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Get a decent Greek grammar book and go through the first couple chapters, even if you don’t plan to complete the book. After completing the exercises you’ll be
by ARandomerDude 5mo ago
Get a decent Greek grammar book and go through the first couple chapters, even if you don’t plan to complete the book. After completing the exercises you’ll be amazed by how quickly the Greek alphabet stuck. Repeat every 10 years if necessary.
- pjmlp 5mo agoAs Portuguese that was of great help, given the amount of words with Greek roots, understanding the alphabet automatically made me available several words that I already knew. Naturally had to skill up on everything else.
- nephihaha 5mo agoThe problem is that the ancient and modern Greek alphabets are slightly different. The ancient pronunciations map more easily on to our alphabet. I find the modern ones less intuitive e.g. beta being a V sound. There is an example below, where someone writes Bravo in modern Greek, and uses "mu beta" for the "b" sound and "beta" for the "v" sound.
- ARandomerDude 5mo agoFor ancient Greek, two great books are: Greek: an Intensive Course by Hansen and Quinn. Basics of Biblical Greek by William Mounce Both are standard texts with solutions easily available online.
- wvbdmp 5mo agoB/V shifts or mergers are very common, notably in many Spanish variants they will, for example, write “vaca”, betraying the latin root “vacca”, but very clearly say “baca”. Coming from a language that clearly differentates between these sounds, it’s surprising how close they are.
- ck45 5mo agoFor me the most clear example (in English and other languages that borrowed from Latin) is "to move" and "mobile".
- ventana 5mo agoAs a fun fact, both Cyrillic letters Б б sounding "b" and В в sounding "v" were historically derived from Greek Β β.