any obsolete language in the old Teach Yourself book, much less any Katharevousa.

Although I'm neither religious nor of Greek heritage, I attend a 3-hour language "class" (it's really more like an independent study group) every week at the local Greek Orthodox Church. That's how I had learned about the Ellinomatheia testing. I had lamented last week to a συμμαθητής (classmate) there that I'm not getting enough listening practice, so he loaned me his Pimsleur Greek II course. I'll start on that tomorrow . He and I (and my labradoodle!) met this morning at a coffee shop to go over some readings in the aforementioned Greek For You book, which was a lot of fun. One passage involved a hit-and-run traffic accident, and the other was a brief story about a guy who tripped and fell in a parking lot, breaking his foot. I wonder if the entire book is going to be so uplifting!

A brief selection of new words/phrases I learned today:

πλησιάζω / πλησιάσω: to approach
η ταχύτητα: speed (this one was easy to figure out because of English tachometer, tachycardia)
ηλικιωμένος: elderly
θα σε προλάβω: I'll catch up with you
η πινακίδα: (license) plate
το ασθενοφόρο: ambulance

The Hotel Atlantis "easy reading" app is proving to be rather difficult. I've read the first chapter and picked up some good vocabulary, but some of the language is rather idiomatic, I think. One good phrase I picked up: Μείνετε ήσυχη, Rest assured.

By the way, I've been trying to access DLI's GLOSS site, to no avail. I get a message that my connection is not private, and I'm forced to "go back to safety." Anyone know a way around this?

[avalon]

This was a pretty full weekend, as far as Greek is concerned. I read the second chapter of Hotel Atlantis three or four times through, which I found much easier than the first chapter. One good takeaway was the idiom Λες να..., which corresponds to "Is it likely/possible..." or "Could it be that..." I also listened to Pimsleur Greek Level 2, Unit 1, and continued to pound those verb forms -- the aorist and imperatives in particular.

Today was particularly exciting: a Greek Orthodox church about an hour away from me hosted a "certificate ceremony" for the 22 students throughout lower Michigan who passed various levels of the Ellinomatheia exam this year. All those who took A1 were Greek-American children/teens and ... me, the 50-year-old To our great surprise, a representative from the Foundation for Modern Greek Studies joined us up at the altar, gave a nice speech, and then handed each of us a $250 check "to further your studies in Greek"! What an unexpected gesture!

[DaveAgain]

By the way, I've been trying to access DLI's GLOSS site, to no avail. I get a message that my connection is not private, and I'm forced to "go back to safety." Anyone know a way around this?

I just tried this using the Firefox 63.0.3 web browser.

I see the following message:

Your connection is not secure

The owner of gloss.dliflc.edu has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.

https://gloss.dliflc.edu/

Clicking on the 'advanced' button brings up the following message:

gloss.dliflc.edu uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown. The server might not be sending the appropriate intermediate certificates. An additional root certificate may need to be imported.

Error code: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER

[add exception]

If I then click on the "add exception" button, I can load the website.

[avalon]

Thanks, DaveAgain. I'm using Chrome, and I'm not seeing the same messages as you.

I tried again this morning and I noticed a link that I swear wasn't there before: "Proceed directly to GLOSS (unsafe)." That worked!

[avalon]

I had a weird dream last night in which I could determine my current CEFR levels not by taking exams, but merely by asking at the customer service desk at my local Kroger grocery store. The employee simply pulls up my account in the computer system and it wirelessly accesses and scans my brain, spitting out my current levels nearly instantaneously

I first asked how my Greek was doing. "Greek: A2," the computer intoned. (Awesome! I'm moving up!)

Then I inquired about my French. Dripping with sarcasm, the computerized voice announced condescendingly, "French? That's cuuuute." (A patronizing phrase indicating that one is completely unimpressed.)

Offended, I left the store without a word. I'll buy my groceries elsewhere, thankyouverymuch.

[avalon]

Yesterday my study buddy and I spent 2.5 hours together working on audio and exercises from Greek For You A2. His strength lies mostly in speaking, while mine are in reading and grammar. So we complement each other quite well in our weekly sessions. On my own lately I've done the following:

*Pimsleur Greek II: Units 1-3 (Enjoyable, and so far it's at a good level for me)

*The old TY Modern Greek: Reviewed pages 65-114, which dealt mostly with verbs.

*Hotel Atlantis: Chapter 3

*I also randomly chose a news article that looked rather doable. All I knew going in was that it involved a Danish family who had booked a room in Germany through AirBnB and were in for a surprise. It turned out that the address they were given was really a brothel! So I ended up learning such words as prostitute, whip, porn flicks, naked... (I didn't plan for this, honest!!)

[Iversen]

(...) it involved a Danish family who had booked a room in Germany through AirBnB and were in for a surprise. It turned out that the address they were given was really a brothel! (..)

This story has also been in a Danish newspaper recently. However the alarm bells should have started to toll for the person who booked the room when the address turned out to be on the street named Reeperbahn in St.Pauli. The area may have been cleaned up to some degree, but it is still fairly wellknown here in Denmark because of its history.

[avalon]

I managed to do quite a bit of Greek study the past day and a half. But first, I finally got around to ordering my own copy of Greek For You A2. I had been leeching off my study buddy by taking photos of pages so I could decide if I liked it. I decided it's worth it to allot $50 from my aforementioned scholarship funds.

Greek For You A2
Practiced Ch. 2 for an hour: Reading, listening, going over vocabulary.

Pimsleur
Units 4 and 5.

TY Modern Greek
Reviewed pp. 115-129: pronouns, adverbs, active participles. These participles end in -οντας / -ώντας, which are easy to recall thanks to Latin, whose present participles end in -ns or -nt+case endings. Thankfully the Greek participles aren't declined for case, number and gender as in Latin!

"Easy Greek" on YouTube (more like Ridiculously Fast Greek!)
Episodes 1-3, two or three times each. While the conversational language itself isn't particularly difficult (as I can see from the subtitles), keeping up with the speed is a whole different story.

"Learn Greek While You Sleep" on YouTube. Yes, I eyerolled at the title. But it's 8 hours of basic sentences. I listened for 30 minutes before abandoning it.

Hotel Atlantis
I read Chapter 4.

Κλικ στα Ελληνικά
Reviewed all of Unit 6.

This morning I did two Greek tests on Dialang, scoring an A2 in listening and a B1 in reading. I'll take these with a sizable grain of salt and assume the reality is one step lower for each.