[Closed] learning to speak greek

I don’t speak any Greek at all, but read Ancient Greek for academic purposes.

The alphabet is not hard to learn at all, and in fact when I first started studying it, we were given from Monday to that Friday to be completely comfortable with it.

In order to learn the language, I would say, hands down, that Pimsleur Method, is your best option. But knowing the alphabet ahead of time will just help you picture the words and, when you really want to remember a particular phrase, write it down.

So... Alphabet + Pimsleur = Greek

I cannot recommend those highly enough.

Learn the alphabet ... the longer you put it off won't help.
It's 24 letters (or arguably 48 with capitals or 49 with sigma changing by position)... you probably already know 1/2 but regardless if learn 5 a day... that's 5 days then you can start reading.

If you were living there and immersion perhaps different, though TBH it's 5 days...
Incidentally I learned demotic when I was 17-18 ... (though with a heavy Cretan accent).. well enough to work (illegally back then) ... later learned Russian (mostly tech), Arabic and French ... both Norwegian languages/dialets and I can get by in Italian or Spanish (or Swedish/Danish from Norwegian languages) ..

I'm not particularly good at learning languages... I just lived lots of places!

French is/was my best, largely as a consequence of reading... the translation into French of Harry Potter is fantastic... if anything I suffer from a more formal language than is current. I was semi immersed but we mostly spoke English at work.

Russian was for work... I just learned the alphabet and mostly I had to read tech papers so my oral was/is rubbish but I can scrape by when I need to. Never did really master the grammar but largely because I was reading tech/scientific papers
...

Norwegian(s) ... total immersion .. just TV/work... no actual effort. My ex was better than I was and learned by watching daytime TV with subtitles. She used to watch Jerry Springer so she had some colourful vocab... 3 extra letter modifiers isn't exactly the same though. Having been brought up with Northern dialect it's a pretty easy language..

Arabic I just did immersion ... the biggest mistake was not bothering to learn the alphabet. I could just read street signs etc. but VERY slowly.

Based on experience I'd strongly say learn the alphabet .. watch some TV .. read some kids books .. try and get some conversation where you can etc.
One of the nicer things about Greek is the antonyms are usually quite logical.

I've posted up links to the Language Transfer - 'Thinking Method' website before, for similar similar language learning posts, because they are really well put together intuative courses, which are completely free.

They've got a complete Greek course: https://www.languagetransfer.org/free-courses-1#greek

Kalimera, Kalispera, Kalinichta.....  takes me back to 1969 in the beautiful old Panathenic Stadium in Athens waiting for the European Athletics Champoinship's marathon  to finish on the original Marathon to Athens route.  Btw, Ron Hill won.

A nice Greek lady next to us tried to teach us some basic Greek... at least those three words stuck.

Sorry,that doesn't help but it just took me back to that baking hot day.

Remember to say malaka as often as possible 🙂

μπίρα

there you go. What looks like a B makes more of a V sound, so you need to go MP to get the B in beer, with the P as a pi, because what looks like a P makes an R sound. As in CCCP (pronounced SSSR) for the old soviet union. Blame tne guy who invented Cyrilic, who was called Cyril.

I'll have spent a few months in Greece probably if you added it up but never got past phrases and basic numbers, directions etc (apo pou pai to leiofereio sto heraclion?) for getting around and a bit of basic Spiros (tamatya sou glikamou ine poly omorphe). Still worth it. My wife used to speak it to a level having done a year at a university there teaching and doing classes, before a fateful trip to Turkey where we met. Anyway... The alphabet's the easy bit, a couple of days or so and you'll have it (though I guess my o level in russian helped). It's the rest that's tricky.

So… Alphabet + Pimsleur = Greek

thanks, had a look at pimsleur but at a couple of hundred quids, ill try to see if i can have some success for free first 🙂

Learn the alphabet … the longer you put it off won’t help.

yep, a few of you agree with this, so ill start there.

They’ve got a complete Greek course: https://www.languagetransfer.org/free-courses-1#greek/blockquote >

thank you, ill try this first i think. when ive learnt the alphabet of course.....

Remember to say malaka as often as possible

just looked it up, ill try not to 😀

μπίρα

there you go. What looks like a B makes more of a V sound, so you need to go MP to get the B in beer, with the P as a pi, because what looks like a P makes an R sound.

aye, sounds confusing! why cant they make it easy for us? 😀

thanks all, enough to get me going for a while here. cheers.

 

Alphabet, pronunciation , a few basic sentences to get you talking,  key verbs, that’s what I would do, and have done, with Spanish and Swedish. Good luck and enjoy!

Remember to say malaka as often as possible

just looked it up, ill try not to 😀

I'm seriously! I go to Crete a lot and malaka, or variations of, are used like punctuation.

Malaka, malakas, malako, malakeas - wherever you can fit it in.

See also: pousti
e.g. Pousti malakas 🙂

I lived in Greece during the late 90s. One of my ex-pat friends became retty much fluent in around 6 months. The main thing that seemed to help her was confidence - she wasn’t afraid to make mistakes.

JP

Can do basic Italian too - learned when I was a waiter yonks ago. Always wanted to be a bit more proficient as I'd love to be able to listen, understand and respond fluently in another language. I find myself watching episodes of Suberra and kinda getting what they say, and also recognising that some of the subtitles aren't quite right. As usual, the words I remember well are the swearies! Vafankulo, cazzo, stronso, puntana, and Barolo. What more can you need? Oh, il non capisco l'italiano..... Il conto per favore.

well im getting there. still very basic, but im understanding it a bit more, just dont get the chance to try it much, and itd take me ages to try and concoct a sentence, immersion would definitely help.

i started around the time of this thread, then left it a few months due to work commitments, and realised id forgotten all id learnt. but, when i started again from scratch i found myself understanding it more.

im running two methods side by side, a proper linguaphone course, plus the language transfer method linked above ^^^
im finding the language transfer method far better for picking it up and understanding, its very good, id recommend this method for any language.

I can speak (and read and write) Greek. I learned it in my teens/20s from a mixture of classes, speaking it on holiday, and self teaching from text books and audio teaching aids.
I taught evening classes for 5 years in my 30s. I always recommended speaking it as much as possible when in Greece and not to be put off by Greeks responding in English. You can explain to them (in Greek!) that you’re learning.
The alphabet is easy to learn but the grammar is quite complex. I put in a lot of time learning the grammar until I more naturally recognised the patterns.
Personally, I find listening, speaking, writing and learning the grammar helps reinforce everything.