Learning Greek

Hello! We are currently trying to learn some basics as well and using the free duolingo app on my phone and my sons tablet. It's pretty straightforward and easy to set up. Good luck!

@MacGeorge8035 hello from Larnaca! I am a Croat living in Cyprus. I am professor of greek language and I believe that despite the fact that almost everybody in Cyprus speaks english learning at least some basic greek is very nice idea since the greek language has so important place in the history of the Western world. If you live in Larnaca or think that online lessons would be ok for you, you can contact me, if not I encourage you to start with some lessons wherever you can...

Local municipality do free or low cost courses ....

We didn't bother here to be honest... We did it for 9 months in Malta to learn Maltese...we were doing ok with it too. but invariably it was found easier for our maltese friends families and hosts to speak English ...

On a personal note I agree with ifadic it is a nice thing to do .. to at least try ... And in terms of learning I found it easier to.learn from locals then and since coming here I try to.learn from Cypriot friends. Well its more like trying to remember if am honest...lol

@Toon I get that will probably be the case here as well. But it would be nice to be able to at least catch the drift of a conversation when my Cypriot friends are talking to each other in Greek. For all I know they could be calling me a big fat Geordie w****r. that's a joke I don't think they are, well are they? oh dear my paranoia is kicking in.

on a lighter note 6 - 1 who would have believed it, best 20 minutes of football I have seen for years.

Malaka is the word to listen out for... Lol yes vrisis was bouncing ... 

@MacGeorge8035 Hi George, For Greek Alphabet I used this mini book.

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Read-Greek … amp;sr=8-1

I liked clozemaster app for the next phase. It has a track called fast track fluency. It is practicing missing words in sentences like we did with English grammar and reading comprehension in school. You can listen to the pronunciation of the words in the sentence after you select the missing word from the multiple choice.

I think it has around seven thousand sentences. Use the multiple choice version till you become better. Then you can type in the words. It will take you a couple years to finish the sentences if you do like ten sentences a day but it will help you learn a lot of basic words. Then after you practice like 1000 sentences you can start watching Greek movies with English subtitles. Unfortunately there is no Greek language in Lingopie but I think you find chrome browser extensions which lets you translate the words or captions into English.

https://www.clozemaster.com/

I did not use this google extension but looks useful

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta … e?hl=en-GB

Some people pick up speaking fast. Some pick up listening quicker. So you have to decide whether you are good with speaking or listening and focus on that area. I found listening to a language easier than speaking. For speaking you definitely need a private tutor with online services like Preply or go to municipality classes if you are a person who likes to go to physical classes. It is impossible in Cyprus to learn Greek on the go as everybody will switch to English . It is like Spain vs Germany vs France Vs Netherlands. I think it is difficult to learn English in Germany or Netherlands because people would switch to English immediately. It would be easier to learn Spanish in Spain or French in France because you are forced to learn the basics of the local language.

As an adult learner who had no special aptitude towards languages I found learning a second language very difficult but could progress slowly over time.

@dvb123 good insight....

@MacGeorge8035 lol 😂 as long as you were not born and bred in Tottenham 😅 we really got a thrashing!

But regarding learning Greek, I tried the local school courses. It was very rigid and fast as the book has to be completed in one year and it delves quite quickly into grammatical language rather than conversation. The book is all in Greek with no prompts in English as we had Russians, Germans, Austrians and Polish in our class!

I would say learn the alphabet inside out first as that is invaluable because although I pick up local dialect in our village which is heavily Cypriot I like to see words written down which helps me to understand better how to say it.

For many years for day to day dialogue I found ‘Talk Greek' an excellent starter course by the BBC it's about 15.99 on Amazon and comes with a book and two CD's.

Once you have mastered the alphabet and Talk Greek then you can look for online or face to face courses to improve the grammar side!

Hope that helps!

Good information Teri

@TERI ALLERTON thanks that is good advice I will follow up on. As for being born in North London. Nah Geordie born but lived all over UK for last 30+ years and before that served in the Army for 12 years. My commiseration if you are Spurs fan, Oops sorry still gloating

@MacGeorge8035 we don't get that chance very often