![]() For every time you see a word you may know, like χρώμα (“color”) or ψυχή (“heart, spirit”), you’ll find ten more that seem unconnected, like “baby” (μωρό) or “water” (νερό). In fact, though it is Indo-European, Greek is an isolate within that family, so it’s very different in many ways.Īs such, learning Greek vocabulary is pretty tough at times as most words are very different. Though many words in most Indo-European languages and beyond have Greek roots (“psychotherapy,” “chromatography”) aside from these kinds of universal terms, Greek is very different from most other languages, even in the same family. When it comes to Greek vocabulary, you may expect some good news, but in all honesty it’s middling at best. In verbs it can denote a change in tense, while the stress can jump around in nouns, too, when they change case or number.Īgain, it’s nothing too difficult, but it makes laying the stress correctly a little tricky at times. The bad news is that the stress can move around depending on how a word changes. It can only fall on one of the last three syllables, though any word of two syllables or more has to have it (exceptions apply). The good news is that the stress is always clearly marked with an accent (ο τόνος) and there usually is only one per word. There is again one small caveat, though, namely the way Greek lays stress on syllables. ![]() One of the very few is the word for “Thursday” (πέμπτη), where the second π is silent. There are very few silent letters to keep an eye on, as well, which is nice. Other than that, the news is mostly good here as Greek is phonemic: it’s pronounced the same way it’s written, though keeping digraphs in mind. Speakers of Germanic and Slavic languages seem to have less trouble with the sounds. This can be a little tricky for English speakers as we have a tendency to “swallow” sounds a little, so you need to teach yourself to move them forward in your mouth. If you’ve ever heard Greek spoken, it can sound a little like Spanish at first thanks to the “th” sound and the vowels coming out clearly. Learning the letters is one thing, saying them the right way is another. Generally speaking, most Greeks won’t give you too hard a time over any spelling mistakes you make, so you shouldn’t either. This isn’t a problem when reading the language, it just takes some time to get used to it, but it makes spelling incredibly hard.Īs a result, even educated native speakers make a mess of spelling, and learners are almost naturally expected to make a dog’s dinner out of it, especially complicated words. One of the weird idiosyncrasies of the language is that it has a lot of digraphs (two letters that make one sound) as well as letters that sound the same.įor example, there are two ways to spell “e” as in the first “e” in “ever” (ε and αι), two ways to spell “o” as in “over” (ο and ω) and five(!) ways to spell “i” as in “key” (ι, υ, η, οι and ει). There is a small caveat to the above: writing Greek. Sentences and paragraphs will follow in a week or two, and after a few months, reading Greek will feel natural to you, and you won’t feel like you put any real effort into it. Once you sit down and set yourself to learning it, you can read entire words within a day or two, even less if you already know the Cyrillic alphabet (the two are very similar). Sure, many letters will have odd forms (why is “m” μ, and how did ν turn into “n”?) and some are really out there, like ψ (“ps”) and Θ (“th”), but there’s nothing truly outlandish like the Hebrew alphabet. Our alphabet, the Latin alphabet derives from the Greek one and, as such, many letters are the same. I know it looks weird at first glance, but look again and you’ll recognize half, if not more, of the letters already. Let’s first shoo the biggest elephant out the room: the Greek alphabet is pretty easy to learn. In this article, I’ll expand on what makes Greek easy to learn and also what makes Greek relatively hard to learn. The primary reason for Greek’s difficulty for English speakers is its complex grammar and different alphabet. For English speakers, it’s certainly going to be more difficult than languages like French, German and Spanish, but much easier than languages like Mandarin or Korean. Greek can be a slightly challenging language to learn. ![]() ![]() If you’re thinking about learning Greek, likely because you’re going on vacation to Greece or Cyprus or even moving there, you may find yourself a little daunted at the prospect.īetween the strange alphabet, the odd sounds, the unfamiliar vocabulary and the confusing grammar, learning Greek must be difficult, right?
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