I just had this random idea reading a site on the Internet. Isn’t the best way to learn a language discussing in it? Here’re a few reasons why it might be:

The Reasons

• Discussion motivates you to learn more words so you can have better more elaborate arguments.
• Discussing makes you want to learn to speak/type better and make less mistakes so that you don’t look *silly* and your arguments are the ones that count (and not the mistakes in them).
• It keeps you actively engaged where you want to understand the essence of the arguments of others and answer them.

In short, one could say that discussing motivates you to learn the language so you can argue and win.

The Implications

But what are the implications of that? There’s a simple one: discuss more!

Debate more

When we meet foreigners for language practice, we usually tell them “tell me about your family”, “let’s talk about life in your country” and so on. Perhaps we should instead say “hello; the system of enprisonment is wrong because it 1) devalues human freedom 2) makes prison inmates even more likely to commit crimes afterwards 3) wastes taxpayers money; what do you have to say?”.

When you talk to people you have just met to practice the language, you end up agreeing with them most of the time and just telling supportive statements where maybe contradicting them a little more would serve you better.

Admittedly this makes you seem arrogant if you do it with strangers but perhaps not so much with people you know or your language exchange partners. Also, there is always a right way to put it even against strangers. Answering “wow, you are good, language X must be hard” with “thanks! well, it’s not so hard because of X and Y” instead of “thanks! yeah, it’s hard” is more likely to encourage discussion and it’s not that arrogant after all..

Practice by debating

In language practicing sites people just end up writing trivial stuff like letters to imaginary friends or daily blog entries which later get corrected by native speakers. That is okay for simple practice, I guess, but think how much more effective it would be if they started making elaborate arguments instead and native speakers could not only correct them but answer to them and so engage in a discussion.

Then native speakers would actually care more about what the people are writing and would be more likely to read it (and perhaps correct it afterwards since they have read it anyway). They would also be more likely to call people out on their mistakes just to make sure that the points in their arguments are expressed  as accurately as possible so that the native speakers can understand and respond to them.

Playing devil’s advocate

Another part of this is a lot of times you agree with people on things. What do you do then? Well, you play devil’s advocate. Playing devil’s advocate is saying something that you do not believe yourself just to start a discussion.

Is it wrong to do so? I don’t think so! You make people examine their believes (and examine your own) which is always a good thing. Also you learn how to discuss more efficiently, learn both sides of the argument and practice the language more efficiently. I think that arguing a side which you don’t particularly agree with can be just as riveting because you are going for victory in the debate then.

Of course, in all of these examples, you have to be careful not to offend people and not to overdo it, or perhaps sometimes make it explicit that you are arguing just for arguing (and for learning the language).

Conclusion…

It seems to me that debating instead of simply speaking can serve as a great strategy which can help you with motivation and with getting more practice (because people usually like to finish the discussions they are involved in no matter how much time it takes) too. So perhaps we should add more discussion to our language learning?

What do you think?

Just a couple of tips that I think are helpful to learn languages while you are living in the country (like me in Greece). I assume most people should know them but I get surprised by how many times they don’t. Here we go.

1. Translate everything you see!

Whenever you see any signs on streets or shops, translate them. Any simple instructions: translate! Advertisements? Do translate! It is very often overlooked by a lot of people but simply being in a foreign country and translating all the information around you, you do expand your knowledge and given enough time, this can help you enough to learn the language even if you don’t put effort into it.

2. Always look up words and grammar you did not know during conversations.

Whenever you speak and you find out that you could not express something because you lacked the word or the grammar needed, make a mental note and look it up after the conversation. Even if you have gotten your way around it, do look up the word. It will be relevant to you so you will be more likely to remember it and the fact that you did need it in practice makes it all the more likely that you will need it again so it’s probably a good word to learn. Also it’s a non-painful way to learn grammar.

3. Practice mental conversations with yourself

Whenever you feel like it, and you are thinking to yourself, try to translate it to your target language. Try to imagine how the conversation would go in that language and what would you say. A lot of times you will also find words that you do not know and for that you can refer to tip #2. You don’t have to have other people around to practice!

These tips, of course, can be generalized for situations even when you are learning out of the country. They are just things I consider helpful. What do you think?

I am already in the last part of my six-months challenge which has become more of an 3-months challenge turning into a 2 months challenge (that’s how I feel at least) but whatever the case, I have discovered a number of resources along the way. I will list all the free resources here so that you can use them if you are learning Modern Greek.

Greek Alphabet Courses

There are lots of tutorials online to learn it but I hadn’t found one I would really like so I have made my own and now I’m obviously recommending it:

• The Greek Alphabet Course

You do not need to worry about the mistakes in this course either because they have been checked by a native speaker Glavkos and then fixed by me. I suggest this becomes your first step to learn the language.

Greek Online Course

• Kypros.org Free Online Greek Course

Frankly, I found the structure to be quite repetitive, also I hated that it only works online and you can’t have it in your mp3 player (due to some copyright issues). On the nice side of things, they have over a hundred lessons and transcripts and even vocabulary lists so you can easily check them up and it does give you some foundations if you are very persistent (you have to be very very persistent, though).

Greek Online Practice Material For Learners

• Hellenic American Union Podcast
• Greek Lessons
• SBS Greek Podcast

Hellenic American Union has a podcast entirely in Greek with 80 episodes and transcripts for each one. The episodes include short dialogues which have a lot of vocabulary in them and there are also some lessons about life in Greece in general. I found it to be very useful for learning all of the common words for I just made flashcards out of them and memorized them and that helped a lot.

The other podcast is made, again, by Glavkos, and it has text only in Greek which is totally cool with explanations in Greek of the unknown words. I found that I can basically listen to it and understand the essence of what is being said which is cool.

Then the last one, the SBS podcast is just a podcast in Greek with episodes from a programme about Australians learning Greek. Most of the podcasts have school descriptions, interviews and stuff like that. There are also health series with podcasts about health on the same site. Finally, there’re things about other topics such as books, politics, etc. It is a good 10 minute Greek practice that I have found.

Greek Grammar/Vocabulary Resources

• Introduction to Greek Verbs
• Greek Medio-Passive Voice Formation Explained
• Modern Greek Verbs Conjugated List
• Modern Greek Grammar
• Greek Word Recognizer/Conjugator/Declinator
• Greeklish to English Converter
• Greektionary: Three Words A Day Service

The first one is just a nice introduction to Greek verbs, the second one is a course made by me about how to solve the biggest problem for many learners of Greek: dealing with the medio-passive voice in Greek (I deal with how to form it mostly, not how to actually use it… although that is not very hard once you get the hang of it). I have not finished the course yet and it will hopefully be checked by Glavkos… I will perhaps tell you more later. Except to have it ready in a week or so. Anyway.

Then there is the Modern Greek Grammar site where you can get PDFs of various topics of grammar. I found the explanations to be pretty nice (although perhaps not perfect).

Then the last thing is great: you type in a Greek word and it recognizes its simple form and also gives you a lot of other forms. The only problem is that there is a limit of 10 words a day (I heard it is extended to 30 if you sign up which I did not). Pretty useful stuff.

The Greeklish to English converter converts text like “gia sas ti kanete” to nice Greek “για σας τι κάνετε”. It has even no common standard and recognizes a lot of different ways you can write the word! It is ridiculously useful and ridiculously accurate.

Then Greektionary is a good service to learn vocabulary. I subscribed to it and it sends me 3 new Greek words with translation, example and audio (like you can find on their site) every working day. This is a nice little thing that makes you feel like you are making progress every day even if you did not study much.

Greek Online Dictionaries

There are two main online Greek-English dictionaries that I have come across and found use of during my studies (there is a need for more):

• The in.gr Greek-English-Greek dictionary
• WordReference English-Greek dictionary

The first one is sort of geared towards Greeks learning English so it does not have Greek word genders and important things like that (which is not a very big deal after all since you can usually guess the gender from the word) and often has multiple meanings for one word without further explanation. The second one, on the other hand, has those but is lacking in vocabulary examples.

Ipod/iphone applications

I use some flashcards software to learn Greek words but the software is not specifically for Greek, so here goes what is for Greek:

• MAGENTA – Greek Dictionary
• Greek Radio

There is also a MAGENTA Greek dictionary application for iPhone/iPod which is indispensable if you have one. It is based on the in.gr dictionary (or actually the other way around) but it really helps you translate almost everything you need for daily life. Then the Greek Radio software lets you listen to almost all major Greek radio stations via an internet connection on your iPhone or iPod which is pretty darn brilliant.

Non-online paid resources

There are books, namely:

• Teach Yourself Greek
• Teach Yourself Greek Conversation
• Colloquial Greek
• Linguaphone Greek
• Pimleur Greek 30 CDs
• Michel Thomas Greek Foundation and Advanced courses
• Roseta Stone Greek

These are the ones I have come across: I’m pretty sure there’s more. They all cost money (usually, anyway).

I have made a comment with this list on another site but it does not seem to be getting enough attention so I thought I’d make a post here to share it with you guys. These are the tools I came across and am using to learn Greek and those tools you can use too.

Attention: The details in this post are not intended to be completely accurate and may contain mistakes, misrepresentation and gross simplifications.

I’m over 50 days already in Greece and I have gotten a little bit used to the Greek language. I’m nowhere near good so this might contain errors but I thought I would give you all a small representation of the Greek language and what you would experience if you were around to learn it. I’m going to write mostly in Roman letters so that everybody can read it and keep it simple. Here goes…

About the Greek letters (and pronunciation)…

I have already written about learning the letters of the Greek alphabet. Learning to read Greek with sufficient accuracy is not a big problem either. I can read it now and pronounce the words given some time. My reading speed is not very good, though. I have talked to a girl who also studied Greek for two years, has a C1 diploma of Greek and she said she still doesn’t read it as fast as she would read the Latin alphabet. It is normal and probably not something you can do much about. The speed is obviously even worse for texts with words you do not recognize.

As you have seen in my post, the letters are straightforward. Talking about Modern Greek, you only have to learn the letters and a few extra combinations such as ου which is pronounced like in soup while it should be pronounced oi in boy, αι which is pronounced like the French é and then you’re good to read it. I sometimes still have problems with ντ becomes it is seemingly pronounced nd and d by some people and I do not know which is correct (the one in the middle – nasal (n) and d supposedly – is but I might have problems with this nasal sound). Same for γκ this is pronounced either ng or g). I am also not sure if I pronounce the sounds of letters γ (g) and δ (d) correctly but at least I seem to be understood.

So, in summary, Greek pronunciation is just 24 easy letters and some combinations thereof… very regular, pretty easy.

Stress oh stress

Oh, there is more. Every word is actually stressed in Greek. Not only that, the stress mark must be shown in every word. Here’s an example of a Greek text for you (I hope I got that right):

Μου αρέσουν λίγο οι γλώσσες.

With correct accent, it could be transcribed as:

Mou arésoun lígo oi glósses.

Well, in informal chat, Greeks would write it something like this:

Mou aresoun ligo oi glwsses.

But the fact remains that every word that has more than one syllable has an accent and it has become a part of the word in some way. This is actually very good for language learners like me because we can remember how to pronounce the words correctly like this.

If you are still wondering what stress is, consider this example. In English you say EXport and some kind of emphasis is put on the syllable ex. For example, it would be wrong to say exPORT emphasizing PORT and the word would be stressed incorrectly. In Greek, all words are like that. The same English word would be written éxport to emphasize the place of the stress if English had adopted the Greek system of stress.

Languages like Russian or Lithuanian have dynamic stress which changes with different forms of words as well but it is usually not shown on words which is a pity because it would actually make the language so much easier for learners and enable getting easier solutions of problems concerning agreeing on the pronunciation of the word among native speakers.

How to construct sentences

Okay, so now we can talk about how to make phrases in Greek. I don’t know where to start. Perhaps we will start with verbs.

Oh verbs…

I found it kind of strange that verbs don’t have the infinitive (*to*) form in Greek. What they have instead is the first person form which is the key to other forms and is used in dictionaries.

There is one single form… for example, let’s talk about finishing, the form in Greek is τελειώνω which would be written teleióno and considering that ei together is pronounced simply as i, it is pronounced telióno as well (that is what I will use in the examples for ease).

This form means I finish. Then you have five different forms for all of the tenses, so roughly teliónis for you finish, telióne for he finishes, teliónoume, teliónete and teliónoun (remember that ou is pronounced like in soup). This is pretty easy and pretty regular.

Also there is another case of these where the last letter is stressed such as μιλώ which is miló for I speak. It can also be written as μιλάω that is miláo which is a form I like a bit more (and these two are changed interchangeably something like he was not and he wasn’t in English). Then these have slightly different endings as it goes milás for you, milái for he, miláme for we, etc. Still pretty easy.

As it has been pointed out by a commentator Tsela below, there is another conjugation for words such as boró which which is in fact similar to the first one mentioned except that it also has stress on the first syllable.

Some verb magic

If you want to connect two verbs together you have to put na in the middle of them. For example, I want is thélo (th pronounced like in the English word this) and I do is káno so if you want to say I want to finish you have to say thélo na káno. Same for you want to do: thelis na kanis, etc. It is not very hard.

However, káno is a bit of an exception here because na does not force káno to change to its second form. It is not the case for most other verbs because they change to their second form after káno.

The second form of verbs

So, if you want to say I want to finish you have thélo, na and telióno but then telióno changes to its second form. The second form of verbs ending in ono is oso so the second form of telióno is telióso. So if you want to say I want to finish you say thélo na telióso which sounds much cooler to me.

Most of the verbs change like that so for example if you want to say I want to speak you change miló to milíso (it changes like that because its ending is stressed) so you have thélo na milíso.

Many different Greek endings have change patterns so for example gráfo (I write) becomes grápso, niótho (I feel) becomes nióso, etc. Then there are some which you cannot guess from patterns and have to learn separately. For example, vlépo (I see) becomes do after na which is kind of hard to foresee.

Of course, this second form can not only be used for thélo (I want) but instead for practically all cases where you have two verbs together (I can see, I want to have, etc.)

The second form is more important than you think…

You would think that you would only use the second form after na but actually it has a lot more uses than that.

In an old construction, if you wanted to express the future and say I will do you would say I want to do because want implies that it will happen in the future (you still want it). As we have already mentioned, it would be thélo na káno. However, in speech thélo na simply got shortened to tha (Greek θα) and that became the future marking particle.

Thus you also use the second form for the future. You want tha milíso for I will speak, tha grápso for I will write, etc. That works wonders.

But wait… there’s more. The second form for the past too!

Now not only the second form is used in the future, it is also used in the past. You just slightly change the endings and you have the past forms. For example, you had milíso for the form of miló (I speak). You can change it to mílisa and you got I spoke which is the past. In a similar fashion you get milíses for you spoke, milíse for he spoke, etc. This is not terribly difficult, is it.

Stress usually falls on the second to last syllable so if you have less than three syllables you have an extra letter (usually é) added in the beginning so káno (which is both the first and the second form) becomes kana but that’s only two syllables so it becomes ékana for I did. Same for égrapsa for I wrote, etc.

The mediopassive voice is creeping me

Right, the only thing that rains on the parade here is the Greek mediopassive voice (just called simply passive in Modern Greek). First, though, the word for to be.

The words for to be

The word for to be look different (like in many languages). In Greek they are different because they don’t end in ω like most verbs do in their first form. Here’s a table with the word for to be in Greek:

The Modern Greek mediopassive voice

Alright, so you have some word, such as telióno. If you say telióno that’s fine, you finish something. But if you are a day for example and you want to say I finish myself, you would say telióno-eímai which has become teliónomai in Greek. Thus to say the day is finishing you could say i méra teliónetai which would mean the day finishes itself. You could also use this to say *I wash myself* in one word and similar things. Greek uses that a lot.

Now it would be fine if the endings weren’t a bit messed up so you get forms such as telionithika, etc (I still haven’t learnt those forms fully).

Also there are some words like skéftomai (I think), koimámai (I sleep) or onirévomai (I dream) which only have the passive voice and do not have active voice because if you, say, think, in the Greek mind you are doing something to yourself instead of just doing something so it’s passive.

Alright, a bit annoying, but it still sometimes sounds cool and is not so hard to learn after all.

Noun articles, declensions and other changes…

Nouns are things to describe objects such as apple, table, language or cucumber. In Greek, they have different genders which are actually three like in a lot of Indoeuropean languages: masculine (male), feminine (female) and neuter. Thus you have o skílos for dog (masculine), i gáta for cat (feminine) and to spíti for house (neuter).

These are not so very hard because they can usually be told by the ending of the word. If anything, you also have the article which is different or every gender and in the end it is okay not to get the genders right too.

Now nouns, their articles and adjectives (things that describe them) all change in some ways. The good news are that these changes are not so hard. You can get a good overview of the changes in Glavkos blog-posts for masculine masculine, neuter, neuter and feminine nouns and I have also left comments about the broad patterns I have noticed there.

In summary… noun changes for you

Let’s go with o skílos which is a masculine word meaning the dog.

If you want to say the house of the dog you change you say to spíti tou skílou where o skílos changes to tou skílou. Thats the first change you will have.

If you want to say that something is being done with the dog or use the dog with prepositions such as with, from, on, concerning, etc. you say to skílo where o skílos changes to to skílo. You could say, for example, tha pao me to skilo which means I will go with the dog (because me means with). You could also say blepo to skilo which means I see the dog. That is the second change.

The third change is when you want to call the dog where you say skílé as in dog, come here!.

Then you have all of these three changes for the plural too (except endings in the plural usually change even less and the changes are even more predictable). You have different endings for nouns for all three genders as well as for adjectives (word such as black, good, etc.) and even articles but in the end it’s not that much. Of course, I still get a lot of the endings wrong and I haven’t memorized all of them that well but that’s not a big obstacle to speaking Greek and they come with time. The situation seems to me similar like that in German except in German you can’t tell the gender of a word by the ending whereas in Greek you usually can.

My summary about nouns could be this: nouns change but not very much.

Greek words

Alright, Greek words are another matter. They are usually different from English although some of them have roots in English and that is very nice.

A thing is to kósmos (as in cosmos), a soul is psichí (as in psychic), vivlío (written biblio, think the Bible) – book, etc. Otherwise some of the words seem unfamiliar and I have to learn a lot of them by rote with flashcards. Here are ten random words for you from my yesterday flashcard learning so that you can find how similar – or different – they are.

As you can see, not very similar. Still a few of these words look familiar (métrios – perhaps related to meter, anapsichí – looks related to psyche). I try to learn them and use associations to remember them better which is not always easy and I keep forgetting a lot of words but I have moved on a lot as well.

Conclusion

The Modern Greek language does not seem very difficult to me. Sure, there are things to learn and the words are not very familiar, etc. thus it is definitely harder to learn than say Portuguese. However, the pronunciation is not overly complicated and it is totally phonetic (what you see is what you get… unlike English), the changes in words are not so drastic as in other languages so that you can usually trace back the original form from other forms (unlike Estonian, for example) and it has been simplified a great deal since Ancient Greek so if there still are people learning Ancient Greek, Modern Greek is not that difficult and definitely learnable. That’s my conclusion so far.

There are quite a few dialects of Arabic. The question is: which dialect of Arabic should you learn if you want to communicate with as many Arabic speakers as you can? I attempt to give a summary of this question.

Origins of Arabic: Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic

There is one original Arabic used in the Qur’an and called Classical Arabic (CA). It is the archaic form that was spoken from around VII to IX centuries.

Then there is Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). This language is the same as Classical Arabic except it is adapted in some ways and geared more towards casual speech. For example, it has words that Classical Arabic does not, such as فيلم (film) because obviously they did not have films a thousand years ago when Classical Arabic was spoken. The forms of Classical Arabic are said to be more poetic and “old”, a rough analogy between CA versus MSA would be Shakespearean English and Modern English, except the differences are bigger in English than in the two types of Arabic. Arabic speakers sometimes do not even distinguish between the two languages and sometimes do not make the distinction.

Now the thing is: nobody speaks neither Classical Arabic nor Modern Standard Arabic in their standard everyday lives anymore: that would be like encountering somebody in Europe speaking Latin. People do speak Latin in Europe, though, except Latin has transformed into variants which are better known as Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian. So has Classical Arabic transformed into dialects about the major of which we will now learn.

Before that, here is the nice thing: everybody speaks “their Latin” in the Arab world because they learn it at school. That is to say, children learn Modern Standard Arabic (or Classical Arabic – as it has been said, Arabs often don’t even make the distinction) at school and all educated people throughout the whole Arab world are supposed. They do learn this language because the Qur’an was written in it. That means that though, chances are, you could not communicate with Italians and French using the original Latin language, you can with Arabs

Current dialects of Arabic

So when we know what people don’t speak in their everyday lives, let’s look at what they do speak. Here the reality is that there are many dialects and sub-dialects and trying to explain and compare them all in a blogpost wouldn’t do them any justice. That’s is why I am just going to list the main large groups of Arabic dialects.

Egyptian Arabic

This form of Arabic is spoken in Egypt, of course. Now the good part is that about 20% of all Arabic speakers are speakers of Egyptian Arabic. The other good part is that Egyptian Arabic is the second standard Arabic of these times. Think of it this way: if Latin is spoken as a common language and known among the educated Arabs, then Egyptian Arabic is somewhat like English in the West now.

This is because a lot of songs, shows, etc. are produced in Egyptian Arabic and also a lot of Arab speakers get to see Egyptian TV (and now presumably see the Internet) thus chances are people might be used to the Egyptian dialect and understand it. Some people suggest that anyone who watches TV in the Arab world will be able to understand you if you speak Egyptian Arabic. That is why a lot of people, when they want to learn Arabic, go with Egyptian Arabic.

Maghrebi Arabic

Maghrebi is a dialect of Arabic spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. This is probably the second big group of Arabic and it is sometimes split into smaller groups such as Moroccan, Algerian etc. Broadly speaking, this Arabic could be characterized by that it has followed a lot of Western words due to its close contact with Western countries. Speaking about speaking, this dialect is only used for speaking because most writing is done in Modern Standard Arabic.

Gulf Arabic

Gulf Arabic is a dialect spoken in Persian Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. It has been argued that this dialect is the one that is the most similar to Modern Standard Arabic (and thus to Classical Arabic too) although big differences between the two do exist. To give you a rough analogy, If MSA is Latin, Egyptian is English, then Maghrebi is German and Gulf is Italian (it’s a good analogy too because of its relatively greater similarity to Classical Arabic). It works fine in the region and sometimes in other places but a lot of people might still not understand you.

Sudanese Arabic

Then there is Sudanese Arabic which is spoken in Sudan. It has a fair amount of speakers because Sudan has many inhabitants too. Sudanese Arabic is said to have been influenced on a large part by local African languages in the territory of Sudan thus the language has an Arabic-African flavor to it. It could be equated to Brazilian Portuguese (because it has native influences from other languages).

Levantine Arabic

The last one that I want to mention here is Levantine Arabic. It is spoken in the Levant region, thus in Lebanon, Cyprus, Palestine, Israel and a few other places in that region (the region also includes the Gaza strip). It could be devided into Northern (Syrian, Lebanese) and Southern (mostly Palestinian) dialects where the Northern one is more related to the Gulf Arabic and the Southern one is related to the Egyptian Arabic. Once again, this Arabic is not really spoken outside of the region so it could be equated to Norwegian (because it has two dialects too).

The others

Apart from that, there are a lot of other dialects such as Iraqi Arabic, Najd Arabic, Hezaji Arabic (arguably all of these more similar to Gulf Arabic), Yemeni Arabic (which is known to be very convservative too and it probably outdoes Gulf Arabic in its similarity to Classical Arabic) and a lot of other dialects that exist.

So… which dialect of Arabic should I learn?

The answer is mainly threefold…You should learn:

• Modern Standard Arabic – if you want to read the Qur’an, be able to read state documents, books and sound cool when you ask questions when you travel
• Egyptian Arabic – if you want to be mostly understood in the Arab world and be able to watch Arab TV, understand the lyrics in their music and so on
• Some specific dialect of Arabic – if you know specifically where you will go and live

This does not, however, take other factors such as difficulty of the language or easiness to learn (due to the amount of learning resources or the degree of the ability to immerse yourself, for example) into account. I would say that MSA is archaic thus it should be harder, Egyptian Arabic should have a lot of resources but a fair amount of tourists too (same for Moroccan Arabic) and specific dialects might be the easiest to immerse yourself into if you are there but might have the least resources to learn.  These are just guesses, however, and you should investigate further before learning any of the dialects.

I tried to give a fair presentation of the Arabic language. here If I got something wrong or you have something to add to this, let us know in the comments.

Since I am almost done studying skimming my Greek grammar books except for a few more (but I don’t think I will do those because they look boring), it is essential I hear more Greek. That’s why I’ll be listening to podcasts in Greek. I excluded all of the podcasts using English automatically since even though I believe that it is beneficial to use English in the beginning of your learning (hence the labs), I have had people in Greece answer me in English enough already. Thus even if I do not understand, I’ll stiψκ to the Greek version and soon I will understand (hopefully). I’ll tell you how I will use the podcasts and I’ll also tell you what other ways I still use to learn. Here are the podcasts…

First, I turned to Glavko’s Greek podcast because it was mentioned by the author before on my blog. I really like that the podcast has a transcript of the text so it is easy for me to read. I also like that the author speaks in Greek entirely (and slower… although slower is not always cool, at this stage of my Greek learning it still is). I have only done the first episode so far because I had tried it at an earlier time but it seemed too difficult for me then (I had it noted for the future) and now it seems like I’m up for the challenge. I could understand maybe 40-50% of what is spoken in the podcast without refering to dictionaries or other aid thus I guess I’m still pretty low. I could still get the idea behind the dialogue of the first episode. With some help of a dictionary I was able to comprehend a lot more and learn a few words along the way. So far I plan to be doing one episode every three days because there are only 11 so far. That will take a month at this rate.

Second, I found these free Greek podcasts from the Hellenic American Union. The nice thing is that there are eighty of them! Another nice thing is that they have PDFs attached to them. They have a short conversation in every podcast, they are short enough (up to 10 minutes) and it comes out nice because I can also read the PDFs. They follow some story of sorts and that’s also cool. Another good thing is that it seems that most of the content is in the first half of the episode so I can just skip the second half if I don’t feel like repeating. All in all, I think I will be doing 3 episodes a day starting today for the next month. That should get me some more Greek.

I also plan to practice Greek more. Since Wednesday, I hope to be able to communicate with somebody more often in Greek but even if that happens, the downside is that it will only be so for a few weeks. I do have to find somebody who lives here with whom I can always speak Gree but believe it or not, in Greece that’s kind of hard (especially when you have to do stuff effectively so you are forced to retreat to English a lot of times).

I will also be continuing with the iPod learning I told you about. Some days I do not do many of these flashcards but I try. I keep looking up words whenever I can: just random stuff I hear, think about or need to talk about. I forget most of the words I look up and sometimes I have to look the same words up a lot of times. Same (but more) with the flashcards. That’s what learning is: not always easy. You have to bear with it.

Apart from that, I am also actively learning about the history of Greece (mythology included). I do this in my favorite way to learn – TTC courses. I am currently up to lecture eight of the courses on the history of Ancient Greek Civilization, Famous Greeks and Classical Mythology. It did not seem like that to me at first but all of these three are awesome courses (you can also see that from their score on the site). The first one deals with Greek history putting it very clearly and concisely, the second one tells the stories of not only the Greeks but also of the most important events (historical or mythological) that happened in Greece and the third one gives a nice introduction over the mythology of the Greeks. Surprisingly, the courses do not overlap much apart from mentioning some of the same facts (which is cool since I know more about them than I would from a single course) and they give me a nice view over the whole Greek legacy.

Oh, and finally, I will also be learning programming. I do know PHP but apart from that, I decided I want to learn Ruby this time. That’s why I will be trying to follow this nice guide to Ruby involving chunky bacon (you’ll see what I mean if you try it) and lots of images. It did not seem very simple to me but oh well, I guess I will still try it. I actually need to know Objective-C rather than Ruby for the moment but I guess you have to start somewhere. I won’t be setting any particular goals towards the Ruby tutorial but I hope I do it often enough to learn.

Thus, in summary, I’m learning Greek but not only Greek and not only not only Greek but also not only Greek not related to Greece as well.

I have posted a while ago how to become educated even if you have finished school (and have fun in the process). This time I want to talk about something yet unrelated to languages, yet very cool: star gazing. It is something I have done only for the last few nights yet but I have thoroughly enjoyed and I want you to try it: watching at the night sky and identifying the constellations. Here’s what it’s all about.

Ever since I can remember, I was interested in recognizing the patterns in the sky and seeing the constellations. However, it seemed like an impossible task to me: there are so many stars and they look so confusing that neither me, nor anybody I knew, could find their way through. They, and I, know the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and that’s about it. Or even they didn’t. If they could find Polaris (i.e. the North Star) in the Little Dipper then that would be good. So, I wanted to know more but I never took the time to learn more.

Yesterday I was browsing iPod apps and I saw one called “Pocket Universe”. I got it for myself and went out to try gaze at the stars that night. I didn’t know what to do at first but I managed to locate the Big Dipper at first and point the view on my screen to the same place and to go form there. It took me about 10 minutes to identify any other constellation (Draco was really hard) but I finally would and I managed to to locate good five or six of them, including Draco, Lyra, Hercules, Cepheus and some more. The great part was that after having identified them I would be able to trace them back from my memory and thus recognize them just by seeing them without any external help.

When I got the first ones, this was an awesome feeling. The Greeks also saw the same stars a couple of thousands of years ago and here I am, looking at them after this time and seeing the same patterns they saw. This is also a reference to the stars because if I know the constellation where a star is located, I can identify and look the star up to find out what kind of “oxygen” it’s made of. As the new saying goes:

Twinkle Twinkle little star,
I don't wonder what you are;
For by spectroscopic ken,
I know that you're hydrogen.

(Lewis Fry Richardson)

I want you to try this. You don’t need to buy an iPod for this purpose, nor do you need any apps. Just get a sky map and go star hunting in the evening. Here are the tips I can give you so far:

Getting your sky map

You will need some reference to recognize the stars. You will also need it to be set up according to the current time of the year and your current location so that it is does show the constellations that you can indeed see and not some other stars. Because it is impractical to get a computer outside, you might want to get some reference for where the stars are and print it out. If you are American, you might try this sky map out and in case you are from somewhere else, well then, try this version of the sky map.

You might want to print out your map and go seeing the stars or to upload it on your phone or something and then go use it. Of course, it would be easier for you to navigate if you could get similar software like I did because then you can use a similar to Google Maps interface to navigate. I guess there should be a lot of applications for a lot of devices. You could also use Google Sky if you have the capacity but its functions go way beyond simple star gazing. And it is kind of harder to identify the constellations with it.

Go out during the evening!

Go out when it’s dark. The stars have to be visible as well. The tip here is pretty self-obvious: try to avoid light. You know how when people got photos from the moon you could not see the stars in the sky like this:

Some people stated this was evidence that the whole mission was a hoax but an alternative explanation is that you cannot see the stars when the surface is well lit. Try it: the more lighting there is, the less stars you can see and it is enough for you to get out from where the light is and what was black sky, you can see lights instead. That’s why you should find a dark place for efficient stargazing.

Start with the Big Dipper!

If you have the map and don’t know where to start, start with the Big Dipper (if you are in the Northern Hemisphere anyway). Look above you head and you should identify it. It looks like this:

Then you can move on onto Draco and Ursa Minor like I did: those constellations are near and you can always trace it back to the Big Dipper. You can just do your tracing like that and see and remember the constellations one by one. Of course, learning the constellations will (hopefully) be your first step.

Do not get discouraged!

It is hard to but in case you do, remember that it takes time at first. It is a bit hard to identify the constellations when you do not know them at first and it might become a bit frustrating. However, as it usually is, persistance pays. Keep at it and try to identify the stars and you will eventually succeed. If something is wrong, consider changing your star map to something else. You can find a lot of those on Google.

It takes time at first but it is an incredible feeling. The stars are so universally human yet most humans do not take the time to even look at them systematically. Perhaps this is due to lack of information, though… I suggest you get the necessary information and try. The sky is lots of interesting and free experience and literally the sky is the limit.

I am in Greece, learning Greek and I will try to post more often from now on. I want to show you three ways how I have recently (in fact, only this week) started making use of my iPod Touch to help me learn Greek fast. If you try enough, you can apply virtually all of these or at least most of these to any language you are learning.

First, I have started using flashcards‘ software. In other words, I have started using science to help me learn. I used to think flashcards were boring and useless but that was before I tried them. Traditionally flashcards are paper cards used for learning with the question written on one side of them and the answer written on the other.

They have been notoriously used for word learning so for example you might have DOG written on one side and ΣΚΗΛΟΣ on the other and then you try to remember the word and only then turn to check if you are right. This was the traditional way at least, now we have electronic flashcards and they have been improved.

I installed certain software to my iPod Touch and uploaded over 5000 Greek words so that now which works like this: I see a word in English. If I touch my screen, it “turns” the flashcard and its equivalent in Greek appears. I then have to judge if I knew this word or not: if I swipe the screen with my finger it marks the flashcard as “wrong”, if I swipe it another direction then it marks it “correct” and after any of these actions, the next flashcard appears. The system is set up in such a way that it repeats the flashcards in certain intervals which have shown to increase the chance of remembering them tremendously and it repeats the cards I got wrong even more often which helps me remember those too.

I have already gone through about 1/10 of my 5000 flashcards collection and even though a long task, I plan on doing it. I noticed those words go into my passive memory instead and I can recognize many of them once I see them again. I also try to think about the words I see on the flashcards and make associations instead of just learning them by rote. This seems to be an effective and rewarding way to remember words and it is based on psychological memory research, and having it on your iPod or iPhone or another kind of portable device is an awesome idea since you can do this from anywhere whenever you have free time (i.e. while riding a bus, waiting for something, whatever).

Second, I have installed a Greek dictionary on my iPod Touch. Thanks Sherlock, huh. The good part about it is that I can look up words I see on street signs, ads, posters and whatever and I can also quickly I need for conversation in real time. This is a very good idea and I very much like not having gotten a paper dictionary (these are expensive and hard to carry) and having gotten an electronic one. I also set up a Greek alphabet on my device so I can also type Greek words in. The only problem is that the dictionary is geered towards Greeks learning English and not Greek learners so it does not provide much details about the Greek grammar but I can cope with that.

Third, I put the essential grammar on my iPod. I found short condensed articles about the main points in Greek grammar (noun tables, verb tables, pronouns, etc.) and put them all on a place where I can easily access them. Thus when speaking or using the language I can refer to the grammar very quickly and that helps me get the right case just in time. I have not used this much yet but I believe this will help me learn a lot more grammar and solidify my knowledge of it, both of which are essential for learning the language.

Now these are the things I should have done before going there. By doing this, I really feel like I am learning. I talked to a guy a few months ago and he said that he was in Cyprus for a summer and was very disappointed when he wanted to learn Greek and he did Pimsleur but that did not help him much although he used to do a lesson every day. Well, of course it did not help him: you have to live the language, not just take a course and expect to learn it. I, however, still use English most of my day and I still don’t really have people to regularly practice speaking Greek with thus it might be too early for me to say anything. Whatever the case, I will try to find some and to learn the language to achieve my goals. Even if I do not, I predict I will still know a great deal of the language. Time will tell.

I was planning to work more during the second half of my Greek challenge. Did I? Well, no. I basically did virtually no learning and then did a quick readup during the last few days. Practically a month and a half wasted (in terms of learning Greek, at least). I did a lot of other things so that kind of explains it but that’s still not an excuse. This happens a lot, though. Not only to me. You know what… I even think it’s okay. Here’s why.

I think we become too focused on with achieving our goals. While there is nothing wrong with setting goals and trying to achieve them in theory, in practice we often start blaming ourselves because we aren’t doing very well or aren’t achieving as quickly as we could have imagined. This is stressing and I don’t think it is a good thing. I guess it actually takes away from the enjoyment of what we do and it makes life more predictable. Even if all of that is not true, still, blaming yourself is not going to fix anything you have done. That’s why I don’t think you should blame yourself if you actually miss some step in your plans. Instead, you should move on.

That’s what I will be doing. I am in Greece now. It was my first day and I had just a couple of conversations in Greek. I managed to buy bread and to slowly explain some things to a guy who didn’t understand them in English (yes, I also used English during my first day… it is simply necessary sometimes). The downside is that I am not exactly in the centre of things so it will be hard to get a lot of opportunities to practice the language. The upside is that a lot of people here don’t speak English. Oh how I like that.

Actually coming here has motivated me a lot to learn more. I still have all the chances to do so and I will. In the end, I still have a pretty good shot at achieving B2, I would say. Even if I don’t, well, that’s still fair enough. So, the lesson is, don’t blame yourself too much. After all, not doing something may help you to do more later. And in the end it doesn’t matter anyway.

Forty-four days have passed since the beginning of my challenge learning Greek. What’s up with the challenge? How well I am doing? Well, the short answer is: I’m probably not above the A1-A2 threshold yet thus it is indeed not going as fast as it could have. I expect things to be faster soon, though. I have written a small report about everything I have done so far.

The alphabet

I have learned the alphabet to a point where I can read it more or less accurately now. The only problem with that is that I’m still pretty slow at reading it. I except my reading speed to increase with time, though, thus no worries. I did that by looking up each letter and also by listening to some words read out aloud in Greek. To consolidate my knowledge and to help the website grow I made a Greek alphabet course which you can obviously use to learn the alphabet too.

Apart from learning the alphabet, I also learned the order of them. That was always a glitch in my education. There are only 24 letters.

alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta theta iota kappa lambda mu ni xi omicron psi rho sigma tau upsilon phi chi psi omega

Not so hard, is it? I have also made a blog post helping you to learn the Greek alphabet yourself.

Conversational basics

I have also learned some basic words. I can talk about myself, about what I do and do not have, understand, want and so on. You know, the A1 kind of stuff. I simply did that by doing Pimsleur Greek and then getting some very simple conversations recorded in Greek to which I would listen. I would read them at the same time to also learn how the words are written.

The preferred technique is to listen to the text before having looked up all of the unknown words and try to see what you can make out of it and then look up the missing words and listen again. There is only one problem with that: I do not like listening to things again. I mean, once is alright and twice is kind of on the limit on boring. That’s why often it’s just one listen with having read the text before and looked up the words I did now know. I kind of think it is a good thing too because I get to try to read it before hearing it read. That’s the main thing I do.

The grammar

What about the grammar? One says that you should not study the grammar but I do like studying some of it. The problem is when grammar study is excessive but just reading up on it and finding the main points is indeed interesting and useful. That’s exactly what I did: I learned some simple grammar from various sources. I did not go into details so that will have to be worked on.

Evaluation and the future

All in all, I have not done as much as I should have. The truth is, I am a bit of a slacker… ;) I plan to work harder during the next 45 days.

I still have a lot of these conversations left to tackle so that’s what I’ll be doing in the near future. I’ll also be having a more heavy focus on grammar. I will do a lot more of this.

My plan is to be able to speak at least level A2 Greek so that I can communicate it with people already when I arrive in Greece on the first of June. I think this is very achievable and while it will not be an extremely efficient use of my time (again), if I do achieve this and then I achieve learning a language to at least the level B2 as I have already declared, I will have shown that it is possible to achieve such things without even having it as a very high priority which will, considering that most foreigners come to a country for months or sometimes years and do not learn the language, be a good point to make.