Rapid Greek: Volume 2

I came across your CD whilst searching for books to take on my holiday in two weeks time to Greece. I purchased the first volume cautiously, being very wary - as it said with music. I thought, oh dear, this is going to be awful. Although I love Greek music I didn't relish the thought of a bouzouki in the background!!I have to say I am so impressed. I have copied the CD to my i-pod and listen to it around the house and I have the CD in my car on my way to work. It is brilliant, I cannot praise it or you enough. Poli Kala. I have 8 working days to go to my holiday - so that is 16 journeys to and from work in the car. I can't wait to go to work each day (this is a first) and listen to the brilliant background music and this novel way of learning.I went onto your web site and purchased volume 2 - ambitious maybe!! I don't think so, as this way of learning is excellent - and FUN. It came this morning and prompted my e-mail to you. I can't wait to use my new found Greek on my forthcoming holidays. It is not often that a new product just surpasses all others - but your earworms do!! I will consider even buying another language - just for fun as it is better and more useful than listening to the radio. Just keep on producing them - they are wonderful. I cannot endorse your product enough. Please pass on my thanks to everyone - the voices are great, the pronunciation is made easy and the music is very catchy (as I guess, it was meant to be). I went to Greek lessons a few years ago but gave up after two as it was boring...not so your method.May I wish you continued success and I will do what I can to spread the word.'Earworms are worth listening too'!!

If you want to acquire some basic Greek phrases then I would highly recommend this CD as your best starting point. It is made up of ten tracks which cover some 200 basic words and phrases. Each track has music in the background - more about this later. There is also a booklet which accompanies the CD. It has the text which is spoken and also some advice on using the CD.Everyone wants a shortcut to learning and it would be easy to be disappointed by any course which made such bold claims. This is not, in my opinion, a shortcut to learning a language. There is no magic here. The reason why it seems to work so well is that the musical background makes it much more palatable to listen to it over and over and over again. And, with repeated listening, things do start to stick.Once you are familiar with the pronunciation on the CD you can then follow the text in the booklet. I also thought that this was useful. For example, the word for 'please' is often given phonetically as 'parakalo.' In the booklet it is written as 'baragalo.' By adopting a compromise between what was heard on the CD and what was written in the booklet, it did seem to result in an improvement in my pronunciation (I hope!)Also with language CD's you can find that you are suddenly presented with a lengthy sentence which is difficult to assimilate. Here the sentence might be spoken and then broken down into its component parts. You get a chance to repeat each part before the whole thing is then reassembled. The repetition of words and phrases is very well done.

Having bought a cottage in Cyprus, I've tried everything to learn Greek, and really had my hopes up with this one. But...To begin with, the `great music' is neither `great' nor memorable. More like bland Muzak - hardly the stuff to stick in your mind (preferably together with the words and phrases).The choice of vocabulary and subjects is always open to debate. Still, instead of starting with ordering in restaurants (the one place where people are likely to know English) it would seem more logical to begin with friendly phrases and greetings, to be able to chat - if only minimally - with the people you meet. (Most Lonely Planet phrase books use this approach.)The voices are clear and there is no danger of being pushed too fast. However, I wish less English had been used, so that when you listen to the CD you hear (and absorb?) mostly Greek, and not equal parts of English and Greek. After all, if you were using the `music approach' and listening to Greek songs, you'd be hearing Greek all the time - in fact, I can still recall some phrases from old Nana Mouskouri songs.Finally: the well-intended `memory hooks' - always in English, and to my mind totally irrelevant and irritating. Surely most speakers of English will be able to associate the number for five - pende/pente - with, say, pentagon, instead of the ridiculous suggestion of `bendy wire'? (Likewise, there must be people who will think of triangles, hexagons and decades in order to remember the Greek numbers tria, eksee, deka/theka? You don't need a classical education for that....) And `wine' - krasee - is surely easier to memorize than an illogical connection with `grassy'. (Whoever heard of `grassy wine'?) I found myself pleading with each new section on the CD, `please, NO memory hooks here!'(Technical phonetical note: the transcription into English tries to be simple. Because most Greek consonants, unlike their English counterparts, are non-aspirated (no `puff' of air before them), they are here written as voiced consonants (which in English are not aspirated) - thus bende, grasee, bosso ganee etc. instead forms like pente, krasee, posso kanee used in most other phrase books. This can be confusing.)

I have bought other earworms language CDs but last year, on my first trip to Greece, I tried another CD programme and didn't find it helpful at all. This year, before my holiday, I purchased this and have found it so much easier to understand and learn. It's also fun to learn this way when I'm in the car, the music really helps. The only downside is my husband groans every time I play it when he is with me. However, he's now picked up a few phrases himself!!I recommend Rapid Greek as it has given me more confidence and even though there isn't a huge amount of vocabulary, I feel I can get by now, pronounce essential phrases reasonably well and understand some of the responses I might receive from Greek speakers.