Greek Alphabet Cards(labs.randomquark.com)

84 pointsby ricochet1110 hours ago16 comments

nayuki2 hours ago
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.
mwexler7 hours ago
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
- ventana3 hours ago
  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.
- gobdovan6 hours ago
  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.
  - nephihaha5 hours ago
    As I say above, the issue is that modern Greek pronounces some letters very differently. We use the classical pronunciation in maths etc.
    trvz2 hours ago
    Modern Greek is, frankly, irrelevant.
    Ancient Greek is needed to get a full Western education, for reading some of our foundational literature properly.
    nephihaha39 minutes ago
    Why would modern Greek be "irrelevant"? Millions of Greeks and Cypriots speak the language, along with minorities in other countries and a very large and well dispersed diaspora. Greece and Cyprus are major holiday destinations for northern Europeans. There are major writers such as Nikos Kazantzakis who have used modern Greek. Heck, I even like some modern Greek music, and am grateful for it, because it was one of the few things which kept me happy during lockdown.
    You're right in saying Classical (inc. Koine) Greek is far more influential, but modern Greek is not "frankly irrelevant".
    gobdovan4 hours ago
    [flagged]
  - psychoslave2 hours ago
    [dead]
ARandomerDude6 hours ago
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.
- pjmlp5 hours ago
  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.
- nephihaha5 hours ago
  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.
  - wvbdmp5 hours ago
    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.
  - ARandomerDude5 hours ago
    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.
jnmandal6 hours ago
Μπράβο ρε. Πόσο όμορφο
Avijit_Thawani6 hours ago
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.
NooneAtAll35 hours ago
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
jonathanlydall4 hours ago
Very cool. With English there is Letterland which seems quite similar at a glance.
https://letterland.com/
BigTTYGothGF2 hours ago
I never understood what was supposed to be so hard about Greek letters.
- psychoslave2 hours ago
  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.
EstanislaoStan7 hours ago
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.
- stavros5 hours ago
  Yeah these cards have modern Greek words on them.
iandanforth6 hours ago
I have similar projects in mind. How were these printed?
romeinaday6 hours ago
no download or buy link?
russum5 hours ago
Are there good sets out there for other languages: English, German, etc?
- unkeen5 hours ago
  This is about memorizing foreign letters.
  - BobAliceInATree4 hours ago
    No it's not. It's about teaching letter forms to kids.
    unkeen4 hours ago
    … 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.
    yorwba3 hours ago
    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.
    unkeen2 hours ago
    "We live abroad in China, and Greek is one of three languages my kids are learning."
vazma5 hours ago
Very nice, I can borrow the idea to teach also my kids :)
metaphor34 minutes ago
During undergrad years, IFC fraternity pledges had to memorize the Greek alphabet for obvious reasons. This is how the capital letters were taught amongst bros.
```
  A BRA
  EZ HO
  I KAM
  NEON
  PETY
  OXY O
```
qzgrid375 hours ago
[dead]
epilys7 hours ago
> 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.
- EstanislaoStan7 hours ago
  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?
  - tokai6 hours ago
    Search for Greek Flashcards.
    EstanislaoStan6 hours ago
    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?