Greek

Last updated August 6, 2022.

Presented here are notes I'm collecting as I learn Greek. Compared with other European languages (like Spanish, French, and German) the resources for learning (Modern) Greek are relatively sparse. Navigating the many works for learning other varieties of Greek can be daunting—many things are called "Greek" and one cannot swallow all this knowledge at once!

Which Greek?

I would like to be able to read the Septuagint as well as Modern Greek so I can actually talk with people and understand audio/video. How nice would it be to hear and understand beautiful Church music, study meticulously prepared books, and pray in the language of the source text of the Holy Scriptures! Modern Greek is a living language spoken in many countries, including the United States.

Practically, dividing up languages into varieties (e.g. "Modern Greek", "Koine Greek", ...) is an academic exercise that is usually not-so-useful. The advantage of identifying a "target" to learn is to isolate things you don't know and build up a thorough competence in multiple domains where "Greek" may be used. Likewise, as you become more advanced, you will notice differences in how different speakers/sources use "Greek" (and thus identify what sounds "more modern", or "more archaic" and so on).

Artificially restricting oneself to only one variety—such as textbook style Modern Greek—is not something native speakers do (and they probably couldn't, even if they wanted to!). Thus our approach here is to study "Greek" as "all that stuff written with αβγ..." and learn to understand everything starting with the easier modern standard stuff, staying alive with Scriptural quotations and hymns, and adding ancient stuff to deboonk modernity.

Reference Materials

These are reference materials I use.

Online

  • My Grammar (Work In Progress
  • Wiktionary particularly good for "rare" words, old words, and viewing declensions and conjugations
  • WordReference Modern Greek Dictionary
    • pretty sparse info; paper dictionaries have served me better

Offline

Overall, I would recommend getting offline materials—you will save more time in the long run spending a few dozen dollars on some high quality resources which are easily replaced and shared. Plus, buying these items can send the message to publishers that people are interested in more (modern) Greek resources!

Dictionaries

  • Pocket Oxford Greek Dictionary (J.T. Pring 1982)
  • The Oxford New Greek Dictionary

Grammars and Textbooks

Listed below are the resources I currently own and am working from.

  • Modern Greek for Adults: Part 1 (Theodore C. Papaloizos, New Edition, 2nd Printing, 1982)
  • Essential Modern Greek Grammar (Adams 1987)
  • A Manual of Modern Greek (Farmakides 1983)