Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Greek Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) (TY: Complete Courses)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Teaching oneself a language without instruction requires discipline--one should be prepared to devote time and practice (more than an hour and a half per week) if one wants to become competent. After trying several Greek textbooks, I've found this one to be the most useful and successful and highly recommend it.

For one thing, it is up to date. Make sure you check the publication date on any Greek books you find--if it's published before about 1990, it's probably out of date since the modern Greek language as it is today was officially set in the 1970's (finally officially embracing the demotiki and more or less phasing out the katharavousa), and textbooks were slow to update themselves.

If you're looking to simply memorize Greek phrases, this book is not for you. Nor is it if you're looking for a cold study of the grammar. It combines elements of both: each chapter begins with about three dialogues and provides vocabulary and grammar to back it up--the closest to an immersion-like type of learning that I can find in a book. Each chapter is very practical--dining out, drinking ouzo, finding your way around, traveling--and provides useful phrases but doesn't neglect the grammar and structure behind the phrases in the way that most books do. It has mini-tests at the end of each chapter and tested reviews at the end of every four chapters or so that are actually challenging and comprehensive of what you have studied. And finally--the dialogues are FUNNY! They're entertaining and realistic, a rarity for language books.

The CDs are useful for training your ear, though it is possible to go without. Either way, I recommend supplementing it by listening to Greek radio, since Greek speakers do speak faster than the speakers on the CD. And if you really want a solid, more thorough knowledge of the language itself (beyond conversational language), I recommend using a grammar to school yourself on the finer points.

Everyone has different approaches to learning a foreign language--some prefer to just learn conversation, others prefer a structured, detailed study of grammar and syntax before trying conversation, and most are in the middle. In any situation, I recommend this book.

A practical introduction to modern Greek, K. Matsukas does a fine job of teaching the reader to cope with situations likely to be encountered when travelling in Greece. While the book is organized into chapters covering specific themes (e.g., ordering food at a restauant or discussing the weather), it by no means a phrase book. Each chapter builds on previous chapters, challenging the reader with more complicated constructs and scenarios.

The real strength of this book is the focus on fostering the development of an intuition for the language, which can be far more useful than grammar tables of conjugation and declension forms. While it does include limited grammatical instruction, the grammar presented tends to focus attention on the resulting unanswered questions and unresolved ambiguities. As a consequence, I found it very beneficial to utilize a grammar in conjunction with this text. (I used the excellent Routledge grammar, ISBN 0-415-10002-X.) For the most part, however, the issues I encountered centered on the finer points of grammar and would not prevent the reader from developing a basic working knowledge of the language.

The optional audio cassettes include readings of dialogues preseneted in the text. They proved quite useful as pronunciation guides. However, the speakers (no doubt out of necessity) tend to over-enunciate. As a result, the cassettes do not provide a very realistic example of the spoken language. I would highly recommend supplementary exposure to spoken Greek (news broadcasts, movies, conversations with native speakers).

I found this book to be one of the worst in the Teach Yourself series. Some of the problems are common to other new titles in this series, while others are unique to this book. The coverage of grammar is extremely weak. Many of the exercises are not challenging at all--matching elements in two columns, circling words, rearranging sentences--and do little to increase command of the language or reinforce material learned. Other exercises require vocabulary that was never introduced and is not even in the glossary. There is far too much English on the CDs, and astonishingly, English words are used as examples for Greek pronunciation. Often there is no time allotted on the recording to repeat the Greek phrases. The author and editors seem to lack a basic grasp of elementary principles of language pedagogy.

I have found this book & cd pack really helpful. I have a lot of experience learning languages by myself and since I was planning to visit Greece I have been into learning greek. (I've already come back and I plan to continue my studies). This book is really useful since it moves step by step. Every unit is about a certain topic and contains dialogs to introduce the new vocabulary in a progressive way. Then, you will find the necessary explanations in order to start speaking yourself. To check your progress, you will find lots of exercises (some written, some of listening comprehension) and you will really be practicing all the skills needed in language learning. Definitely, this is a book aimed at beginners, yet it is not a phrase book. And, if you are a grammar-based learner (like I am), I strongly recommend you to complement your studies with a greek grammar book, yet don't miss this one!

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing really "bad" about this Teach Yourself Greek book and CD set - it's just that it kind of throws you in at the deep end. It starts with the alphabet and a basic pronunciation guide, then it goes right into "How are you?" and "What's your name?" etc, which is fine for someone who knows the verb "to be" in Greek already. I am a total beginner, so I really need something that starts at the VERY beginning. I mean, I can memorize the various phrases fairly easily, but it isn't of any real use unless I actually understand the nuts and bolts of the language. To use a cooking analogy, this is like learning to scramble eggs without knowing how to break them first.
However, for someone with an intermediate grasp of the immediate basics of the language, I would still recommend it. Like I said, there's really nothing bad about it - it's just not as "for beginners" as you might think.

According to one of the best language learning books that I know (The Language Teaching Controversy by Karl Conrad Diller): "Thus learning a living language involves learning to think in that language. Guided practice through thinking (through speaking, writing, listening or reading) is what enables a person to learn a living language in which he can think. Knolwledge of a language allows a person to understand infinitely many new sentences and to creat grammatical sentences (rule governed creativity) which no one else has ever pronounced but which will be understood iimediately by others who know the language." That is: meaningful interaction/practice.
According to that criteria Teach Yourself Greek fails miserably. You are thrown dialogues one after the other with almost nothing in terms of explanations of how the language functions, just memorization. The dialogues are very complicated in the beginning chapters and you get easily discouraged as you go along. Too much space is also wasted with transliterations, with the English translation placed right next to them. This is an almost unavoidable temptation which ruins the learning and understanding of the written Greek.
Explanations are left for too far ahead, thereby creating confusion and frustration. On page 41 the author says "Don't worry about understanding everything immediately. Leave some questions for later. Everything will make sense in time." Well, some explanations are left for far too "later". I'm sorry, but it won't make sense, since the grammar here is almost non-existant. And some of the "questions" are never answered. In chapter 3 they use the reflexive type verb "thimamai" = I remember. . Nowhere in the book did I find an expalanation of how these verbs are conjugated. In the vocabulary there is also an (f) after this expression as if it were a feminine noun! Chapter two uses the particle "na" which is explained very superficially only in chapter eleven!!!
As has been pointed ou by another reviewer (Diogenes) the exercises are relatively useless. Nothing to improve your creative powers of the language. Dialogues which you have already heard are repeated in the exercises where you are supposed to fill in what's missing. You will learn nothing from these. The mini-tests are just memorization exercises.
The book doesn't show you how to hand-write the alphabet. The former edition had this. A pitty. On the CDs the English translation comes before the Greek, thus eliminating the chance to test yourself orally.
There is very little reinforcement of the material learned and you are mostly just thrown from one dialogue to another. You can listen to a language all day long on the radio but this is not meaningful interaction and will not teach you how to say what you want or really understand new utterances which you have not already heard.
I would only use this book to review if you have gone through a basic course or use the dialogues for dictation. Outside of this, forget it. The author should take a look at the TY Turkish,or TY Serbian, TY Arabic books to get an idea of good organization. I don't know why, but many TY authors are afraid of the word "grammar", as if using it might reduce sales. Instead they use "language points" or "How it works". This is kind of a dumbing down. Are we readers that stupid now? By the time you went to school you spoke you own language but you didn't stay at that level for the rest of your life. I assume you want to learn Greek but don't have 5-6 years surrounded 24 houras a day by it. Everybody had grammar in school and that's one of the reasons you speak your mother-tongue fluently and correctly.
Also be careful those who like to use water-based fluorescent highliters: the ink smears! Now that is what I call a cheap production. Remember when TY books were all bound in signatures and had hard covers?
Anyone who recommends this book hasn't seen any others on the market. Instead get "Take off in Greek", "Communicate in Greek" or, if you speak German, "Griechisch Aktiv". You will be much better served.

This is excellent. I have purchased other greek language CDs in the past. And this one is better than the others that I have purchased. However, what I am most impressed with, is the book. In the first 15 pages, I was, for the first time, clear about many things about the language. Together, this book and CD are giving me confidence in further learning modern Greek.

I bought the Teach Yourself Greek book w/CDs(2) hoping to learn the language at a basic entry level. After slogging through the tedious "Introdution," which is a must if you want to get a handle on the alphabet, pronunciation, vowel sounds, consonant sounds, stress mark placement(Plus two-letter vowel and two-letter consonant exceptions), I was glad to finally start in on the first lesson. It took only one listening, while working with the book, to realize this was not going to work for me. I had to keep referring back to the "Introduction" for clarification on spelling and letter grouping(Those two-letter exceptions can be confusing at times). I imagine, after several lessons one might not have to do that, if he/she eventually memorizes what is definitely needed in the "Introduction." But it would be too slow-going. Not for me.

I read reviews with references to Theodore C. Papaloizos "Modern Greek" and thought that might be worth looking into. Amazon carries a few of his books, albeit as older editions, so a visit to the publisher's website greek123 settled that issue. I researched as much as I could at the site(Watched the videos, scanned text samples and so on) and finally decided on ordering the "Modern Greek" set, 8th edition(The 8th edition is the newest one), which at first might seem like a pricey $106 and change, but now that I have it, I'm glad I didn't nickle-and-dime-it buying one item at a time.

The set comes with a 534 page textbook, a 126 page workbook, an answer key book and six audio CDs. So far it's looking pretty good. The first lesson starts off with the Greek alphabet, one double vowel, punctuation marks, an auxiliary verb, the accent mark, three definite articles and three indefinite articles. I like this format much better because the essentials are spread out over the course of the book; not crammed into one section as in the TY Greek book.

By the way, the textbook measures 8x10 inches, is hefty and has really nice color photos and graphics.

If you're really serious about learning Greek, "Modern Greek" by Theodore C. Papaloizos is the way to go. And don't be chintzy. Buy the set, because I can assure you, you'll go back for the rest anyway.

*****Annnnd, get the 8th edition because of the color photos and graphics, not to mention it's been updated. The website still sells the 7th edition set, but I heard it doesn't have the color in it and is cheaper in price(Your call).

The problem with this book is that it tries to be both a phrase book and a language learning book at once, and fails at both. There is virtually no grammar instruction whatsoever in this book. Instead new vocab is only introduced in full sentence "phrases", like a phrase book does. At first glance it would seem that the authors were unaware that Greek is an inflected language. There is no explanation of the genitive and accusative cases and new vocab is introduced both in the text and in the dictionary at the back of the book without also providing the genitive ending for words.

The book is also very poor in explaining how to conjugate words, some of the verbs are introduced only in the 1st person singular, others are only introduced using the 2nd person plural, and yet others are only introduced using the first person plural.

What this means is that every time a new word is introduced, the learner needs to spend about 5-10 minutes searching the internet trying to find the other grammatical forms of the word and thus how the new word could actually be used in a sentence (aside from the single sentence provided in the text). I used Google translation tools or wiktionary for this, but they are far from perfect resources. Seeing as every chapter has about 30 new words in it, this means that the learner needs to spend about 3 hours searching the internet for each chapter.

Let me give an example, in one chapter the phrase "mprosta sas" ("in front of you") is introduced. But there is no explanation of how to grammatically modify the phrase to say "in front of me" or "in front of them". After searching on the internet, I found out that "sas" can either be the genitive or the accusative form of "you". I think (but I am still not 100% sure) that one needs to use the genitive of the personal pronoun rather than the accusative, therefore "mprosta mou" would be "in front of me", but the book did not help much in working that one out.

Another annoying thing about the book is that not all of the vocab introduced in each chapter are included in the dictionary or in the chapter itself, and since the reading and listening passages are not translated, again one has to go search the internet to find their meanings.

For each reading passage, there is a translation using the Latin/Western European alphabet. This is definitely an essential addition for say the first 5 chapters because it takes a while to get used to reading the Greek letters. However after that it becomes a waste of space (it would be better to use that space to include an english translation of the passage).

The one saving grace about this book is the CDS, for every reading passage, there is an excellent audio recording where Greek people actually say the passages at a normal pace. It helped me immensely in my listening skills. However even the CDs are annoying in one way. For each listening passage, there is a long and totally unnecessary introduction to the Greek passage in English ("Tim and Mary are now in a travel agent and are asking about.......")
I use the audio CDS all the time, I must have listened to each passage about 50 times, so I have had to fastforward through the english introductions 50 times. At least if the English intros were on separate CD track, I could just press the skip button.

I could not decide whether to give this book 2 or 3 stars, I ended up deciding on 2, but I would like to break it down further by rating it on different skill sets:

Reading: 4 stars (good explanation of alphabet and good transliteration)
Writing: 1 star (little explanation of grammar so no way to form one's own sentences)
Speaking: 2 stars (whilst there is little explanation of grammar for forming one's own sentences, at least the audio recordings help the listener with pronunciation)
Listening: 5 stars (excellent audio recordings for passages)

This course is a lot of fun, but it is also very challenging. It immediately immerses you into the language. It requires dedication to learn any language and this one certainly is no exception, but I would reccommend this book to anyone wanting to learn Greek