It’s All Greek To Me Thanks To "Just Listen 'N Learn Greek”!"

It started with Spanish then moved to Japanese, now we’re knee deep into Greek. A few of the brood have been pen pals with a few kids from Greece for several years now and they’ve learned a good bit of Greek from them through letters, emails and phone calls but that wasn’t enough. When I started looking for conversational Greek CD’s or learning kits for them, I was really disappointed with what I found. Most of them were geared towards the business class and I was close to giving up. I knew that if I was going to find something that they was going to be able to use, I’d have to start asking Greek people what they thought of them. There’s a small Greek restaurant a few miles away and I asked the owner if he knew of any sets or kits he could recommend and he laughed. “I already know how to speak Greek honey, ask my granddaughters”. With their mothers permission I took the two teen girls with me to the bookstore so they could help me pick out something. After looking at the selection they couldn’t really recommend anything that they had and suggested that I borrow something that their mother picked up for one of the non-Greek speaking people at the restaurant. Well, that would have saved us a whole hell of a lot of trouble from the get go if they would have just said that but I think they wanted to roam the mall without their mom watching.

Just Listen ‘N Learn Greek

OK, let’s get this out of the way first - this is a conversational language set of three cassettes with a large book. It will teach you pretty much everything you will need to know to get through meals, ask for phone numbers, do basic math and survive day to day life in Greece. After talking to Mr. Kastopolis, the owner of the restaurant, he said that English is spoken a lot in Greece and unless you plan on going off the tourist trail, you shouldn’t really need to know that much Greek. But as the old saying goes, when in Rome, do as the Romans. It’s better to know Greek and not have to use it than to wander around asking people if they speak English. I started off listening to the tapes and got lost after the first five minutes. My son faired a lot better since he already knew most of the basic phrases for hello, my name is ..., what time is it, please, sorry etc. I had a hard time saying a lot of the phrases because I tried a little too hard to copy the dialect and it sounded like Spanish instead of Greek. Now Annabelle is wandering around whipping out Greek phrases and let me tell you, it’s too freakin’ cute.

It is a tough call as to which would be more beneficial for you - the book or the cassettes. The cassettes contain three hours of drills, sayings, lessons and music - having to flip cassettes and rewind them is a chore but I would imagine it is easier than having to do it with a CD. This is available on CD if you want something more compact or something to listen to in your vehicle. I started out reading through the book and got lost almost immediately - the cassettes were just as baffling. I do a lot better with the Instant Immersion CD’s that take you through baby steps - they show you a picture and say the word for it and have games to reinforce it. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with this - it’s just a very straight forward, cut and dry way of learning Greek. I kept up with it for about two weeks and was really amazed at what I picked up from the tapes and now that I am using the book with it, I don’t feel so lost.

When you are learning a new language it is always a great help to have someone around who knows the language. I was able to order a meal in Greek, ask for the time and understand some of the menu after two weeks with the cassettes - something that I didn’t think possible. One of the biggest benefits of the tapes is that the people who are repeating the words or phrases in Greek are actually Greek themselves and [according to the book] everything is recorded in Greece. One thing that had me in hysterics was the English narrator; he’s from England. Imagine trying to learn to speak Greek with so many accents flying around. Even so, I can say that this system does work but you have to take it slow and not expect to learn a lot of stuff at once. If you listen to the tapes over and over, eventually some of it is going to sink in. It is a very face paced language and most of the time I am clueless as to what they are saying at the restaurant but I am learning .. and that is the most important thing. The brood really liked the tapes and book and didn’t have nearly as much trouble with it as I did - the only thing that really stumped them was the counting to one hundred but hearing it on the tapes really helped.

The book is about 250 pages long and the font they used is extremely small so they do cram a lot of information into it. You will learn a lot from it if you use it with the cassettes so please, don’t try to sit there and learn the language from just the book alone. There are fifteen sections to the book that cover everything from talking about yourself [name, age, where you are from] to shopping, directions, food and drink, numbers and learning how to correctly say the letters of the alphabet so you can read street signs and menus. Through the book you’ll see some black and white photographs, illustrations and drawings and some basic Greek tourism information like exchanging money, holidays, places to stay and hitting the taverna [restaurants]. The book that is in this kit was first put out in 1985 with a reprint in 1994 so it isn’t the newest thing on the market but hey, languages don’t change that much so it’s not that big of a deal.

The tapes in the set start off with basic phrases and build on them. You have to do the reviews and drills and know them perfectly in order to advance to the next stage. At the end of each side of the tape there is a review section in the book to go over as well as on the tape itself. If it takes you a month to say “How are you?” [Ti kanete?] then so be it. If you try to jump around and learn everything at once you are going to get frustrated and give up. The dialogue on the tapes is very clear but there are some points where they Greek speaking people are going way too fast for you to keep up. If you can’t follow what is going on then don’t skip to the next chapter, rewind the tape or go over the section in the book and keep practicing. Using the tapes and the book at the same time will really help you pick up on things but sometimes seeing the words and hearing them can get overwhelming - especially if you aren’t familiar with how certain letters are pronounced. There is a nice table in the book to show you how to correctly say the letters and if you are having a lot of trouble, read over the table and phonetic pronunciations.

I have no idea how much this set cost but if I came across it and it got the thumbs up from Mr. Kastopolis and his granddaughters, I’d be willing to pay about thirty dollars for it but I would want to get it on CD so I could listen to it while I am driving. Both the tapes and the book do a good job of going over conversational Greek but if you want to learn how to write and read the language, this isn’t going to help you that much. The book has a small dictionary in the back as well as an index but the print on it is extremely small so it is a little hard to find exactly what you are looking for. The stuff in the book runs parallel to what is on the tapes so it isn’t hard to use them both at the same time. I’m sure that there are tape or CD sets that are better than this but when I started looking for them, they were no where to be found.

The Bottom Line

I’m not sure if Greek is considered a romance language or not, it’s a fast paced language that isn’t easy to learn on the fly but the tapes and book really helped me learn a lot in a relatively short period of time. This system will teach you how to get around, ask for help, check into a hotel, convert money, learn the alphabet, dine out, seek medical assistance, shop and experience Greece on a social level. The brood have learned a lot from this set and their friends in Greece were really impressed when they were talking on the phone. That is the true test - if you can get the dialect down and have a conversation with someone without calling them a potato head or offending them by saying a word incorrectly. Even though I borrowed this from Mr. Kastopolis’ daughter [with no pressure to return it quickly], I have gotten a lot out of it and recommend it to anyone that is interested in learning some basic Greek phrases for a vacation, business trip or general communication skills. It isn’t all that flashy but it does a great job of walking you through all the drills and exercises to allow you to retain the most from your efforts.


As always, thanks for the read!

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2006 Freak369


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