Category: Language and Culture
Geia sas/hello. I can't believe I didn't post this yet, but here we go. This is the site where I learn Modern Greek.
http://www.kypros.org/LearnGreek/course/category.php?id=1
Here's a little background for interest's sake. This was originally a radio program broadcast over the CY BC (like the Cyprus version of the BBC) in the 60's or 70's. It's standard Greek, not Cypriot, though you'll sometimes see a few things slipt in there. As a sidenote, they also have a course in Ancient Greek, but I've never used it, since either my screenreader has a difficult time recognising the polytonic three accent system or I just don't have the right fonts. Anyway, the nice thing about the Modern course, aside from it being totally free, is that you don't need a book or anything. You could just learn by the audio and you'd be fine. But if you want more, they have notes, which are supposed to be exact copies of the audio. However, the online version has alot of errors. So if you're really serious about the written portion, you either need to get a Greek speaker to help you or go to
http://www.zavallis.com/language.html
and get the Learn Greek by Radio book. Forget the other language ones as they're of no use to anyone, since they don't have English in them. Anyway, this iis a totally accurate copy of lessons 1-35. The only thing about that is that I have yet to find scanning software that can handle both languages on the same page, so if you need to rely on OCr, you'll probably be in trouble here. Also, in order to dread the text, you either need a screenreader like Hal that has built-in Greek support or a synthesizer like Loquendo (the Aphrodite or Artemis voice), the Alexandros voice for Realspeak or the E-Speak Greek version. The latter is totally free. Anyway, what I personally do is copy and paste the English parts into a document as I go along and literally fill in the Greek stuff. So I'll see a word and either go over it letter by letter and type it, or if I know it, I'll just hear the word and type it in. It makes the lessons go much more slowly, but it helps me retain what I've learned. If you just do the audio though, each lesson should take about 15 minutes. They range from elementary to advanced and there are 105 lessons in all, but they're never graded or anything, so you could work totally at your own pace. Anyway, hope that someone finds this interesting and useful.
Hi.
You can also find the audio lessons from Kypros net at the c y b c website with much better audio quality at the following address: http://www.cybc.com.cy/radio/learn_greek.html
But there are no notes here.
Ooh cool! I didn't know that. Thanks for the resource. Do you know if they've written, or if they plan on writing, the second volume to that book? It's ashame that this one only goes up to Lesson 35. lol I almost started writing in Greek. Also, do you know if Leonidas Koullis is still living? I wanted to get in touch with him and thank him for the wonderful book and course. That man truly changed my life!