Manual of Modern Greek, I: For University Students Elementary to Intermediate (Manual of Modern Greek)

Rating:
Summary: Never spoken greek before, but now I can...
Review: As a native english and french speaker, learning greek has been a daunting task, until now. With eight months until my planned trip to Greece, I'm finding that with this excellent book, I'm learning proper pronounciations, grammer, and accentation. This book is far better than any phrase book, as it teaches you to think on your feet, not just recite from a page.

Rating:
Summary: Time to Move On
Review: My language-learning background is one where I've learned French and Japanese by way of schools, textbooks, online, and CDs. By far, this book is the poorest method of teaching a language that allows an English speaker to dive wholeheartedly into the culture. First published in the 80's (in the US), the teaching methods show their age; especially given the wealth of technology available today.

An example: I've learned via Japanese language that it is important to address fundamentals first, such as enunciating and writing an unfamiliar alphabet. Alas, charts and tables in this book do not provide these options, and it appears the author assumes one has a basic understanding of the Greek language. In short, presupposition reigns. Interestingly, I can see how this text would also be pedantic for the intermediate user, making me wonder at what level one might benefit from this book.

I wish I could recommend an alternative, but I'm in the throes of discovering that myself. Onward...

Rating:
Summary: Solid Manual on Modern Greek
Review: This book was publsihed some twenty years ago, as a text at McGill U in Montreal. It contains the essence of the slightly purist demotic Greek: the grammar, the sentence structure, the vocabulary and so on.

I have been using this book to relearn Greek, having been away from it since childhood, and have found it to be a great self-study tool, better than others more recently published.

It is not a text for the faint of heart. It is a University level text. It is a no nonsense text that teaches the essentials of modern Greek in 400 or so pages