
The Greek described in this FSI Basic Greek Course (volume 1 of 3) is representative of the kathomilumeni variety, i.e. that of the 'standard! speech of educated Greeks. As the influences from the other styles of Greek on the natural speech of an educated person vary according to the speaker and thus create a great variety of !correct' utterances, both the most common dhimotiki and kathaverusa forms are represented in the Basic Dialogues and Grammatical Notes. At the same time the use of extreme dhimotiki or toverpure1 katharevusa is carefully avoided.
The whole Course consists of 75 units and is divided into three volumes, each volume containing 25 units. After every five units there is a Review con-sisting of a Narrative which is based on the vocabulary of previous units. In addition to this the Review Units of Volume I have Review Drills in which the student is supposed to supply proper forms of given words. These drills are continued in more advanced units in connection with the katharevusa grammatical forms. Katharevusa is systematically introduced in the narratives of Volume III and the rules of katharevusa grammar are discussed in the subsequent grammatical notes. Thus the student who has completed Volume III of this Course should have a good foundation for reading official documents as well as newspapers written in katharevusa.
The following parts may be found in a Unit:
-Basic Dialogue Sample Drills
-Response Drill
-Substitution Drills
-Useful Words
-Transformation Drills
-Polite Expressions Correlation
-Substitution Drills
-Narrative Response Exercise
-Grammatical Notes
-Topics for Discussion
You can find the other volumes of the
FSI Greek Basic Course here:
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FSI Greek - Basic Course - Volume 2
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FSI Greek - Basic Course - Volume 3
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to the southern Balkans, the Aegean Islands, western Asia Minor, southern Italy and Cyprus. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Coptic, Cyrillic, Gothic, Latin and many other writing systems.
Greek is spoken in: Greece
Greek is also called: Ellinika, Graecae, Grec, Greco, Neo-Hellenic, Romaic