Customer Reviews

Conversational Greek in 7 Days

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not as complete as the Teach Yourself Greek or the Colloquial Greek offerings, but still a solid instructional conversational course. Make sure you get the book/cassette combo, not just the book. Designed to deliver conversational skills. Language books fall into two broad groups: those that teach you phrases and go light on the grammar, and those that endeavor for a working knowledge of the entire language. This book falls into the former category, where it does a good job, but while you may gain some useful knowledge in 7 days, you will not be able to master all the material in the book in that time.

Both my husband and I found this course very hard to follow. The written text does not follow the tape and you find yourself skipping from page to page and getting frustrated.

We did learn enough Greek to get by on our trip, but I would not purchase this again. I would go with another tape/book combo.

This is an excellent book for someone who wants to know just enough Greek to enjoy a vacation. I purchased this book five weeks before a trip to Greece, and found that I could order from a menu, give directions to a taxi driver, read Greek (could not always understand it), and exchange pleasantries. Now, I would like to refresh with this book, and then find an intermediate course to continue learning such a wonderful language!

If you don't want or don't have time to go with the "learn yourself" type books this is the best short introduction I have seen and used. It is very practial, much better than a phrase book as it has has grammar expalnations, dialogues and exercises which help you apply what you have just learned, and lets your ear get used to the spoken language. There are 7 lessons broken into several parts which makes going easy and gives you time to assimilate the vocabulary of about 700 words. Very good if you want a quick review just before leaving for Greece.

Very clear and concise. Great info and well laid out. I am a big fan of the Pimsleur Programs, and this was a great supplement along with some others to add to the self study program I was following.

I bought this book three months before my trip to Greece and I found it very helpful. I bought the book alone yet it contains transliterated pronunciation so it becomes really easy to follow it. It is true that you won't learn in seven days (actually the idea is that they teach you the language needed by a group of travellers during their seven-day stay in Greece). You have to invest a lot more than that to grasp the language, but if you are disciplined you will learn just what you need in a trip! It teaches you what you need for every day situations like ordering in a restaurant, booking a room, shopping, finding your way out, etc. Yet this is NOT a simple phrase book. It really teaches you to understand what people tell you and to express yourself not only by repeating boring phrases, but by building up your own sentences in order to say what you need. I strongly recommend it!

Has good vocab section, and covers a lot of important stuff.
You just need to make sure to motivate yourself and read the entire thing...its also small and great travel size!

Unless one practices a language, one is inclined to forget. This book triggered memories and brought me right back into a basic working knowledge of Greek words, phrases and grammar. If you don't know the Greek alphabet, there's the phonetic alongside. It's a great little book for beginners and a refresher course for people who need to get up to speed again on a modern version of a great ancient language. You'll see why when my upcoming novel "Pentadaktylos" (Five Fingers) is published shortly. It was also very useful in writing my life story.KINGS, KILLERS AND KINKS IN THE COSMOS

I was at the bookstore one month before my trip to Greece and I decided to get a book to learn some Greek. This book was the only thing on the shelf in the language book section that had greek in it. I decided to get it. It looked nice and I especially liked the dialogues. A few days later I opened the book and started to study it. I started with the alphabet and then moved on to the beggining of chapter 1. Then everything changed. THIS BOOK HAD A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF VOCABULARY TO MEMORIZE! I spent hours for 3 days trying to memorize all of it. It is all right to have dialogues and SMALL vocabulary lists, but what was in there is way over the limit. DO NOT listen to the other reviews they are just Greeks and people who know some Greek (or are friends of the author)!I could not remember any Greek when I went to Greece. GET THE LONELY PLANET GREEK PHRASEBOOK,IT IS MUCH BETTER.