Customer Reviews

Greek Today: A Course in the Modern Language and Culture

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We live in Greece and my dh is a homeschooled freshman. She did not want to take any other foreign language for HS credit, but we could not justify the many available tourist books, for high school credit.
I was looking for a text and workbook that would be challenging enough for a high school curriculum. This book said directions were in English so I thought I had found what I needed. Only SOME of the directions are in English and only SOME of the words are translated. Much of the book is assumed to be read out loud by a Greek speaking Teacher to a class. Since I can't understand what I am reading to her we are like the blind leading the blind. We are struggling through but I definitely wouldn't recommend the book for home use.
ALSO, we take the workbook to our neighbors to grade and our natural born Greek neighbor says there are MANY errors in the book.

This book is an excellent source of explanations and grammar but definitely no for self study. There is NO answer key. Too much role play and classroom type exercises for someone studying by him/herself. A lot of the exercises are the drill type (I see this is still a hangover from the obsolete 1950's academic type grammars concepts) instead o meaningful interaction which makes you creat sentences. Only 1 CD for a big 608 page book, much too little. 2500 words are alot for someone wanting a basic course for self study. Don't waste your money on the workbook which is more of the same drills and exercises like "write the English word next to Greek one". All I need is a piece of paper for an exercise like that. Vocabulary is learned by "meaningful interaction" in context, not lists. It could be a good complement to a "learn yourself" course, however.

I highly recommend it as the best book I've seen for teaching yourself greek. It's also an excellent classroom book. Contains many exercises and activities to perform out loud - very important for gaining spoken proficiency. The CD included with the book allows you to hear proper spoken greek. Great pictures, font, and layout. Really well done. The best greek book that is out there.

Learning modern Greek can be a bit of a daunting task.
Specially if you have some knowledges of classical Greek . The modern pronunciation, the iotacism, words that looks alike but do mean something different.. well, it can be a bit scary.

Now, I must say that "Greek Today" is a REALLY GOOD self study textbook. The main book is quite thick and is in a A4 format. It comes along with a workbook that I definitely recommend as it gives great exercises and a great way to make sure you know your vocabulary. All the explanations are in English,and also, the course comes with 2 CD roms, 1 for Mac, one for Windows, with recordings of the dialogue by Greek actors.

Studying that course is pleasant, an easy task and honestly, it makes modern Greek a Doodle to learn compared to its classical sister. NO ghastly hard conjugations, reduced declensions.. what a joy. Greek Today gives you all the pleasure of learning a great and lovely language without the headaches. The website also gives you extra material to study and loads of texts, videos andis very user friendly.
I have tried other textbooks, and THIS one is by far my favorite.

If you re serious about learning modern Greek.. Go for it . Buy that course, (I know it is an investment but you deserve quality ).
Get yourself a cup of agnos ellinikos kafes (real greek style coffee) and start studying.. You won t regret it , I can assure you that

Nicely published, large textbook, with clear layout and clear font. The accompanying CD is well produced also, although it seems to lack a cross-index to the textbook. It is obviously intended for classroom use, under the guidance of a teacher. It can also be used for self-study, perhaps in tandem with " A Manual of Modern Greek" by Anne Farmakides, an older but excellent book which I found extremely helpful.

This is an excellent, comprehensive work on modern Greek language and culture. However, it is not ideally suited for self-tuition and needs back-up from a teacher. It is also essential to use the workbook alongside it in order to reinforce each aspect of the grammar covered. In order to make it more suited to self-tuition it would need to have a key to the exercises and a Greek/English glossary at the end of each chapter. Finally, I think that each chapter could have been divided up into smaller units in order to aid motivation. So much grammar and vocabulary is included in each chapter that it can be of-putting.

I just finished this book as a self-study review to help my vocabulary. I knew a lot of Greek already so I can't share from the perspective of someone first learning Greek, but it did teach me a lot. This is definitely for a classroom (I used an imaginary friend for some exercises to practice); there are no answers to any questions--a big drawback. I spent 1/3 of my time correcting my work (I did my best, but can't be sure I was right). It teaches you almost everything you need to know (all tenses, many kinds of adjectives and nouns) except for adjectives in -on, nouns derived from verbs, and passive imperatives. I think this book goes into things too fast. In the Communicate in Greek series the plural genitive tense, which can be difficult, isn't taught until textbook 2 of 3 and then not all at once. This book teaches the nominative, accusative, and genitive all in the first chapter, which I couldn't believe. It assumes you know grammar (when first learning, I had never heard of declensions, verb conjugations nor understood how words could have genders. I think this is true for many people and textbooks just assume otherwise). It just doesn't explain enough when teaching grammar, and besides the intro you're plunged head-first into Greek letters, which I think will discourage people, but it at least includes some handwriting. The audio (which isn't a lot) is in full sentences--no words pronounced on their own. This is one of the few books, however, that explains in English, one of its main pros. I've been lost in charts written in Greek and done some Rosetta Stone and find this method much easier. Yet I think they used big words and terms that weren't even needed. You might already know something and only find it out once you "translate" the grammar terms. It has 12 chapters, each with one long dialogue, additional vocab, a grammar study of things introduced in the dialogue and exercises, a theme narrative with exercise, questions for discussion, etymology, a classroom game, a dialogue to write and two more short dialogues about traveling and everyday life with an exercise to follow. The chapters were too thick. There's a ton of vocabulary, then a glut of grammar explanation, sometimes 11 pages of it! Also, the amount of vocab was mind-boggling. Knowing at least 1/2 the words already, I still got hand-cramps making flashcards and felt like I was cramming for an exam. If it had been spit up more evenly it would've helped. It didn't teach weather phrases or the complex rules for numbers very well. The main dialogue at the beginning is split into three parts, each the same thing with more words added every time. I liked this very much, because I wasn't overloaded all at once as I listened. Unfortunately the third part is only written, not on the included CD (the other dialogues and theme are on the CD). I've often wondered why books that feature non-Greek characters are portrayed by native speakers. I now know--it sounds terrible! The whole book revolves around one family and their friend, Alexis, who meets Elizabeth, from America. I don't think anyone should emulate Elizabeth's dialogue parts, because she's not pronouncing things correctly (i.e. in a bumbling American accent). It explained how to use italics in Greek, which I never knew. The etymological section was very interesting and may help you remember a few words by learning how they relate to English, but is mostly a waste of time. I even had to use my (English) dictionary often to come up with answers. I had trouble filling in the blanks with some dialogues, because I couldn't figure out what they were looking for. Some of the vocabulary introduced by poems isn't something anyone really needs to know right away. However, the book is very fun. Most pages have a song, poem, picture of an object or ad, or cartoon on it. The makers of this book really know what they're doing. It's slickly produced and interesting. The dialogues aren't boring and are sometimes even funny. The actors are very good, not stilted, sounding like real people. Background noises are added to make it lifelike. It's very top-notch. This book, better than any I've ever used, actually teaches phrases from everyday speech. This is not, "John, may I borrow that newspaper of yours?" but, "Yo, Johnny, what's up?" It has lots of slang, which it actually explains (unlike other books), and phrases used in regular conversation. With other books this is a great frustration, because they introduce words, but not phrases. Imagine looking up "hang" and "up" and struggling to understand what someone means by "I had a hang-up about it". With this book this happened far less, making it stand out amongst other books. I learned a phrase that's literally "here that we say them" means "by the way" and "hour with the hour" means "at any time now". Dictionaries and other books never told me this. The best part is the appendix. No other book is nearly as thorough. Words for "fun" in pictures or songs (which are translated) aren't in the back, but most others are. This seems like a no-brainer, but with one I've used before a dictionary is needed or you can't learn a portion of the words. In addition, most of the verbs have a number so you can look up its conjugation--a mini verb-conjugation book in the back. Its English-to-Greek dictionary isn't as thorough, but it's the best I've seen (I was impressed it even had one). My one beef is that sometimes vocab is given with 3 definitions on the page, but in the back there are 4 definitions. Every word, even if translated on that page, still needs to be looked up to get all the definitions. Yet the words are translated in a way that's much easier for me to understand compared with others I've used. For instance, I learned the word "information technology," but didn't fully understand it. Greek Today calls it "Computer Science," and now I get it. It was very good at giving definitions that clicked with me, partly because it's written for Americans, a rare occurrence with Greek books. I don't think to myself "I will photograph my cat", but "I'll take a picture of my cat". They're the same, but somehow I like the second better, because it's more useful when I'm trying to convey something in Greek using my English-centered mind. Greek Today does this better than any book I know, and I was amazed at all the sensible definitions it gave of words I already knew, with meanings I'd never seen before. The English-Greek section lets you look up "ill" and see "to be ill", a great asset. It also contains explanations of all grammar terms in English in the glossary. It has all grammar terms in Greek in a glossary that gives the English equivalent, something very useful I've seen nowhere else. It lists names in the glossary as well.
There was one part in the book, when discussing hypothetical conditionals, that no matter how long I studied it or whom I asked for help, I never fully understood. Also, as these books usually do, it never states that some things must simply be picked up over time, not through memorizing rules. The most important is the genitive plural, which has so many rules I'm not sure the average Greek even knows all of them (the accent changes according to gender, syllables, where it's accented, if it came from ancient Greek, etc.). I loved what this book did with declensions, however. Most, if not all, nouns and adjectives are given a number for a chart that has a sample word conjugated so you know exactly how to decline it (even if it has an irregular plural) in every grammatical case. I wish I had one of these for every word in the language, because it would be extraordinarily helpful. I'll probably use this even though I'm done, to look up how to say words in various cases. It also has a chart of irregular verbs. As far as the book itself--it's really thick, partly because of large font. I would hate to have to lug this tome around in a backpack. I sometimes used something heavy to hold it open. If it was cut into two books though it'd probably cost more. The book is also very up-to-date with words like "yuppy," "voicemail," cell-phone," while books still sold in stores carry the old accent system abolished in 1982. The authors are also interested in teaching culture, too. Sometimes it was too philosophical for me, explaining about urbanization, feminism, island values clashing, but it shows they know what they're doing and are excited about it. If it makes any difference the 1st author is Peter Bien, a man who has translated about half the Greek lit pieces I look up. All in all, I think this book is too hard for people just starting out in the language. If basic grammar and the alphabet are already known, if you have someone who knows Greek to help, or you have something to supplement this, it can work well, even at home. This book is excellent for classrooms, especially colleges, but may be too much for most self-studiers.

This I find to be a good start on learning Greek. Learning any language is going to require effort but having the various forms of media may ease it some. Go to their website which is also referred to in the book for additional material in learning this wonderful language.

I'm native Russian language speaker ,live in Europe, and we have a lot of common with Greek , including alphabet , but I chose this book in English , because it's the most comprehensive , very good structured , with a lot of useful information book. Unfortunately , it's not available for russian language speakers .

May be a good book but it havn't a dictionaty for lessons or a translation of the text and this make difficult to learn alone. You need a teacher for learning. Also , evry lesson is divide in few sections and that dos'n aid to get all picture.
I find a teacher to help me but this get more mony.