4 Motivating TED Talks in Portuguese For Polishing Your Language Skills
Have you ever watched TED talks? If you have, did you find them useful and amusing?
7 minute read
I want to begin this post by asking this question, is any language easy to learn? Think about it this way, you grew up thinking, speaking, and seeing the world through a system of words and sounds. Your brain becomes accustomed to this way of thinking. Then it erupts into chaos when you try to introduce something new like a foreign language.
Just because learning a language is hard doesn't make it impossible. So before you walk away from writing systems that look like hieroglyphics or strange grammar rules. Put on your armor and get ready for the battle. Learning a new language is quite possibly one of the most rewarding things you can do yourself.
Western-European languages are considered the easiest to learn, especially for English speakers. These include Spanish, French, and Italian. Greek is considered a medium language according to the infographic provided by the Foreign Service Institute in addition to Slavic languages and Hindi. So is the Greek language easy to learn? Well, the expression, "It's all Greek to me." wasn't created for no reason.
The Greek Writing System
If you are an English or Western-European speaker you are used to the Latin alphabet. Greek uses the Greek alphabet which is closely related to the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian and other Slavic languages. This alphabet went through many changes from ancient to the modern Greek that we know today. You might be familiar with the Greek letters if you were in a sorority or fraternity at a university. However, if you aren't familiar with the Cyrillic writing system, this will take some time to get used to.
Vocabulary
Languages German, French, or Spanish are heaven because there are quite a few cognates. The cognates are motivation because it makes the learning process a little easier. Then you look at Greek and get overwhelmed by all of the new words. I'll let you in on a little secret, many of the words that we use in English are actually components of Greek words think poly, micro, or macro. By learning Greek you are discovering the roots of English words and it can be quite fascinating.
Grammar
Everyone's favorite part of language learning, am I right? The good news is that Greek has the same word order (SVO) as in English and other Romance languages. On the other hand, it has three genders, an alphabet that isn't very phonetic, and a case system. Adjectives and adverbs can also be put in odd places in sentences and verbs can have up to 50 forms. On top of all that, Greek is a highly inflected language unlike English which means that words can change form or endings depending on how they are used in a sentence. While Greek grammar seems terrifying it is a satisfying hurdle to jump.
There's a very important saying that applies to all areas in life, "Mindset is everything." How you view something will affect how you approach it, and that's a fact. If you think Greek is going to be a headache then you probably won't stick with it. However, if you flip that mindset upside down, it's doable. What you need is the right approach to learning a language, especially those with a system that has no resemblance to Latin. My advice is if you are interested in the Greek language just go for it.
