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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Modern Greek is, frankly, irrelevant.
Ancient Greek is needed to get a full Western education, for reading some of our foundational literature properly.
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.
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.
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.
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
I never understood what was supposed to be so hard about Greek letters.
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.
Very cool. With English there is Letterland which seems quite similar at a glance.
https://letterland.com/
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.
I have similar projects in mind. How were these printed?
no download or buy link?
Are there good sets out there for other languages: English, German, etc?
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."
Very nice, I can borrow the idea to teach also my kids :)
> 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?