The Greek Lesson
democracystreet.blogspot.com/2010/12/learning-greek.html
Nearly our last Greek lesson before Christmas. Niko's the teacher we always wanted. He started us this May with four helpful books.
- Κλεάνθης Αρβανιτάκης Φρόσω Αρβανιτάκη, Επικοινωνήστε ελληνικά 1(Arvanitakis, K & F Communicate in Greek - Epikoiniste Ellinika 1, Book 1 and the exercise book that goes with it.
- Greek: An Essential Grammar of the Modern Language
- Oxford Learner's Pocket Dictionary
Niko has lesson plans, gives us homework, chats in Greek, records things on my laptop so we can practice pronunciation, helps with writing Greek and is invariably supportive and funny. But our progress seems so slow - or is it? When my mother stayed with us in Corfu in October she had the impression I was speaking quite a lot. Lin says things like :I'm never going to learn". but she was helping me with homework yesterday and translating paragraphs of Greek from a paperback novel. Our lessons are an hour and a half but Niko never finishes by the clock so we often have longer than agreed time. Yesterday as well as going through our homework, which was all about getting the right pronoun for different sentences and remembering the declension of four verbs - μένω - to live, έχω - to have, δουλεύω - to work, and είμαι - to be. Then we did some grammar and punctuation - accents, other diacritics, using capitals and lower case, and the transcription of foreign names. The Greek question mark is a semi-colon. Where English use speech marks "" , Greek uses . Greek divides large numbers with full stops, thus 1.456.777 instead of the English 1,456,777. Where English would use a semi-colon (;), Greek uses a colon or raised point (:).
A sentence to test pronunciation and grammar: "Your donkey's milk is good."
The Greek Lesson
democracystreet.blogspot.com/2010/12/learning-greek.html
Nearly our last Greek lesson before Christmas. Niko's the teacher we always wanted. He started us this May with four helpful books.
- Κλεάνθης Αρβανιτάκης Φρόσω Αρβανιτάκη, Επικοινωνήστε ελληνικά 1(Arvanitakis, K & F Communicate in Greek - Epikoiniste Ellinika 1, Book 1 and the exercise book that goes with it.
- Greek: An Essential Grammar of the Modern Language
- Oxford Learner's Pocket Dictionary
Niko has lesson plans, gives us homework, chats in Greek, records things on my laptop so we can practice pronunciation, helps with writing Greek and is invariably supportive and funny. But our progress seems so slow - or is it? When my mother stayed with us in Corfu in October she had the impression I was speaking quite a lot. Lin says things like :I'm never going to learn". but she was helping me with homework yesterday and translating paragraphs of Greek from a paperback novel. Our lessons are an hour and a half but Niko never finishes by the clock so we often have longer than agreed time. Yesterday as well as going through our homework, which was all about getting the right pronoun for different sentences and remembering the declension of four verbs - μένω - to live, έχω - to have, δουλεύω - to work, and είμαι - to be. Then we did some grammar and punctuation - accents, other diacritics, using capitals and lower case, and the transcription of foreign names. The Greek question mark is a semi-colon. Where English use speech marks "" , Greek uses . Greek divides large numbers with full stops, thus 1.456.777 instead of the English 1,456,777. Where English would use a semi-colon (;), Greek uses a colon or raised point (:).
A sentence to test pronunciation and grammar: "Your donkey's milk is good."