Greek Language and People

click here for more details, find new or used items	David Hardy Our price £7.66 (£14.99) New from £7.45 Used from £7.40 Pages: 2 (Audio CD) ISBN: 0563519770 Pub: BBC (BBC Active) Pub date: 2006-03-16 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 7000

Reader Reviews:

Waste of time and money (1/2 people found this helpful)

I've been teaching modern Greek for more than 10 years. This course book is not suitable for students who are serious about learning Greek. It's ok for those who, as tourists, want to be able to order a souvlaki in a greek taverna. I would be very suspicious of teachers of modern Greek who make use of this book. Very disappointing. I'd stick with the Communicate in Greek course books instead.

This is just some exercises -- not a Greek course. (0/0 people found this helpful)

Groan! After ordering and receiving this product from Amazon, I discover that it's not a Greek course at all -- it's two CDs of exercises for the course book, sold separately.

Nowhere on the Amazon product information page does it say that this is not a Greek course, and even worse, that page is full of reviews of the book, which presumably have ended up on the wrong page altogether.

Let me make this clear -- this is two CDs containing exercises for the coursebook, without which, this product is pretty much useless. You cannot use this product on its own.

So, So.. (3/3 people found this helpful)

I m sorry to be not that enthusiast or thrilled about that book,but I honestly thought it was a bit a waste of money for any serious Modern Greek learner .

Don t get me wrong, the Book is very well printed, nice format, mainly in white and blue colours.. and is nice to look at

Now, about its content .
It sounds to me much more like a "SOS raft . how to survive in Greece and Cyprus" than a true textbook. Sure, you will learn how to ask for a coffee, book an hotel room, takle a bus to the Acropolis and be able to survive in a Greek speaking surrounding . But, I doubt it very much that you ll be able to get beyond that basic level.This is the kind of book I would take with me on a flight to Greece to quickly try to learn a couple of sentenses before landing.

I would say that, for someone wishing to quickly grasp a basic knowledge of demotiki, immediately useable.. then get that book or the well done "Teach Yourself Greek" by A. Matsukas

But if your goal is to learn Modern Greek to a decent level.. well.. look somewhere else and save your money.

Welcome new edition (8/8 people found this helpful)

I have had the old book for a while and was just starting to refresh my knowledge of Greek when I noticed the new edition. The thing that I would add to other reviews is the excellent cross referencing of the exercises to cd tracks. Instead of just having one track per chapter as a lot of other books do - meaning that you have to do a lot of fast forward and rewinding to get to the exercise/dialogue that you want, this has been split down into a large number of tracks, one for each exercise and dialogue. Each exercise in the book then has the track number inside. This is exactly what I was hoping for.

This is an excellent book but I would also recommend using "beginner's greek" by Aristarhos Matsukas because this has translitteration i.e. the greek alphabet words spelled out as you would say them in English. This really helped me to get to grips with the alphabet.

BLUE (19/20 people found this helpful)

I've been learning Greek using the old edition for a while now and yes, the old book was well out of date with references to Drachmas instead of Euros and to film stars that no-one these days will have heard of (well ok, maybe you've heard of TZHN XAKMAN?). The treatment of grammar was also pretty poor.

But, the book had a lot of charm and described all the old ways and traditions that have survived in Greece even to the present day. This was backed up by lots of photos of people taking part in the things described in the book - relevant places, religious and family gatherings - basically showing the people in the book's title.

This new edition by contrast is bang up-to-date in terms of language and grammar and the visual style is smart and contemporary (though strangely, everything including the photographs is BLUE), but it seems to lack a lot of the charm and most of the photos of the old edition - the people part of the title appears to have gone missing - and the text seems to have become politically correct (see the bit describing Kafeneios).

Let's be clear: like all the BBC language courses, this is a book for beginners and is aimed at people who go on holiday to Greece, who want a first (and probably no further) step into the Greek language, either at evening class or by learning a little Greek for themselves. Consequently, in what appears to be quite a wide, mixed and variable quality of 'Greek self learning books' this book and it's accompanying CDs are more than adequate for the average person to get to grips with a few basics of the Greek language. If you want a more in depth language course or want to study for exams, you will have to look elsewhere.

As a basic starting point, this book does the job nicely and the new edition's general dumbing down (and also assuming that the current wave of film stars like TOM XANKS are still remembered) will probably mean that it will last another 23 years before needing another new edition. So on balance (and despite my minor grumbles :) I'll give it 5 stars, as I think it is still by far and away the best introduction to the Greek language you'll find.

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