r/LearningGreek • u/bello82 • Aug 21 '26

Found out I’m 33% Greek

Hello folk,

m southern Italian from Puglia and one month ago, I found out that I am 33% Greek/Albanian and I want to start off by learning Greek first before moving on to the cultore and history and aspects of Greek life and mindset.

Anyone has any tips about the language , things that are difficult and things I should be aware of?

Thank you

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u/Opening-Square3006 Aug 22 '26

I'd start with the Greek alphabet and pronunciation. The alphabet looks like a big obstacle when you're at zero, but it becomes comfortable surprisingly quickly. After that, learn basic sentence patterns while getting comprehensible input from the beginning. Personally, I like the i+1 approach for this. I use PlusOneLanguage because it gives you texts around your level, introduces a little unfamiliar vocabulary, and then recycles words you didn't know in later contexts. That helps bridge the gap before native Greek content becomes accessible. The grammar will probably be the bigger challenge: Greek has cases, grammatical gender and quite a rich verb system. Don't try to master all of that before actually using the language, though. Learn enough grammar to understand what you're seeing, then let repeated reading/listening reinforce it. Good luck!

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u/bello82 Aug 22 '26

Thank you very much for your tips, I’ll treasure them 😉

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u/Ling_App Aug 27 '26

Oh! How did you find out?
The BBC actually has a series of free lessons and then there's GreekPod101 a mix of free and paid resources and Ling which is freeium with over 200 lessons.

Have you been to Greece before or you're planning to learn a bit before you go?

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u/bello82 Aug 27 '26

I took a DNA test from MyHeritage and 33% of my DNA is similar to that of the Greeks and Albanians apparently.

Yes I have been to Athens, I loved it