Why am I learning Greek?

[Chris]

I had been going to Greece for my holidays for about 10 years and never seriously thought about learning Greek. The last 2 years of those 10 I started to look at a phrase book while sun bathing. I found to my surprise it was actually easier to learn the alphabet and groups of letters than to rely on the English transliteration. After that I aquired a basic Greek course book and cd's and with steady progress completed it. I then started an in depth course (probably "O" level) with cd's and got through that in about 2.5 years. I am still learning as I would like to be fluent one day.
The reasons then, are that it is my hobby which I love to do and have a passion for.

[channeal]

My story is very similar to yours, Chris (and my name is Chris as well!).

My husband and I have been going to Greece (Kefalonia) since 1999 and fell in love with the island. At first, I had no interest in learning Greek, but gradually became interested in knowing what the Greek signs said. We had also got to know some people who do not speak much English and we wanted to be able to communicate with them a little bit more! I was not sure if I was capable though as I am not so young now (I am approaching my 58th birthday now) and the old memory is not as good as it used to be (oh how I wish I had started learning much earlier!). However, I bought a teach yourself book and learned the alphabet on the beach one year. After returning to England, I took courage and enrolled hubby and myself onto a Greek evening course.

We live not too far from Brighton, so did one year at a class in Hove from September 2005 and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, there were not enough students for a second year so we had to join a class in Worthing and never really felt we integrated into that class (the people already all knew each other, having already done one year.) we then had a year with any lessons, but this year we have had some private lessons in a tutor's house with just a couple of other people. It has been good fun, although that sadly has also come to an end now (at least for the time being).

I love learning Greek very, but my memory has definitely been a problem! I have no real difficuly with grammar etc, but getting Greek words (and especially verbs!) into my ageing brain is quite a challenge. It does go in, but takes some time! To help me, I have made a Greek verbs website which anyone who is interested can currently see at http://www.geocities.com/greekverbs (I say currently as I am going to have to find another host for it as Yahoo is ending its provision of free websites soon.) There is a page on there which includes links to several learning resource websites, so please take a look and see if you find anything helpful on there.

I have only recently found the ilearnGreek site, but it looks very good!

Cheers,

Chris.