Modern Greek Study Group

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
Language patzer
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Language patzer » Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:44 am

I would like to tell you about the old greek movies, and some old tv series that are known and loved by all greeks. Everybody knows them, quotes them, we've seen them a thousand times and we still watch them.

I thought they might help you with language, but also give you a cutural reference that we all recognize.

Here is one movie with many loved actors, a comedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHxdAINcvgM


If you find this idea useful ask me and I will tell you about movies etc.
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Mac
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Mac » Sat Feb 13, 2021 7:19 pm

Γεια σας! Native English speaker from the UK here. My mum was a native Greek speaker who came to the UK as a teenager. She tried sending me to Greek school as a child, but it didn't work. We didn't speak Greek at home and Greek school at that time was not geared up for children that couldn't already speak or understand Greek. I studied German and French at secondary school, but was terrified of speaking and didn't apply my languages outside of the classroom. I tried Greek again as a young adult by attending a weekly class, but an hour a week does not a language learn, especially as I was still being passive in my learning.

After a break (of decades), I returned to learning Greek at the start of last year, wanting to reconnect with my roots and connect with family in Greece. I started with a weekly in-person class (pre-covid) and Duolingo. Over the past year, my approach has continued to evolve, with new elements added and discarded. No more weekly group classes. 1:1 conversation lessons on Italki. Duolingo daily (vocab). Individual study of 2 textbooks/ courses: Ελληνικά Τώρα and Άκου Να Δεις. Most recently, I've started journaling in Greek (today will be day 3!). Supplemented by a playlist of Greek pop songs on Spotify, Πέππα το Γουρουνάκι & Super Easy Greek on YouTube, and Μικροί Κύριοι - Μικρές Κύριες books (Mr Men and Little Misses). I've used shadowing with slowed down recordings of Super Easy Greek and Greek songs. I do dabble with other things, but trying to simplify and focus.

Other resources:
    AudioBookWorms on YouTube for Greek audiobook version of Ο Χάρι Πότερ και η Φιλοσοφική Λίθος (Harry Potter).
    Weekly WeeGreek podcasts for listening practice with Greek at two levels, followed by the English.
    Filoglossia - Learning Greek as a Foreign Language for beginners. Audio files, exercises.
    News sites protothema.gr and CNN.gr for reading and translation practice and to connect with what's happening in Greek.

My progress is uneven, but I have made progress. I even picked up the phone a couple of days ago to talk to a cousin in Greece in Greek! As an introvert, this was a big milestone for me. Θέλω να συνεχίζω να μαθαίνω ελληνικά. (I want to continue to learn Greek)
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby kanewai » Thu Mar 04, 2021 2:31 am

I'm a bit over two months into Greek, and have some early thoughts on the courses I've been using. It's been a challenge, for sure! I still struggle with matching what I read with what I hear. My mind keeps wanting to read the "Latin" sounds of the Greek letters. That is, a word like μπράβο still looks like mprabo rather than bravo. For short words I can easily catch myself; for longer words it's still a struggle.

Language Transfer (through Lesson 75)

The positive
120 audio lessons!
I really like the way Mihalis slowly walks us through the language. When I look at Greek verb charts my mind goes blank. And yet it all makes sense when Mihalis guides us step-by-step
The iPhone app is a vast improvement over having to search and download individual lessons from SoundCloud.

Minor critiques
Small quirks with the app; I have to manually check off which lessons I've finished, and I can't find a way to un-check one.
The avoidance of grammar terms sometimes helps, but sometimes it only confuses me more. I have to stop and think, what is he even asking here?

Major critiques: none


Assimil (through Lesson 45)

The positive
Natural sounding dialogues. It's nice to know what I'm aiming for.
It is dense with information!!! This is not a dumb-downed modern version. It takes me a couple days to work though each lesson, even passively.
I recently discovered that the Greek transcript shows on the iPhone when I play a lesson. It looks like all my Assimil courses do this. I never knew.

Critiques
I wish there was a way to play each sentence line-by-line. If I hit pause I miss part of the next sentence, and I spend a lot of time endlessly re-winding to check the pronunciation of words and phrases.
I really need some basic grammar drills to supplement Assimil, but this is the norm for them.
It's hard to believe I'll be ready for an active phase in a few days.


Communicate in Greek / Επικοινωνήστε Ελληνικά (through Lesson 7)

The positive
The lessons are all in Greek. There are some English notes in back.

Critiques
There are no clues in the dialogues to what the new words mean, so one needs to look up every single new word in the dictionary. It's a complete waste of time
There are too many diversionary games.
I hate this book, and will be donating it to the library.


FSI Basic (through Lesson 3)

The positive
Lots of grammar drills!
Lots of audio! Each dialogue is reviewed many times; once for listening, then word by word for pronunciation, then for practice, then for comprehension. I wish other courses did this
The audio is better quality than I was expecting, based on the reviews.

Critiques
The pdf looks like it was made from a blurry copy. It can be hard to read. I use this mostly for oral comprehension and practice.
The dialogues are dated (minor critique)
The dialogues use Greek script, but the exercises only use a transcription system, at least for the first ten lessons (major critique)
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guyome
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby guyome » Thu Mar 04, 2021 12:37 pm

Maybe you already know about it but I thought I'd mention the Learn Greek by Radio course. It was broadcasted in the 1960s(?) by the Cypriot radio network and can now (legally) be found online for free. It starts from scratch but is apparently rather fast-paced so maybe you'll enjoy going through it to get more practice. There are 105 lessons of 10/15 minutes each.

Some time ago, the lessons could be downloaded from various websites but the only one I can find now asks you to register (free of charge), but you get a transcript of the lessons.
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby kanewai » Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:17 am

I took a couple screen shots that capture some of my issues with the FSI Greek pdf. The first is the narrative from the third chapter. The narrative itself isn't hard, but the font drives me crazy. It's actually a bit easier to read on the screen.

The second is the first answer / response drill from the same chapter. I hate hate hate that they use a transcription here. For me it just makes things more confusing, and since it's phonetic it makes it hard to look up words that I had forgotten (kamnya confused me for awhile).

I'm pushing forward with it. It's hard, but I like the rigorousness nature. So far, though, it isn't quite on the same level as the FSI Spanish and French courses.

greek 2.JPG


greek 1.JPG
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby PfifltriggPi » Sat Mar 06, 2021 1:01 am

kanewai wrote:The second is the first answer / response drill from the same chapter. I hate hate hate that they use a transcription here. For me it just makes things more confusing, and since it's phonetic it makes it hard to look up words that I had forgotten (kamnya confused me for awhile).


Professor Argüelles mentioned in his video on the courses that a vast number of courses which for languages which are written in non-Latin scripts are in a "rather tortured transcription", even languages like Greek or Russian which do not really need them. He, along with most other people I have heard on the subject, credit the high use of transcriptions among government courses as being due to the US government being much more concerned with their students learning to speak than to read, since, whether they went abroad with the State Department or the military, they would be speaking with people, not reading novels. I agree, though, that it can often be quite annoying for those of us trying to do something else with the courses.
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Sat Mar 06, 2021 2:58 pm

In general I work harder on speaking/listening because I don't really want a predominantly text-based knowledge of a language. However I also want to read books, newspapers and write a bit (in others, with a difficult alphabet I'll definitely settle for some oral mastery above mastery the literary side). I've come across other courses like the FSI above more geared to speaking and I just accept that I'll work on written knowledge from other sources.

Developing all the four skills of speaking/listening/reading/writing in complete equality doesn't quite happen in a neat fashion, for various reasons. If I'd started a course like e.g. Pimsleur and then felt I was more interested in reading, I'd just stop the course and do something else.
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Language patzer
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Language patzer » Wed Mar 10, 2021 12:11 pm

kanewai wrote:
I'm pushing forward with it. It's hard, but I like the rigorousness nature. So far, though, it isn't quite on the same level as the FSI Spanish and French courses.



Do you actually learn the polytonic version of the language?
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kanewai
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby kanewai » Wed Mar 10, 2021 8:50 pm

Language patzer wrote:Do you actually learn the polytonic version of the language?
I don't think so. None of the books have mentioned anything about this - is modern Greek even polytonic? There are accent marks on each word, and the older FSI course has additional marks that aren't in the modern courses. There's nothing like what we have to deal with for Homeric Greek.
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Language patzer
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Language patzer » Thu Mar 11, 2021 6:09 am

Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. Polytonic means the accents, as you know, and it can be used in modern greek as well as in homeric greek. Greek kids are not taught the accents any more though, unless they study ancient greek. It's a good thing to know btw. It's a lost knowledge I'm afraid (don't get me started).
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