Ryan Doherty's Blog - Posts Tagged "greek-languages-learngreek"
It's all Greek
So I've decided on my next challenge. I'm going to teach myself Greek. This is a completely new language to me. I don't think I've ever had the challenge of learning a whole new Alphabet before so it's going to be an interesting journey. This will be the first new language I've learned since Dutch which was back in 2010 and which I never got to fluency in. Mainly due to my work schedule and family commitments. Or so I thought. Or maybe because I wasn't following my own advice.
It's relatively easy to learn a language as a young student, you have all the time you want on your side as well as youth. As an older family man it's not so easy.
Or maybe it is? I tried learning the Greek alphabet the other day and knew straight away that it wasn't going in. So on my second attempt I changed tactics and decided not to bother learning the alphabet, but just to learn how to read. What's the difference you may ask. Well, I decided just to start watching beginners Greek YouTube videos with subtitles in Greek. Surprisingly this is working brilliantly for me. After just an hour I was reading Greek words. I wasn't able to read every word, but the high frequency words I began to be able to read very quickly, even if I couldn't name the individual letters. This seems to fit what I've heard about the psychology of reading. We don't actually read a book by reading letter by letter and then working out to the word from it. Rather we tend to just scan over the words as a whole and the brain registers the meaning like it were a picture. This definitely seems to be the way to go.
On the third day I jotted down the obvious. A few verbs in their infinitives. The conjugation of the verb to be. Basic vocab. The genders and how to make plurals. Colours and numbers up to 1 Million. Writing them down just in Greek letters with the English next to them helped cement them into my brain. Next I need lots of input, I hope to be speaking Greek by the end of the year!
It's relatively easy to learn a language as a young student, you have all the time you want on your side as well as youth. As an older family man it's not so easy.
Or maybe it is? I tried learning the Greek alphabet the other day and knew straight away that it wasn't going in. So on my second attempt I changed tactics and decided not to bother learning the alphabet, but just to learn how to read. What's the difference you may ask. Well, I decided just to start watching beginners Greek YouTube videos with subtitles in Greek. Surprisingly this is working brilliantly for me. After just an hour I was reading Greek words. I wasn't able to read every word, but the high frequency words I began to be able to read very quickly, even if I couldn't name the individual letters. This seems to fit what I've heard about the psychology of reading. We don't actually read a book by reading letter by letter and then working out to the word from it. Rather we tend to just scan over the words as a whole and the brain registers the meaning like it were a picture. This definitely seems to be the way to go.
On the third day I jotted down the obvious. A few verbs in their infinitives. The conjugation of the verb to be. Basic vocab. The genders and how to make plurals. Colours and numbers up to 1 Million. Writing them down just in Greek letters with the English next to them helped cement them into my brain. Next I need lots of input, I hope to be speaking Greek by the end of the year!
