Where Next?

If the rest of the pages in our Starting Out section have whetted your appetite for learning this fascinating language, then the logical next step is to let the professionals guide you! Many many intelligent, articulate people have written books especially for people who are learning Greek, and while we're constantly trying our best to make this website a great resource, it will probably never better a book or CD/tape/computer-based course written by a trained Greek teacher.

Below is a tiny selection of the thousands of books out there, which we include on the back of personal recommendations from members of our discussion forum. We have no hidden agenda when it comes to the books and courses themselves, apart from being satisfied customers! However, most of the links below go to Amazon, and any purchases made after clicking through our site means we receive a small amount of commission at no cost to you - this is not to say we are pushing Amazon over and above any of the other bookshops out there, it just goes some way towards pay the bills!

Courses With Tapes/CDs

Beginners' Greek from the Teach Yourself series, is an entry-level course (book and CD), with an impressive range of topics (all fully transcribed in Greek and translated into English), and a very good grammar reference given its size and cover price.

Greek from the very same Teach Yourself series, is a more complete version of its baby brother (Beginners' Greek, see above). More of the same - many units covering different subjects, plus a fairly extensive guide to pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Also includes a brief history of the Greek language.

For a good book & audio course there's the BBC Greek, Language & People Course by David A. Hardy. There's a TV series too which is repeated occasionally on BBC2 (usually in the early hours of the morning) with Chris Searle and Katia Dandoulaki (Κάτια Δανδουλάκι)

Computer-Based Courses

ILSP (the Institute for Language and Speech Processing) has developed a series of CD Roms entitled Filoglossia (in Greek, this means someone who is a friend of language). This is a multi media software series to teach Greek to non-native speakers and has a multi language interface.

An online version is also available.

EuroTalk supply a series of interactive CD-Roms which range from children's flashcards, through beginners to intermediate level. There are quizzes, animations, and the facility to listen & record yourself speaking (requires a microphone!)

This first book is a real basic introduction for absolute beginners, designed to offer decent basic vocabulary to get you started. Great fun to learn basics without bothering with in-depth grammar.

An intermediate-stage course from Eurotalk, to follow from the above course. Includes an interactive TV quiz, in which you can compete one-on-one against a friend!

If you want to learn to type Greek, learn the alphabet and a few words and phrases in the process, you could do worse than Type & Learn Greek, an interactive CD Rom which lets you record your attempts at pronunciation.

(At least one user reports typographic errors in the software itself, which spoils an otherwise good product - but it is still definitely usable)

Reference Books

Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language (by Holton, Mackridge and Philippaki-Warburton) is a heavyweight champion in the world of Greek language reference books. It weighs in at over 500 pages, is packed full of linguistic terminology and copious examples of grammatical constructs even your tutor may never have heard of - so it's not for the faint hearted!

However, this could be the book for you if you have a head for grammar, and are prepared to learn some terminology (be warned, some of the terminology used in the book may be different from that which other textbooks may use!). As the title suggests, this book is thoroughly comprehensive and covers everything you're ever likely to need to know about Greek language today.

(Such is its popularity on our discussion forum, this title is simply known as the "Green Book"!)

Essential Modern Greek Grammar - this small work by Douglas Q. Adams (presumably his middle initial avoids confusion with the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!) may be low on pages, but it's high on quality, with all manner of grammatical structures explained succinctly and clearly. One drawback is that this book predates the simplified single-accent system now employed in Greek, so it is full of superfluous accents, but that aside this is an excellent little book.

201 Modern Greek Verbs - every language learner should have a verb reference book, and students of Greek are no different! This book contains (surprise surprise!) 201 of the most common verbs in use in the Greek language, listed in all the tenses, active and passive, and is the sort of thing that is essential to help gain a mastery of the Greek verb system.

Like the Adams grammar book, this book suffers slightly from its age, and contains all manner of now-redundant accents and breathing marks to confuse you, but once you have deciphered what each word looks like in "true" modern Greek (it's not hard, honest!), the book comes into its own.