Steve is learning Greek!

gregf · February 27, 2017, 8:38pm

… and Turkish, Hebrew and Arabic!

My guess is that Steve learning a new language here will ultimately turn into new content as he works his way through the language, and I’m excited to hear about his progress with learning this wonderful language.

Congrats on your first 100 words, Steve, και καλωσήρθες !

Sarka1 · February 27, 2017, 10:26pm

It is a great news really.

Diotallevi · March 3, 2017, 10:24pm

Thought the same I hope you are right!

Athens2014 · March 7, 2017, 9:54am

Why is the Greek language considered a wonderful language? Because of the sound? How does it sound in your ears? Perhaps like the Italian language, somehow?
Steve likes almost all the languages. For instance, Arabic language doesn’t sound very well in my ears. Too many vowels in analogy with the number of consonants. There is a disproportion, which is far from the harmony.

Athens2014 · March 7, 2017, 1:32pm

Better Greek, with excellent accent.

I found a video in YouTube with perfect Greek and excellent accent. The level is higher, but less boring than the old fairy tales with the weird expressions, which are not used anymore and you waste your time searching for them. I hope you enjoy it!

gregf · March 7, 2017, 1:53pm

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I find Greek culture and history absolutely fascinating. As for the language itself, it is as wonderful as every other human language. I’ve never been one to judge a language by how it “sounds”: I speak and love German as much as I do French and Italian.

But for me, every Greek word is charged with a special bit of history, going back for centuries. When I hear or read a word like “θυμός” and can think about how it was used in Homer, Plato, the Bible, the Greek fathers, etc., all the way down to modern Greek, I just get excited.

My goal is some day to read everything from Homer to Cavafy in the original, regardless of whether we call it Homeric, Attic, Koine or Modern Greek. For me it’s all one long and amazing story. Modern Greek is helping me get to reading and enjoying 3,000 years of texts and stories, by exposing me to more Greek than I would be able to just reading ancient texts.

So that’s why it’s wonderful for me. Plus I like to pretend I’m Ulysses.

Athens2014 · March 7, 2017, 7:24pm

Homer is very difficult even for the Greek natives with a good education. There is a translation, which is a result of a 30 years constant study by an “admirer” of Homer, who had been translating each word from the ancient text by the closest word that we use in nowadays. He also speaks French!
http://www.biblionet.gr/author/11981/Κώστας_Δούκας
http://www.biblionet.gr/book/18336/Όμηρος/Οδύσσεια
http://www.biblionet.gr/book/18338/Όμηρος/Ιλιάς

Cavafy must be one of the best poets in the world. For me he is the best, but I don’t know about every poet that exists. He is difficult, not only because of the difficult Greek words that he uses, but because he needs somehow a decode on the meaning of his thought. He often speaks for the death under a veil of a weird story.

As for the total of the ancient Greek scripts, I have chosen to read or study, depends on the difficulty of each script, the ready study of the experts, who have been devoting whole their lives in these scripts. The requested is the meanings of the Philosophy, which are unique and so powerful that show the only route for the prosperity of the humanity. Under this perspective, no matter the way, the text, that someone learns about the principles that ancient Greek Philosophy teaches, because the core of the meanings is the valuable element.

Sarka1 · March 16, 2017, 7:20pm

For me Greek is not as melodic and nice sounding as romance languages such as French or Italian. But I also find Greek to be a fascinating language. It has such an interesting alphabet. One of the reason for my fascination is that it comes from such ancient times and another that it is so different from other languages. I always like the history of ancient Greece, so learning Greek means getting to know more about this. Needless to say that Greece is my favourite country to visit in the recent years and I am looking forward to be able to go there again in the summer.

Athens2014 · March 17, 2017, 2:35pm

So, it is a matter of taste the sound of each language and also a matter of the correct accent. I could not learn any language without being fascinated by its sound. But people we have a variety of motivations for everything we do in our life. And this variety of tastes and motivations make the life very interesting.

Sarka1 · March 19, 2017, 8:46pm

Yes in fact these days I really like listening to Greek. I like to listen to the Greek radio or watch something on tv though my understanding must improve yet.

Athens2014 · March 21, 2017, 3:09pm

To Sarka.
Here is a Greek song that I like. If you like it and want more songs, just let me know.
If you don’t understand some expressions, just ask me.

http://www.stixoi.info/stixoi.php?info=Lyrics&act=details&song_id=7173