Language
Greek Education Center
Greek Education Center
Modern and ancient Greek History
The Greek Education Center offers Greek language courses for foreign language speakers living in Cyprus or Greece, or others around the world, who are interested in learning the Greek language from scratch.
Greek from the beginning, for speakers of any language, who want to communicate in Greek, read and write.
With the most advanced methods of language teaching, excellent native speakers of Greek, and experts in teaching Greek, Greek becomes, experientially and with a pleasant mood, the second most important language of our students in less than six months.
Our courses offer a unique learning experience. They are interactive so that the teaching becomes pleasant and efficient. Students are constantly involved because the courses contain activities that everyone joins in throughout the course.
The lessons can be group or individual, depending on the needs of our students. In private and group lessons, all students receive personalised support to learn the Greek language. Their teachers support everyone individually according to their learning needs.
During the first three months, the courses aim for our students to communicate confidently with Greeks: To get to know each other, talk about themselves, listen and understand. At six months, they will be able to develop written language. In one year, they can respond to any need for communication. After one year of classes, students who want to continue can attend Greek courses on Greek Philosophy, Greek Literature, Greek History and Greek Mythology at the Greek Education Center. They will also be able to study in Greek in any field of study at any Greek University.
Students can take exams at three months, six months and one year. The Greek Education Center certifies their proficiency in using Greek at every stage. They can use language certificates wherever they feel they need them.
COURSE STRUCTURE
Greek language courses at the Greek Education Center begin with teaching Greek writing and the Greek alphabet. Knowledge of the symbols of language is vital in any language. When students learn the symbols and sounds of the symbols, they begin to learn to listen, write and read words. The training is entirely interactive, using electronic means and the continuous participation of students.
When students begin to recognise letters and syllables and read and understand what they hear when someone speaks Greek, they can practice, depending on their time and progress in learning Greek. The Greek Education Center provides them with all the material they need in electronic form. Depending on each student’s progress, teachers provide all students with what they need to keep progressing.
Lessons at all levels become experiential. Students can learn authentic speech for Greek communication in real situations. They become familiar with the Greek ethos, Greek humour, and culture. They quickly think like Greeks in the Greek language as well.
THE GREEK DISCOURSE
The speech of the Greeks has been cultivated for centuries. This is why the Greek language is one of the most expressive languages in the world. It has a vibrant vocabulary. It has seven million unique words. In Greek discourse, the experience of the Mediterranean people of the Greeks for thousands of years is concentrated.
The Greek language is malleable, and its compilation is multimodal. In Greek, the most uncomplicated thoughts can be expressed with the most complex formulations and the most complex thoughts with the simplest formulations.
The Greek discourse is direct, fast, and very effective in communication. It reflects the spontaneity of the Greek temperament.
The Greek language can be tricky for foreign speakers. Its alphabet differs from the Latin alphabet of other European languages. However, the sounds of words are more transparent—vowels sound whole. While Greek nouns have three genders, it is easy to tell the genus of the noun from its suffix. When the student of Greek becomes familiar with the grammar of the Greek language, it is easy to conjugate all nouns and use all verbs correctly in all tenses and all persons.
In all eras of the Greeks’ great history, people worldwide learned to speak the Greek language. This was not only because it was the language of an influential civilisation but also because the Greek language was and is a language in which all elements of the human psyche balance. Humanity became wiser with Greek speech. It became more poetic. Greek poetic wisdom has educated and will educate man at every age.
Finally, the Greek language is a language of science. Many Greek words are used in all sciences and, of course, in the humanities in all languages. Thus, people use Greek words in all sciences, whatever their language.
GREEK FOR GREEKS
The Greek courses program at the Greek Education Center addresses Greeks in Greece, Cyprus, and abroad, as well as native speakers of the Greek language who want to cultivate their language beyond its use in everyday communication. Because we think the way we speak and write, our thinking mirrors ourselves. If we know how to talk and write Greek well enough, our reflection in the mirror of our thoughts becomes an image we want to see.
Such an image of us is created in the “advanced courses” in the experiential seminars on the Greek language for Greeks in order a) to become better interlocutors in communications of all kinds, b) to express ourselves in our written language attractively to our readers on social media and not only, c) to think flexibly and not lose in argument struggles, d) to make our language an investment portfolio, with a stable return in our social life.
So that we do not hesitate to express ourselves in our own language.
So that we do not lose sight of the wordings we did not use to know.
So that we do not lose confidence when we need it most!
GREEK FOR GREEKS ABROAD, NATIVE SPEAKERS OF A SECOND, FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Greek for Greeks abroad, native speakers of a second, foreign language.
Greeks abroad from the second generation and above may receive Greek language courses from the educational missions of the Greek and Cypriot State. Along with this elementary education, they can enhance their language education and knowledge of ancient and modern Greece and Cyprus at the Greek Education Center of the University of Limassol. A unique program for Greeks and Cypriots abroad who want to speak and write better Greek will introduce them to the natural speech of the Greek language as if they lived in Greece or Cyprus.
No language is foreign…
The term “foreign language”, charged as it is with various meanings, is misleading. It lacks a basic explanation for the phenomenon of language. Any language consisting of verbal signifiers and words is symbolic. Therefore, Greek, a mother tongue and a “foreign” language, is an equivalent verbal system organised because of both figurative and abstract references to the world. From language to language, sound and graphic markings change. But that means nothing, not about the languages or our ability to learn them.
As regards the languages themselves, symbolic differences do not reflect the quality, as we say, of the language. From this point of view, we do not have legitimacy, and there is no point in talking about higher and lower languages but about symbolically different languages. Each language has its value as an autonomous symbolic – figurative or abstract – system. The value of language is practical and functional for our perception of the world and communication. In each language, we communicate, depending on the language, differently with others. Still, we also perceive the world differently, depending on the symbolic nuances and resonances accompanying each “linguistic idiom”.
Languages strongly reflect the experiential content of undertaking and managing each linguistic ethnicity’s relationship between itself and the world, things and people. From this point of view, every language is a living organism, as much as the people who use it and by whom it exists as a living language. When a language dies and becomes, as we say, “dead,” it means that all the people for whom that language contained the meaning of life perished.
This was done with ancient Greek; the same was done with Latin. The death of language echoes and alludes to a kind of genocide. This means that we will never know precisely the meaning, the experiential content of many words, but mainly expressions, of the ancient Greek language because, quite simply, there is no ancient Greek alive to teach us how she used words to express herself.
“Foreign languages,” we now call living languages used by other than our linguistic ethnicities. “Learning,” in this regard, “a foreign language,” means “appropriating a verbal, symbolic system that reflects a specific experiential relationship that people of another nation have established between themselves and the world.” “Learning a foreign language” means “making the experiential content of a foreign language my own”. It implies that I acquired another relationship with the world, apart from that, maintained using our mother tongue, as we call it. When we learn a foreign language, the language ceases to be foreign. It becomes flesh from our flesh. Our senses, perception and thinking are expanded and enriched. Our relationship with language, therefore, is a relationship of life, and the learning of foreign languages is a process of vital importance for our very existence as humans.
Human communication, as a manifestation of excellence of vitality and creative expression of life, is greatly enriched by learning one or two or more foreign languages. When someone communicates with the Englishman, French, or Greek, it means opening a horizon in life. And the horizons of nations are extensive, great.
More significant is the horizon of life—things, feelings, and thoughts—which opens before us through a language, our own or foreign. Learning foreign languages means “no language is foreign…”