Greek

[Ryder]

Hi everyone! I have yet another idea about my summer. 6 weeks on exchange in Greece! anyways, I'm almost fluent in French and have just started Spanish and I was wondering if anyone knew if Greek sentances and stuff were structured like those languages.

Thanks!

[starpiste]

I can't be too helpful here because I only know some Ancient Greek which is much more complicated than modern greek (compare old english to modern english) but don't expect too many similarities. It has an entirly different linguistic history than French and Spanish, which are both based in Latin, a language several hundred years younger than Greek. I think the benefit you'd have is an understanding of learning language and general grammatical concepts.
I wouldn't let that stop you though. Learn the alphabet, which is fairly simple once you get used to it, and go for it. That's part of the fun isn't it?

[goyincognito]

Originally posted by starpiste@Dec 2 2004, 01:14 PM
I can't be too helpful here because I only know some Ancient Greek which is much more complicated than modern greek (compare old english to modern english) but don't expect too many similarities. It has an entirly different linguistic history than French and Spanish, which are both based in Latin, a language several hundred years younger than Greek. I think the benefit you'd have is an understanding of learning language and general grammatical concepts.
I wouldn't let that stop you though. Learn the alphabet, which is fairly simple once you get used to it, and go for it. That's part of the fun isn't it?

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Ancient greek huh?

I did that too pursuing a classics certificate...nothing like a verb in the pluperfect active optative expressing aspect in a future less vivid conditional phrase in a sentence with nouns of the third declension, eh?

Boy am I glad that's over with.

Where did you study?

[goyincognito]

Oh and Ryder - Greek is a different linguistic family from the latin languages, so there are marked differences...but if you already are fluent in a second language you'll have no trouble. The alphabet is easy!

[florencia9699]

Mmm... correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember correctly Greek even has a different alphabet (some letters look symilar but it's not entirely the same).

When I was there nothing reminded me of Spanish.

[goyincognito]

Originally posted by florencia9699@Jan 3 2006, 09:02 PM
Mmm... correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember correctly Greek even has a different alphabet (some letters look symilar but it's not entirely the same).

When I was there nothing reminded me of Spanish.

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Yep - that's right, about half the letters are the same and the other half are unique so it's not too bad. Latin and Greek are close cousins on the language tree so there's a lot of similarities and shared words!

I tried typing out an example in Greek but the board got mad at me


At least I tried!