SLKB

I started out a little overly confident in my quest to learn a little Greek. After all, I had done so well learning Italian for a previous vacation. But Greek?! After a week, I'm still struggling with the sounds of the alphabet! I know that most Greeks speak English, but nothing says "presumptuous" to me as an American who doesn't attempt to read a few road signs and speak a bit of the language. I have an audio CD and a workbook (Oxford University Press--Take Off in Greek.) Any suggestions from other self-taught tourists?

brotherleelove2004

Perhaps this will help:

http://www.kypros.org/LearnGreek/

It's not an easy language to learn. If you just learn the basic polite phrases: hello, good morning, thank you, etc., you'll be fine.

Christina

Good luck, learning any language is difficult in a short time. I'd just try to learn a few polite phrases, as I don't think it's that easy to learn a language well enough to actually construct sentences that well.

I studied Greek by myself a little bit for a trip there many years ago. I had a good book (Cortina), but don't have any audio courses to recommend. I didn't think the pronunciation was any particular problem, though, the sounds are fairly straightforward from the alphabet, once you learn it. There are only a couple sounds that are a little foreign to English (gamma and chi), as far as I felt. The vowel sounds are fairly simple, like Spanish. Maybe the pronunciation would be difficult just because they use a different alphabet, so the connection isn't direct in that sense. I found the verbs and cases, etc., the most difficult, as that is usually the most important thing in a foreign language to learn well.

Anyway, good luck, any little bit helps. Perhaps things have changed, but I did not find that most Greeks speak English at all. Probably they spoke it less than any other European country where I've traveled.

Liz2005

Have you tried the Rosetta Stone? I believe it's pretty expensive, but you can return it if you don't learn the language. I hear it makes languages easy to learn, but I haven't tried it myself. As someone who has been to Greece and has a Greek husband and in -laws all I can say is good luck and keep trying! I find the langauge extremely hard. Just yesterday my husband spent a good hour having me say the name of his Nona - Argyro. Good gracious! It'a Arrrr yrrro. I can say it pretty well when we're practicing, but when I have to say it to her (mind this is over the phone) It comes out AR Gyro. Like I'm a pirate or something. Oh well, she says my name Elli say bit (Elizabeth). I figured we're both trying.

Sorry to ramble there, jsut wanted to say you're not the only one struggling with the Greek language!

Heimdall

Lucky for us, English is the lingua franca of the Greek tourist trade. I often hear Norwegians, Swedes, or Germans conversing in English with Greeks, because that is the language they both know.

My Greek friends definitely appreciate a 'kalimera' in the morning, and 'kalispera' in the evening. You could use 'parakalo' (please), and 'efcharisto' (thank you), but no one really expects it from foreign visitors.

I have long ago given up trying to learn enough Greek to carry on even a simple coversation, but my language skills aren't very good anyway. I do like to practice my reading on signs, menus, etc, so if you can memorize both upper and lower case letters, and some of the letter combinations (the Greek mp is pronounced as b, for example) it will be helpful. Good luck, and I hope you get on better than me!