While bored in high school math class around the year 2005, I forced myself to learn the Greek alphabet. That very much came in handy in university, as Greek letters are frequently used for variables in computer science, mathematics, and physics.
Very handy. My math education would have gone much better if my notes weren't full of "lambda is the half stickman; sigma is upside down Q or broken E" and other really silly things
As native speakers of a language that uses Cyrillic, it was a little easier for my peers and me to learn Greek letters for the math classes, since most of them come for free to people who know both Latin and Cyrillic.
But when the probability theory class started, everyone found themselves in one of two groups: those who could reliably draw "ξ", or those who instead drew some random snaky thing which probably does not even have a proper Unicode representation. I spent half an hour finally memorizing how the damn thing is actually written to move myself from the latter group to the former.
Yeah, they should mark the Greek alphabet as a mandatory prerequisite for college math. It had an unreasonable effect on how quickly I was processing notation-heavy math after learning some Greek for going on a trip over there.
What you call "classical pronunciation" is really at best an approximation of the ancient Greek pronunciation, but mixed heavily with English (after some frolicking around in Latin). As far as I know, this is limited to English speakers only.
For example, π is pronounced "πι", or probably closed to "pee" in modern and in ancient Greek. It's never pronounced like "pie". Same with all letters that end with "i", for example "φ,χ,ψ" (pronounced as phee, chee, psee, never rhyming with pie). T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek.
There are differences between modern and ancient Greek of course. For example "β" (beta), originally pronounced more like it's now in English, only with a longer "e", while in modern Greek it's more like "vita")
The modern academic consensus is that "η" was likely pronounced like the "e" in "met" but longer. In IPA, it'd be /e:/. And thus "β" as /be:ta/. What you are saying is how it is done in modern Greek though.
I had a native Italian professor who said "β" more like "vita". One day he tried to write "ξ" on the whiteboard and said "whatever the hell this is?". I was the only person who spoke up.
I'm well aware it is an approximation, but there is a traditional classical pronunciation in use as there is with Latin (or Sanskrit, Pali and classical Hebrew), which is still in use whether or not it is authentic.
Everything written in ancient Greek that is foundational to western literature, has already been translated, likely to a higher standard than most of the people trying to learn it.
Unless you wish to be part of an effort to further improve the quality of these translations, including to adjust them for the fact modern languages themselves are a moving target, just read those translations.
Modern Greek, on the other hand, is a living language with new art and culture coming from it. I may not be able to write "a cup of tea please" without misspelling tea, nor pronouncing it so badly they reply in English (as per my user profile), but this is infinitely more valuable than knowing if the ancient Greek character inviting people over for a meal is saying the people will eat the meal or be the meal.
Wow, what a way to write off something "foundational to western literature".
I studied koine Greek with my dad. Today, I study Aristotle alongside half-a-dozen English translations (the latest, Adam Beresford's Ethics, is hilarious, "like Han Solo and Chewbacca, Achilles and Patrocles" in the notes; his Aristotle uses "Perhaps...but that's a bit off-topic").
None of the English translations is as convincing as knowing the original vocabulary. Many phrases and idioms are still obscure or debated. Why should the student not want to look behind the curtain?
Finally, there is something bracing about knowing the ancient grammar. Greek has features long-vanished from English.
You would separate students into those who never need to bother looking a bit into "foundational to western literature" and those handful who are on a PhD track. Eventually, nobody would grow up to be recruited into the latter.
To be fair, there are nuances in the ancient Greek which are best brought out by some study of the language. The most frequently translated ancient Greek text(s) would be the New Testament, and even there you can see a lot of modern churches base their ideas on dubious translations.
I find ancient Greek not so helpful when it comes to etymologies. Some are helpful, but many are obscure or misleading. Climax comes from the word for a ladder apparently, and electron comes from the word for amber. There are stories behind both but they won't get you far. Any word beginning with psych- tends to relate to the mind, but the Greek means "soul".
Why would modern Greek be "irrelevant"? Millions of Greeks and Cypriots speak the language, along with minorities in other countries and a very large and well dispersed diaspora. Greece and Cyprus are major holiday destinations for northern Europeans. There are major writers such as Nikos Kazantzakis who have used modern Greek so there are cultural reasons to. Heck, I even like some modern Greek music, and am grateful for it, since it was one of the few things which kept me happy during lockdown.
You're right in saying Classical (inc. Koine) Greek is far more influential, but modern Greek is not "frankly irrelevant".
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.
As 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.
The 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.
B/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.
Fascinating! I assume Mandarin is one of the other two languages your kids are learning, in which case you may be interested or have already seen Chineasy app and book, for a similar experience with Hanzi.
There was a hilarious illustrated book "Greek to Me". It is a thorough (English) introduction to koine Greek, mainly Bible as well as classical from Herodotus, Arrian, et al.
It uses the silly-picture mnemonic approach. For instance, the verb εγειρω features a fellow raising up a suction-cup arrow with an egg stuck in it.
Present-indicative conjugations are in a picture of an omelet oozing in an oasis:
Nothing special, probably not even the hardest out there to learn. But that's still requiring some effort, just like learning any alphabet actually. Greek somehow kept prestigious place in academia, so it's just more likely going to show that friction in the face of those who are there to learn completely unrelated matter for which using different alphabet is superfluous.
That just reminded me I have a teach yourself devanagari by practicing book waiting for me.
… which heavily involves memorizing foreign letters. English and German mostly share the same alphabet, though, which suggests that the person asking the question hasn’t quite grasped the point. That’s what I was trying to get at in my comment.
The author is a Greek-speaking parent teaching his Greek-speaking children to read by visually pairing each letter with a Greek word that starts with that letter.
If you tried to teach English-speaking children with words that start with that letter in German, you'd probably confuse them quite a bit.
The author criticizes also English cards for not having letter shapes.
Also, "foreign" is always relative. How about an Ancient Greek referring to the barbarians who have no Greek? And, the author's using Greek while living in China.
During undergrad years, IFC fraternity pledges had to memorize the Greek alphabet for obvious reasons. This is how the capital letters were taught amongst bros.
Just did and still not seeing exactly what OP has made where the object looks like the letter. There are a few where the letters are abused to vaguely look like (use same texture) objects.
Maybe my Google foo sucks but could someone actually link what they're seeing?
While bored in high school math class around the year 2005, I forced myself to learn the Greek alphabet. That very much came in handy in university, as Greek letters are frequently used for variables in computer science, mathematics, and physics.
Also plastered on frat and sorority houses all over town :-) (at least at many universities in the US)
ομφαλός (belly button) is quite weird for ο (omikron), but I can't think of something better!
Just listing the letters below and my rating for each letter, maybe someone has a better idea for some of them:
α - αχλάδι (pear) 5/5
β - βάρκα (boat) 5/5
γ - γίδα (goat) 4/5
δ - δεινόσαυρος (dinosaur) 4/5
ε - έντομο (insect, bug) 4/5
ζ - ζώνη (belt) 3/5
η - ηλιοτρόπιο (sunflower) 3/5
θ - θρόνος (throne) 4/5
ι - ιππόκαμπος (seahorse) 3/5
κ - κάκτος (cactus) 2/5
λ - λιοντάρι (lion) 4/5
μ - μάσκα (mask) 4/5
ν - νυχτερίδα (bat) 4/5
ξ - ξύλο (wood, stick of wood) 2/5
ο - ομφαλός (belly button) 1/5
π - πόρτα (door) 4/5
ρ - ρακέτα (racket) 4/5
σ - σαλιγκάρι (snail) 5/5
τ - τραπέζι (table) 5/5
υ - υποβρύχιο (submarine) 4/5
φ - φίδι (snake) 5/5
χ - χιόνι (snow) 2/5
ψ - ψάρεμα (fishing) 3/5
ω - ωκεανός (ocean) 5/5
I'm basing my rating on how common a word is, and how much the shape resembles the drawing and vice versa.
For χ - χελιδόνι (swallow) with X tail-wings is the best
Very handy. My math education would have gone much better if my notes weren't full of "lambda is the half stickman; sigma is upside down Q or broken E" and other really silly things
As native speakers of a language that uses Cyrillic, it was a little easier for my peers and me to learn Greek letters for the math classes, since most of them come for free to people who know both Latin and Cyrillic.
But when the probability theory class started, everyone found themselves in one of two groups: those who could reliably draw "ξ", or those who instead drew some random snaky thing which probably does not even have a proper Unicode representation. I spent half an hour finally memorizing how the damn thing is actually written to move myself from the latter group to the former.
Yeah, they should mark the Greek alphabet as a mandatory prerequisite for college math. It had an unreasonable effect on how quickly I was processing notation-heavy math after learning some Greek for going on a trip over there.
As I say above, the issue is that modern Greek pronounces some letters very differently. We use the classical pronunciation in maths etc.
What you call "classical pronunciation" is really at best an approximation of the ancient Greek pronunciation, but mixed heavily with English (after some frolicking around in Latin). As far as I know, this is limited to English speakers only.
For example, π is pronounced "πι", or probably closed to "pee" in modern and in ancient Greek. It's never pronounced like "pie". Same with all letters that end with "i", for example "φ,χ,ψ" (pronounced as phee, chee, psee, never rhyming with pie). T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek.
There are differences between modern and ancient Greek of course. For example "β" (beta), originally pronounced more like it's now in English, only with a longer "e", while in modern Greek it's more like "vita")
The modern academic consensus is that "η" was likely pronounced like the "e" in "met" but longer. In IPA, it'd be /e:/. And thus "β" as /be:ta/. What you are saying is how it is done in modern Greek though.
I had a native Italian professor who said "β" more like "vita". One day he tried to write "ξ" on the whiteboard and said "whatever the hell this is?". I was the only person who spoke up.
I'm well aware it is an approximation, but there is a traditional classical pronunciation in use as there is with Latin (or Sanskrit, Pali and classical Hebrew), which is still in use whether or not it is authentic.
Modern Greek is, frankly, irrelevant.
Ancient Greek is needed to get a full Western education, for reading some of our foundational literature properly.
Everything written in ancient Greek that is foundational to western literature, has already been translated, likely to a higher standard than most of the people trying to learn it.
Unless you wish to be part of an effort to further improve the quality of these translations, including to adjust them for the fact modern languages themselves are a moving target, just read those translations.
Modern Greek, on the other hand, is a living language with new art and culture coming from it. I may not be able to write "a cup of tea please" without misspelling tea, nor pronouncing it so badly they reply in English (as per my user profile), but this is infinitely more valuable than knowing if the ancient Greek character inviting people over for a meal is saying the people will eat the meal or be the meal.
Wow, what a way to write off something "foundational to western literature".
I studied koine Greek with my dad. Today, I study Aristotle alongside half-a-dozen English translations (the latest, Adam Beresford's Ethics, is hilarious, "like Han Solo and Chewbacca, Achilles and Patrocles" in the notes; his Aristotle uses "Perhaps...but that's a bit off-topic").
None of the English translations is as convincing as knowing the original vocabulary. Many phrases and idioms are still obscure or debated. Why should the student not want to look behind the curtain?
Finally, there is something bracing about knowing the ancient grammar. Greek has features long-vanished from English.
You would separate students into those who never need to bother looking a bit into "foundational to western literature" and those handful who are on a PhD track. Eventually, nobody would grow up to be recruited into the latter.
To be fair, there are nuances in the ancient Greek which are best brought out by some study of the language. The most frequently translated ancient Greek text(s) would be the New Testament, and even there you can see a lot of modern churches base their ideas on dubious translations.
I find ancient Greek not so helpful when it comes to etymologies. Some are helpful, but many are obscure or misleading. Climax comes from the word for a ladder apparently, and electron comes from the word for amber. There are stories behind both but they won't get you far. Any word beginning with psych- tends to relate to the mind, but the Greek means "soul".
Why would modern Greek be "irrelevant"? Millions of Greeks and Cypriots speak the language, along with minorities in other countries and a very large and well dispersed diaspora. Greece and Cyprus are major holiday destinations for northern Europeans. There are major writers such as Nikos Kazantzakis who have used modern Greek so there are cultural reasons to. Heck, I even like some modern Greek music, and am grateful for it, since it was one of the few things which kept me happy during lockdown.
You're right in saying Classical (inc. Koine) Greek is far more influential, but modern Greek is not "frankly irrelevant".
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.
As 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.
The 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.
As a fun fact, both Cyrillic letters Б б sounding "b" and В в sounding "v" were historically derived from Greek Β β.
B/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.
For 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.
Μπράβο ρε. Πόσο όμορφο
Fascinating! I assume Mandarin is one of the other two languages your kids are learning, in which case you may be interested or have already seen Chineasy app and book, for a similar experience with Hanzi.
I wish cards like these didn't stop at ONE letter
a lot of reading skill is in connecting one letter to the next, syllable-grouped
teaching should incorporate that
There was a hilarious illustrated book "Greek to Me". It is a thorough (English) introduction to koine Greek, mainly Bible as well as classical from Herodotus, Arrian, et al.
It uses the silly-picture mnemonic approach. For instance, the verb εγειρω features a fellow raising up a suction-cup arrow with an egg stuck in it.
Present-indicative conjugations are in a picture of an omelet oozing in an oasis:
-ω -ομεν
-εις -ετε
-ει -ουσιν
I read this whole article like you were going to teach them Ancient Greek, but now I'm guessing modern is more likely?
Anyway, some of my strongest language class memories from college are from translating parts of the Odyssey and New Testament.
Yeah these cards have modern Greek words on them.
Very cool. With English there is Letterland which seems quite similar at a glance.
https://letterland.com/
no download or buy link?
I have similar projects in mind. How were these printed?
I never understood what was supposed to be so hard about Greek letters.
Kids aren't born knowing the Roman alphabet either. These cards are for four-year olds!
Nothing special, probably not even the hardest out there to learn. But that's still requiring some effort, just like learning any alphabet actually. Greek somehow kept prestigious place in academia, so it's just more likely going to show that friction in the face of those who are there to learn completely unrelated matter for which using different alphabet is superfluous.
That just reminded me I have a teach yourself devanagari by practicing book waiting for me.
Are there good sets out there for other languages: English, German, etc?
I learned to read Devanagari by putting generic Google images cards on my phone's wall paper.
This is about memorizing foreign letters.
No it's not. It's about teaching letter forms to kids.
… which heavily involves memorizing foreign letters. English and German mostly share the same alphabet, though, which suggests that the person asking the question hasn’t quite grasped the point. That’s what I was trying to get at in my comment.
The author is a Greek-speaking parent teaching his Greek-speaking children to read by visually pairing each letter with a Greek word that starts with that letter.
If you tried to teach English-speaking children with words that start with that letter in German, you'd probably confuse them quite a bit.
"We live abroad in China, and Greek is one of three languages my kids are learning."
right, but giving English-speaking kids the following would help them:
- a bear that looks like B
- an orange that looks like O
- a snake that looks like S
- a tree that looks like T
(and so on; that's just what I can think of off the top of my head)
The author criticizes also English cards for not having letter shapes.
Also, "foreign" is always relative. How about an Ancient Greek referring to the barbarians who have no Greek? And, the author's using Greek while living in China.
Very nice, I can borrow the idea to teach also my kids :)
During undergrad years, IFC fraternity pledges had to memorize the Greek alphabet for obvious reasons. This is how the capital letters were taught amongst bros.
> However, I haven’t found any such cards for Greek characters, so I think mine are the first in Greek.
Huh? A simple web search shows many, many, many results.
I tried searching and even had Claude search in modern Greek and didn't find specifically cards with objects shaped like the letters.
Can you share what you found?
Search for Greek Flashcards.
Just did and still not seeing exactly what OP has made where the object looks like the letter. There are a few where the letters are abused to vaguely look like (use same texture) objects.
Maybe my Google foo sucks but could someone actually link what they're seeing?