Here’re The Resources To Learn Modern Greek!

Attention: If you want to learn or improve your Greek while having fun, please try my Interlinear Greek bilingual book. This book is a Greek book by Roubina Gouyoumtzian translated in the innovative Interlinear format, where the translation is provided below each word. Such format lets you read and improve your Greek easily regardless of your level.

I am already in the last part of my six-months challenge which has become more of an 3-months challenge turning into a 2 months challenge (that’s how I feel at least) but whatever the case, I have discovered a number of resources along the way. I will list all the free resources here so that you can use them if you are learning Modern Greek.

First and before we begin I will have a plug: start using CoolJugator: The Modern Greek Verb Conjugator. It can conjugate the Greek verbs you put into it, it grows fast, there is autosuggest and other features and you will like it.

Alright, now a themed list follows.

Greek Alphabet Courses

There are lots of tutorials online to learn it but I hadn’t found one I would really like so I have made my own and now I’m obviously recommending it:

• The Greek Alphabet Course

You do not need to worry about the mistakes in this course either because they have been checked by a native speaker Glavkos and then fixed by me. I suggest this becomes your first step to learn the language.

Greek Online Course

• Kypros.org Free Online Greek Course

Frankly, I found the structure to be quite repetitive, also I hated that it only works online and you can’t have it in your mp3 player (due to some copyright issues). On the nice side of things, they have over a hundred lessons and transcripts and even vocabulary lists so you can easily check them up and it does give you some foundations if you are very persistent (you have to be very very persistent, though).

Greek Online Practice Material For Learners

• Hellenic American Union Podcast
• Greek Lessons
• SBS Greek Podcast

Hellenic American Union has a podcast entirely in Greek with 80 episodes and transcripts for each one. The episodes include short dialogues which have a lot of vocabulary in them and there are also some lessons about life in Greece in general. I found it to be very useful for learning all of the common words for I just made flashcards out of them and memorized them and that helped a lot.

The other podcast is made, again, by Glavkos, and it has text only in Greek which is totally cool with explanations in Greek of the unknown words. I found that I can basically listen to it and understand the essence of what is being said which is cool.

Then the last one, the SBS podcast is just a podcast in Greek with episodes from a programme about Australians learning Greek. Most of the podcasts have school descriptions, interviews and stuff like that. There are also health series with podcasts about health on the same site. Finally, there’re things about other topics such as books, politics, etc. It is a good 10 minute Greek practice that I have found.

Greek Grammar/Vocabulary Resources

• CoolJugator: Greek Verb Conjugator
• Introduction to Greek Verbs
• Greek Medio-Passive Voice Formation Explained
• Modern Greek Verbs Conjugated List
• Modern Greek Grammar
• Greek Word Recognizer/Conjugator/Declinator
• Greeklish to Greek Converter
• Greektionary: Three Words A Day Service

The first one is a Greek conjugator service (that I have launched) that conjugates any Greek verb that you put into it. It can do a lot of verbs and is constantly growing.

The second one is just a nice introduction to Greek verbs, the third one is a course made by me about how to solve the biggest problem for many learners of Greek: dealing with the medio-passive voice in Greek (I deal with how to form it mostly, not how to actually use it… although that is not very hard once you get the hang of it).

Then there is the Modern Greek Grammar site where you can get PDFs of various topics of grammar. I found the explanations to be pretty nice (although perhaps not perfect).

Then the last thing is great: you type in a Greek word and it recognizes its simple form and also gives you a lot of other forms. The only problem is that there is a limit of 10 words a day (I heard it is extended to 30 if you sign up which I did not). Pretty useful stuff.

The Greeklish to English converter converts text like “gia sas ti kanete” to nice Greek “για σας τι κάνετε”. It has even no common standard and recognizes a lot of different ways you can write the word! It is ridiculously useful and ridiculously accurate.

Then Greektionary is a good service to learn vocabulary. I subscribed to it and it sends me 3 new Greek words with translation, example and audio (like you can find on their site) every working day. This is a nice little thing that makes you feel like you are making progress every day even if you did not study much.

Greek Online Dictionaries

There are two main online Greek-English dictionaries that I have come across and found use of during my studies (there is a need for more):

• The in.gr Greek-English-Greek dictionary
• WordReference English-Greek dictionary

The first one is sort of geared towards Greeks learning English so it does not have Greek word genders and important things like that (which is not a very big deal after all since you can usually guess the gender from the word) and often has multiple meanings for one word without further explanation. The second one, on the other hand, has those but is lacking in vocabulary examples.

Ipod/iphone applications

I use some flashcards software to learn Greek words but the software is not specifically for Greek, so here goes what is for Greek:

• MAGENTA – Greek Dictionary
• Greek Radio

There is also a MAGENTA Greek dictionary application for iPhone/iPod which is indispensable if you have one. It is based on the in.gr dictionary (or actually the other way around) but it really helps you translate almost everything you need for daily life. Then the Greek Radio software lets you listen to almost all major Greek radio stations via an internet connection on your iPhone or iPod which is pretty darn brilliant.

Non-online paid resources

There are books, namely:

• Interlinear Greek Book – a bilingual book in Greek
• Teach Yourself Greek
• Teach Yourself Greek Conversation
• Colloquial Greek
• Linguaphone Greek
• Pimleur Greek 30 CDs
• Michel Thomas Greek Foundation and Advanced courses
• Roseta Stone Greek

These are the ones I have come across: I’m pretty sure there’s more. They all cost money (usually, anyway).

I have made a comment with this list on another site but it does not seem to be getting enough attention so I thought I’d make a post here to share it with you guys. These are the tools I came across and am using to learn Greek and those tools you can use too.

Attention: If you want to learn or improve your Greek by having fun, please try my Interlinear Greek bilingual book. This book is a Greek book by Roubina Gouyoumtzian translated in the innovative Interlinear format, where the translation is provided below each word. Such format lets you read and improve your Greek easily regardless of your level.

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