How Easy is It to Learn Modern Greek

The Greek language is the native tongue of over 13 meg people in Greece (and Republic of cyprus and Republic of albania). It's a linguistic communication of the Hellenic language family, which is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. This means that despite Greece'southward and the Greek language's importance in world history, the linguistic communication isn't closely related to whatever other languages in the globe.

The thought of democracy was famously invented in Greek and it's the language of philosophy and an amazing ancient civilisation. But how hard is it to acquire Greek?

Due to the fact that Greek isn't closely related to other languages, such every bit English, in that location are aspects of the language that'due south more difficult than others. Information technology's got some other Alphabet that you need to learn to read and write, it'southward got some unusual sounds that might exist difficult to pronounce for an English speaker, and and then the grammar is quite unlike too.

On the plus side, English language has borrowed quite a few words from Greek throughout history, so some of the vocabulary might seem familiar. Yet other words are indeed very strange!

Greek is a relatively difficult linguistic communication to master. It's more than hard for an English speaker than Dutch, French, and German, merely it might exist easier than Russian and Standard arabic. The reason for the Greek language'southward difficulty is that it's less closely related to English language than other languages. Greek grammar has unusual features such as cases, and you need to learn a foreign alphabet with a challenging pronunciation.

Let'due south wait at some of the features that make upwardly Greek and encounter how difficult they are!

The Greek Alphabet Is Not That Hard To Learn

The give-and-take "alphabet" actually came from Greek. It's the name of the first 2 messages, Alpha (α) and Beta (β). There'southward likewise a connectedness between the Latin alphabet that we use to write English today and the Greek alphabet. The Greek script is the ancestor of not simply the Latin script, but also the Cyrillic script used by languages such every bit Russian and Ukrainian.

This means that there's a strong resemblance between our alphabet and the Greek 1, significant that information technology's quite easy to larn. It can be washed in the space of a few hours or less, but I recommend to spread out some writing exercises over 5-7 days in order to revise the Greek alphabet a few times and really become it under your skin.

Then in other words: The Greek alphabet isn't a huge claiming. Everyone could learn it within a few days. But what most the pronunciation of the individual letters?

Greek Pronunciation – Is It All Greek To You?

While most of the messages in the Greek alphabet have like sounds in English language, at that place are a few sounds that do not exist in modernistic spoken English language. While they don't exist in English language, they're quite common in many languages around the world, and you'll most likely have heard them before in some way or another. Watch the video beneath for a quick walk-through of the Greek alphabet.

While well-nigh of the letters in the above video are pretty direct forward, there are probably a few that catches your center.

Among them are:

• Γ γ = This letter is pronounced like a French (Or German) R.
• Ρ ρ = This is a thrilled R. (So it's of import to make the distinction betwixt this i and the one higher up).
• Χ χ = A little like the "lh" in "Lichtenstein" or "loch". Information technology's more or less similar to a Castilian "J". Sometimes information technology's pronounced more than raspily like the Standard arabic "خ" or the Dutch "1000".

And that's pretty much it. In that location are obviously quite a few Greek letters that nosotros don't have respective letters for in English, but the sounds do exist.

All in all, Greek pronunciation shouldn't be a huge challenge for an English speaker, although there are a few letters that you lot'll need to get used to. If y'all can't pronounce them off the bat, put pronunciation a side for a while, while you keep listening to Greek. Information technology'll become easier after a while.

What About Greek Grammar – Is It Difficult To Larn?

Greek grammar is a chip dissimilar from the Germanic and Romance languages well-nigh Europeans speak, merely information technology'south not every bit complicated every bit in some Slavic languages or languages such as Standard arabic or Hebrew.

The Greek word order is by and large subject area – verb object, similar in English language, but because of the Greek example system, information technology'southward likewise possible to modify the lodge of the words without loosing the significant of the sentence. This tin take some getting used to!

The 4 Greek cases, of which the iii are more than frequent, modify the endings of the nouns depending on the function of the judgement. This means that the information will be present in the noun itself rather than in the give-and-take-gild, making it possible to exist a picayune more than liberal with Greek syntax.

The substantive endings equally change depending on number (similar in English: one apple tree, two apples), just the gender, of which there are iii, equally plays a function in nouns endings as well equally the articles used.

Add to that that Greek verb conjugation is a lot more complex than English verbs.

I could write a long listing of all the features of Greek grammer that makes the language complicated to larn, but on the other paw, I don't actually call up that the complexity of the grammar is the existent problem with learning Greek.

While you can spend a lot of fourth dimension studying grammer, learning the rules and dissecting and analyzing Greek phrases, information technology doesn't really help yous that much when you demand to use the language. Using grammar is more oftentimes than not instinctive.

Call back nigh it: How ofttimes practice you think most the rules of English language grammar when you lot speak? My guess is never. This is because people learn their mother tongue from hearing it used correctly over and over again. They get used to it, and somewhen, linguistic communication mistakes will just first to sound wrong. This is what you'll have to archive in Greek as well. Y'all demand to listen and read enough Greek for the language to become ingrained in your mind, so you don't need to call up virtually information technology.

So sure, the grammar is more than or less complex, but I wouldn't consider information technology the kind of difficulty that you need infrequent talent in order to master. You just demand to go used to information technology.

Is Learning Greek Vocabulary Hard?

At present finally the words. Learning words is essential to mastering any language. As for any language, remembering words becomes easier when they remind you lot of something you already know.

In English there are numerous political, scientific, philosophical and technological words that have their roots in Greek. This will plain assistance you learn some vocabulary. But on the other hand, everyday words in Greek are rather different from the Western European languages we're more than used to hearing. This means that you'll demand to dedicate more time to learning words and getting used to them.

I've written an article on the topic of remembering words while learning languages that goes more than into detail on this subject. Generally, however, I tin can say that learning words in strange languages is all about creating associations. The more connections you can create in your brain in relation to each new piece of information, the better you volition think.

These associations tin be everything from memories of actions, pictures, sounds, smells, stories, rhymes and so on. Sometimes, merely doing something with a word can assistance y'all think it better. This can be something as banal as writing the word down in your notebook. After having washed this, chances are that you lot'll remember it better just from the memory of writing it down past hand.

But the more you lot can come up with, the more effective it'll exist. For instance, if you look upward a flick of the give-and-take you're learning, if you think of a synonym or if you recall of a word that sounds like the word (even if it's unrelated) you'll be much more than likely to remember the discussion.

While all of these techniques are like shooting fish in a barrel to use, they exercise accept time. The more unfamiliar as foreign linguistic communication sounds, the more often you'll demand to call back of associations to remember words. This means that a language like Greek will take longer to learn than, say, Dutch considering the Dutch give-and-take "huis" has a much clearer parallel to the English give-and-take "business firm" than the Greek word "σπίτι" or "spíti".

Is Greek Hard To Learn According To Linguists?

The Foreign Service Found is the American regime establishment in accuse of didactics foreign languages to Usa diplomats going overseas. They've sorted the languages that they teach into different categories based on the number of classroom hours they estimate that each linguistic communication will take to learn.

FSI'southward estimates are based on FSI's ain instruction plan and patently doesn't utilize to a self-student'due south approach and terminate-goals. Just it tin can be a practiced indicator as to the perceived difficulty of different languages for the average English speaker.

FSI divides the languages that they teach into four groups.

The beginning one, group one, is for languages such as French, Dutch, Danish and Spanish. These languages are amid the easiest for an English speaker and are estimated to take around five-600 classroom hours to learn to a high caste of professional working fluency.

Grouping 2 includes languages such as German, Malay and Swahili. These correspond more grammatically complex languages and more exotic languages than group i. These are supposed to take around 900 classroom hours to larn.

In grouping iii which is where we find Greek, we besides run into such languages as Russian, Hindi and Thai. I would argue that Greek is one of the easier languages in this category, though. These languages take around 1100 classroom hours of study in gild to reach FSI's professional working proficiency.

And then finally, at that place's group four, which includes very fourth dimension-consuming languages such equally Standard arabic, Korean, Japanese and Standard mandarin Chinese. These are supposed to accept an impressive 2200 classroom hours to learn to a high caste of fluency.

But to get back to Greek: 1100 hours is around 3 years of studying an hr per day. I think that you lot can really learn Greek a piddling faster than that, and if your goals aren't necessarily to reach a loftier degree of professional working proficiency (at least to begin with) you could at least get to the upper intermediary level and be conversational within a year.

Then Is The Greek Language Hard To Acquire?

Information technology shouldn't come as a surprise that this kind of question is hard to answer. It's a little similar asking "how long is a piece of string". It depends.

Learning Greek can be both difficult and easy depending on who you lot are and how y'all arroyo language learning. Mostly, yet, I'd say that it'southward a linguistic communication that'south attainable to everyone.

Ane of the virtually important factors to consider however, is i that hasn't got a lot to do with the language. Information technology'south all about yous:

Are y'all motivated enough to stick with studying Greek every solar day for 1, two or three years? Will you put in the work and stay consistent?

The unmarried most important attribute in language learning is putting in the work. You'd exist better off working at Greek daily with the worst possible learning technique, than neglecting your studies altogether.

Learning Greek is not that hard, but sticking with it might be.

If yous want to read my suggestions as to how y'all should get near learning the Greek linguistic communication, go read my article chosen "How to learn Greek by yourself".

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Source: https://autolingual.com/greek-difficulty/

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