Modern Greek

We don't get a lot about this one, just wondering... One of my friends will be in Greece this summer and she's wondering how difficult it is to learn Greek... She's trying to decide if it'd be fun to start learning, learn some 'important' phrases right before she goes (where's the bathroom, etc.), or forget about it and hope they speak English.

Thanks!

She could try BBC languages "Talk Greek" if she just wants "tourist" language. It's available for free on the internet.

Yes, I think it would be fun for her.

She could try a book for kids like "Your First 100 Words in Greek" from the library (with CD, hopefully) and then move on to basic phrases she'll need to order especially in smaller cities in Greece.

Greek people like it when you know some Greek. It shows respect for their culture to do something like this as a minimum.

I'm trying to take up Modern Greek right now. So far, it's proven to be a very fun, intuitive language when it comes to learning and speaking. It's much more regular than I expected. It does have a few features that differ significantly from English, but there's been a large enough influence from French, Italian and English that you will usually find enough borrowings to get your bearings in the conversation.

There's another book in the same series as 'Your First 100 Words in Greek' that I've been using. I think it's 'Learn to Read and Speek Greek for Beginners'. I like it, to a point. It isn't very comprehensive; you can learn how to say your name, where you are from, how many mice there are under the table and what you want at the cafe, but it never teaches you how to ask 'how are you?' (ti kaneis;). I doesn't get into the nitty-gritty about inflection, cases and whatnot, but it's not really for hardcore grammarians anyways.

So, yeah. Basic conversational Greek is easy enough to learn with that much time to prepare.