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.
David1917
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby David1917 » Tue May 04, 2021 2:41 am

mokibao wrote:Has anyone been able to find the audio tapes for Le grec sans peine (first edition from the 70s, not Le nouveau grec sans peine)? Can't find them on shopping sites, can't find them in public libraries, can't find them on Russian-language websites.


I am searching for these, as well as many other audio components to Assimil, Langenscheidt, and Buske courses for various languages. Stockpiling used books is cool until it's impossible to find the other pieces. I wonder if everyone who bought the full sets literally just threw the tapes and cds away or something.
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mokibao
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby mokibao » Tue May 04, 2021 5:41 pm

They don't seem to appear on WorldCat either. I'm a bit concerned that they may not have been digitized at all, in which case they are in serious danger of being lost forever. Which is a shame as I had a look at the text and it was in the pure old school Assimil style I enjoy: dense in explanations, ambitious in scope and full of jokes.

Worst case I guess some TTS could be slapped on it but usually the quality isn't up to par for non-FIGS languages, and the dialogues are going to suffer. Or we could pool a bounty and ask some charitable souls to do a live modern reading, but this raises copyright issues (the absurdity of laying claims on products you don't sell anymore...)
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David1917
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby David1917 » Tue May 04, 2021 8:21 pm

mokibao wrote:They don't seem to appear on WorldCat either. I'm a bit concerned that they may not have been digitized at all, in which case they are in serious danger of being lost forever. Which is a shame as I had a look at the text and it was in the pure old school Assimil style I enjoy: dense in explanations, ambitious in scope and full of jokes.

Worst case I guess some TTS could be slapped on it but usually the quality isn't up to par for non-FIGS languages, and the dialogues are going to suffer. Or we could pool a bounty and ask some charitable souls to do a live modern reading, but this raises copyright issues (the absurdity of laying claims on products you don't sell anymore...)


Ugh, so true. 70 years is fast approaching for some of those first Assimil courses, though... :shock:

I recently asked Assimil if they'd be willing to sell mp3s of their old courses but they said they have no archive of them. Seems false, but also most companies are horribly inefficient and not concerned with longevity, so who knows it could be true. Really it's probably that the labor of digging up master tapes and finding someone to convert them to digital and clean them up a bit is not worth the handful of us who would buy them.
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Le Baron
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 04, 2021 10:17 pm

David1917 wrote:I am searching for these, as well as many other audio components to Assimil, Langenscheidt, and Buske courses for various languages. Stockpiling used books is cool until it's impossible to find the other pieces. I wonder if everyone who bought the full sets literally just threw the tapes and cds away or something.


I'm surmising, partially from memory of seeing people's purchases in the past, that many more books were bought than full packages because the extra audio was often expensive. The vinyl versions were fragile and wore out and I've only ever seen a few examples of extant reel-to-reel tapes sold with a course. They had some at my school, but these were already deprecated and they used the 'language lab' cassette method. I have cassettes for some old courses, but you can see they've had a battle with a cassette mechanism at various stages in their lives.

We may recall that in the past people had a nasty habit of throwing things away. Usually parents who tidied out the loft and gave things away to people who either ruined them or eventually chucked them out themselves and they went to landfill. :shock: So the leftover stuff is minimal, especially for languages that weren't sold in their thousands back when people mainly learned FIGS.
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Neurotip
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Neurotip » Wed May 05, 2021 8:59 pm

kanewai wrote:How's your experience with Harry Potter? It's often my first book in a new language, but it's hard to find in Greek. As far as I know it isn't on kindle, or on audible, either.

I'm probably missing something obvious, but isn't this what you're looking for?
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kanewai
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby kanewai » Thu May 06, 2021 1:27 am

Neurotip wrote:I'm probably missing something obvious, but isn't this what you're looking for?
Nah, I was the one completely missing the obvious. I was looking for audible (none), kindle versions (none), or hard copies (expensive and rare).

I downloaded the .epub version you linked to, and gave it a test run, even though I'm a few months away from being able to read it. I converted it to .mobi format, sent it to kindle ... and -now I have a new problem: neither kindle nor the iPhone are Greek friendly. There's no built-in Greek pop-up dictionary for apple or for amazon products, which I find odd. I found one to download for the kindle, Modern Greek - English Dictionary: inflexion friendly (Ajax Fast-Track Language), which seems to work.
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Neurotip
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Neurotip » Thu May 06, 2021 9:45 pm

kanewai wrote:I downloaded the .epub version you linked to, and gave it a test run, even though I'm a few months away from being able to read it. I converted it to .mobi format, sent it to kindle ... and -now I have a new problem: neither kindle nor the iPhone are Greek friendly. There's no built-in Greek pop-up dictionary for apple or for amazon products, which I find odd. I found one to download for the kindle, Modern Greek - English Dictionary: inflexion friendly (Ajax Fast-Track Language), which seems to work.

Oh, what a shame. I'm not kindle-literate so I can't help you with that side of things, but glad you managed to download the book anyway. Let us know how you get on! I did enjoy noticing how whoever designed the covers seemed to be trying to hide the 'Ο' in 'Ο Χάρι Πότερ' as if they were embarrassed about it ;)
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby kanewai » Sat May 22, 2021 4:00 am

I've been diligently working on Greek for five months now. It's sobering how much work it's been just to get to a very basic stage. I think, maybe, that a basic A1 level is actually in sight!

I look back on the times where I just flirted with a language - like doing Assimil for a summer, or trying out Pimsleur - just to see how far I'd get. I never get far. It's really taken an all-out multi-pronged approach.

I feel like there are just enough Greek resources out there to reach an A1 / A2 level independently. It's a big change from the FIGS languages, or the main east Asian ones, where there are tons of resources. The combination of Language Transfer, Assimil, and Pimsleur has been working for me. I'd be lost without all three. I do miss having a single, condensed paperback grammar course to refer to, like the old Teach Yourself courses. Those were so common a decade ago, and in a lot of languages; now they seem to have all been replaced by bloated multi-book courses like Living Language's new series.

One unique challenge with Greek has been trying to find good online resources. They are either far too complicated (here are ten pages of charts for all the variations for first declension nouns) or strangely dumbed down (one site, instead of teaching grammar, divides Greek verbs into chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry "flavors").

I finished the first level of Pimsleur this week. And I'm half way through Assimil (75% of the passive phase, 25% of the active phase). I'm going to take a pause with active studying this week, review everything I've done in Assimil to date, and take one more run through Language Transfer. And then I'll push on!

I have a copy of Ο Μικρός Πρίγκιπας / The Little Prince at home. It's going to be challenging, but I think I'm close to being ready for it. It will probably take me a full evening for every couple paragraphs. There are some Greek YouTube readings of the book that will help me through it.
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Language patzer
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Language patzer » Mon May 24, 2021 5:28 am

kanewai wrote:
I look back on the times where I just flirted with a language - like doing Assimil for a summer, or trying out Pimsleur - just to see how far I'd get. I never get far. It's really taken an all-out multi-pronged approach.




Well said, it happens to me as well.

As for the little prince, go for it! I wish I could think of a book for grown ups as well, that you might be able to read at the A2 level...

As for resources, do you absolutely need english explanations? There is a site with all older school books, that has tons of books. I think I have shared the link somewhere. I also think that some old movies will help, even if you don't catch eveything.
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Language patzer
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Re: Modern Greek Study Group

Postby Language patzer » Mon May 24, 2021 6:07 am

Ανθολόγιο για τα παιδιά του Δημοτικού, Μέρος τρίτο
[1976, 2η Έκδοση]

Αναγνωστικό για τις Ε' και ΣΤ΄ Δημοτικού που περιλαμβάνει πεζά και ποιήματα της Νέας Ελληνικής Λογοτεχνίας εμπνευσμένα από την καθημερινότητα των παιδιών και των οικογενειών τους, την ελληνική ιστορία, τις οικογενειακές στιγμές και εορτές, το παιχνίδι και την εθνική παράδοση, και τα δημοτικά και ακριτικά τραγούδια. Περιέχει και 5 κείμενα γραμμένα στην καθαρεύουσα με θέματα από τον κοινωνικό και εθνικό βίο, και ερμηνευτικό λεξιλόγιο.. Το βιβλίο είναι αφιερωμένο στη μνήμη της Πηνελόπης Δέλτα.

http://e-library.iep.edu.gr/iep/collection/browse/item.html?code=01-17416&tab=01

You may enjoy this. It has original texts by writers and poets, and a dictionary in the end.
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