Speak Greek with Confidence - 3 Audio CDs and a Booklet
Brand New (still shrink wrapped) 3 CDs and Booklet
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We’ve all travelled abroad with the best of intentions when it comes to speaking the language, only to falter when it comes to the crunch. This quick and constructive course gives you the Greek you need to talk to the locals – and crucially, the confidence to put it into practice.
As well as providing essential vocabulary and phrases, the course also aims to improve your understanding of spoken Greek, so that you can feel sure of yourself in two-way conversations.
Based on the ten situations you are most likely to find yourself in while travelling abroad, the course builds your knowledge and understanding gradually, and is suitable for complete beginners.
A booklet is included, with the dialogues and their English translations. A glossary of the words and phrases used also provides you with a handy phrasebook while you travel.
By the end of this course, you will be at Level A2 of the Common European Framework for Languages: Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions. Can communicate in simple and routine tasks
* Learn anywhere, any time with this convenient audio course which requires no reading or writing
* Focusing on ten realistic scenarios, you’re given the words and phrases you'll actually need to get by in Greek
* Boosts your confidence by providing strategies for understanding what you hear, so you can start a conversation without being afraid of the response!
* No grammar means you’ll make fast progress, without learning boring rules or unnecessary vocabulary
Table of Contents:
Greetings, names, introductions, nationality (English, Greek, American), words for 'yes' and 'no', jobs, Mr and Mrs, 'please' and 'thank you'. Culture: how/when Greeks greet. Gender (m/f), sing/plural, personal prons, articles, verb 'to be' introduced, po
Describing self, job, age, family, kids, more greetings appropriate to morning, afternoon, evening etc., phrase: how are you?, first few numbers. Culture: Greek daily pattern of life. Verb 'to be'(continued), verb 'to have', masc/fem forms, personal prons
Finding/booking accommodation, hotel items/times of breakfast, types of room, with bath/shower etc, more numbers, times, dates, prices, money (euros), passport, culture: accommodation in Greece.
Directions, getting around, sightseeing, bus, train, taxi, metro (Athens), left and right. Culture: Greek taxis (!). Asking where something is, how long to get there, prepositions, imperatives (ie giving directions), asking interlocutor to speak more slow
Eating/drinking out; meals etc, common food and drink items, requesting, ordering, asking if available, likes and dislikes, hungry/thirsty
Money matters, paying for things, asking price, getting/checking change. Culture: Greek food and drink (coffees). Asking what something is like, referring to this and that
Shopping: souvenirs, clothes, sizes, colours. Likes and dislikes (con), comparatives, superlatives
More on money and paying, banks, credit card payments. Culture: Greek shops and shopping. Verb 'can' introduced, with its complex associated grammar touched upon
Leisure, entertainment, sport, beach. Culture: how Greeks enjoy themselves. Asking what time things start, finish, open, close; reserving seats/tickets; modals: 'can, must, have to' (intro only)
Sorting out common problems with health, sunburn, upset stomach, pharmacy, mosquito repellent etc, complaints, asking for help at pharmacy, saying what you need, don’t need, modals
About the Author(s):
Hara Garoufalia-Middle teaches Greek to adults of all ages and levels at the evening programme of the University of Westminster, and at the City Literary Institute.
Howard Middle is ELT consultant to Thomson ELT and National Consultant for Greece for Trinity College London.
About the Greek Language
Greek has a documented history of 3,400 years, the longest of any single natural language in the Indo-European language family. It is also one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages, with fragmentary records in Mycenaean dating back to the 15th or 14th century BC, making it the world's oldest recorded living language. Today, it is spoken by approximately 17–25 million people in Greece (official), Cyprus (official), Albania, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Italy, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Egypt, Jordan and emigrant communities around the world, including Australia, United States, Canada, Germany and elsewhere.
Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet (the oldest continuously used alphabet, and the first to introduce vowels) since the 9th century BC in Greece (before that in Linear B), and the 4th century BC in Cyprus (before that in Cypriot syllabary). Greek literature has a continuous history of nearly three thousand years.
Greek is a language distinguished by an extraordinarily rich vocabulary. In respect to the roots of words, ancient Greek vocabulary was essentially of Indo-European origin, but with a significant number of borrowings from the idioms of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks. Words of non-Indo-European origin can be traced into Greek from as early as Mycenaean times; they include a large number of Greek toponyms. The vast majority of Modern Greek vocabulary is directly inherited from ancient Greek, although in certain cases words have changed meanings. Words of foreign origin have entered the language mainly from Latin, Italian and Ottoman Turkish. During older periods of the Greek language, loan words into Greek acquired Greek inflections, leaving thus only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected.
Like most Indo-European languages, Greek is highly inflected. Greek grammar has come down through the ages fairly intact, though with some simplifications. For example, Modern Greek features two numbers: singular and plural. The dual number of Ancient times was abandoned at a very early stage. The instrumental case of Mycenaean Greek disappeared in the Archaic period, and the dative-locative of Ancient Greek disappeared in the late Hellenistic. Four cases, nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative, remain in Modern Greek. The three ancient gender noun categories (masculine, feminine and neuter) never fell out of use, while adjectives agree in gender, number, and case with their respective nouns, as do their articles. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for:
* mood — Ancient Greek: indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and optative; Modern Greek: indicative and imperative (other modal functions are expressed by periphrastic constructions)
* number — singular, plural (archaic Greek also had a dual)
* voice — Ancient Greek: active, middle, and passive; Modern Greek: active and medio-passive
* tense — Ancient Greek: present, past, future; Modern Greek: past and non-past (future is expressed by a periphrastic construction)
* person — first, second, third
* aspect — Ancient Greek: imperfective, perfective (traditionally called aorist), perfect (sometimes also called perfective, see note about terminology); Modern Greek: perfective and imperfective
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