3 Best Resources To Learn Greek: An Interview With Easy Greek
This is the first interview of a blog post series about three different resources of great quality, easy to use materials. The trilogy includes materials to watch, listen and read. Two more interviews will follow in the next little while, to conclude this series of 3 Best Resources for Greek learners. Especially if you’re in the Beginner, pre-Intermediate and Intermediate level, you’ll find them most helpful.
For those of you who have been following the blog and my newsletter, you’ve heard me talk before about the Easy Greek YouTube channel or you’ve probably seen me in the episode about perfectionism in speaking.
The videos are a series of 66 episodes to help Greek learners learn Greek through natural, everyday language in the form of short interviews in the streets of Athens and occasionally, other parts of Greece. You can watch them on the Easy Greek YouTube channel, which also includes the 26 additional Super Easy Greek videos, for beginners. You can become a member on their Patreon page, here, for as little as $4 a month.
This interview was taken from Dimitris and Marilena, who are two out of the three members of the Easy Greek team - Fanis is the third member and camera person.
Let’s see what Marilena and Dimitris say about how Easy Greek started, how you can learn with the episodes, where to find them, plus more fun things about them.
NOTE: Part of the interview is found here, but you can watch the whole episode at the bottom of the page. Let’s dive in!
Danae: Today, Dimitris and Marilena stand before the camera and answer our own questions!
Which is their favorite episode?
How many hours are needed for a 10-minute episode of Easy Greek?
Where did they grow up?
Who are the faces behind the team of Easy Greek?
Come with me and we'll discover this and much more, on a fun online meeting.
For a start, how are you? How are you spending these quarantine days?
Dimitris & Marilena: We wake up without an alarm clock... - Rather, we do set an alarm clock which we then turn off. That's the truth. I do, at least (laughs). Let's say that the first two weeks of quarantine we were very excited with all the opportunities we had of doing new things at home.
Marilena: I try to see it as an opportunity for introspection. [...] OK, I don't want this to last any longer, but I feel this was a break that the world/people kind of needed - from the air and sea clearing up to our own mind clearing up. What scares me a little bit is what's gonna happen from now on.
Danae: So, Easy Greek. How did you first get involved with Easy Greek?
Dimitris: Well, Easy Greek - for a start we belong to the larger family of Easy Languages, which started in Germany by the team who does Easy German, Cari and Janusz. I began watching Easy German when I was doing German and preparing for C1. And not a long time had passed before I saw that ''Hey. Easy Greek is also a thing. But the people who are doing Easy Greek only did three episodes and stopped.''
Danae: I remember, those three episodes, and I also thought ''Ah, why aren't there, why aren't there any more? Where are the rest?''
Dimitris: …And because I really liked the idea of Easy Languages, I said ''OK, I have all the skills necessary to begin it myself, because I really like it and it doesn't seem like there's anyone else doing it at the moment.'' It was now, in late April of 2018, that I sent an e-mail to Easy Languages and told them: ''Guys, I like the idea, I want to try...'' I remember it as if it was now. - ''You in?''. And not a day goes by and they said ''yes, we're in.'' And the first episode was Easy Greek 4, ''What's your star sign''. Now we've released a good 89 episodes... and we're not stopping!
Danae: May you reach a hundred*. A thousand to be exact! (laughs) (Greek wish: Να τα εκατοστήσετε! Να τα χιλιάσετε!)
Marilena: Can you imagine?!
Danae: Which is your favorite episode thus far, or what are your favorites, because maybe you can't choose.
Marilena: For me at least there are two categories.
Dimitris: Very hard (to choose)...
Marilena: I mean, there are the episodes we make with Dimitris at home anyway, of which, by necessity, in the quarantine, there are many more of now, and there I enjoyed very much the episode before last, I think, the episode...Which is… Weird Greek food. And another favorite episode, and one of the few times I've done a street interview, was the episode about music. I really liked it a lot.
Dimitris: …the episode ''What's your favorite Greek song''. My own favorite episodes... I think I'd say… the same. As Marilena. That episode was the warmest one.
Danae: You're in full agreement.
Marilena: One of the few times.(laughs) It's the one that warms the heart when I see it.
Dimitris: I also like the episode about ancient Greek, the second one. We made it when we did our Easy Greek meeting. The meetup. - ...in Athens, around Christmas, last Christmas, when we had friends, acquaintances, people, family come - even my mother spoke on the episode. It came as a reply to our first episode on ancient Greek which we made and which is... let's say it's by far the most… the one with the most views, now it's getting close to 400,000 views. But it has a flood of negative comments. I wanted us to make a response. On this path, we, too, learn and improve ourselves.
Danae: Has a supporter of Easy Greek ever appeared on an episode? A friend of Easy Greek?
Dimitris & Marilena: Yes. There have been two of them. - And from around the world.
Dimitris: Two times I can think of right now. One was when we were shooting the episode about What are your plans this summer, last year, we ran into a family that had come to Greece, a family of Greek Americans, and while we were looking for people to talk to, again it was outside the Acropolis museum, we heard, ''Hey, Easy Greek!'' And they recognised us and we talked and we put that on the video in the end and it was amazing.
Marilena: I really like that there's a community forming. I find this - it's my favorite expression - to be a revolutionary act, bringing people closer together through language.
Danae: Behind the camera [...] How many hours (does it take) for a 10-minute episode to reach us all done and ready?
Dimitris: 15-20 hours, at least. Just the editing takes three days...
Marilena: ...what takes the most time is perhaps going through the small mistakes, doing this proofreading, making sure that all the subtitles are correct, and again some things slip past us, and again we have in the comments: ''you know, you made a mistake there'' and... we don't always have the time to make the super-thorough check we should be doing.
Danae: Your (videos) look professional, they are excellent.
Dimitris & Marilena: Thank you very much.
Danae: Have you ever done anything (similar), what's your own background?
Dimitris: I didn't start working with video for Easy Greek. In fact, I first made short videos when I was very little, I liked it. I've been making videos since I was fifteen years old. In my free time. Then I went to university and studied... in the University of the Aegean, I studied Cultural Technology and Communication, and I made - I was never so big on video, I was more into photography and... I would develop Flash applications, which isn't used anymore, but yes, I definitely have some connection with digital media.
Danae: Good. And you, Marilena?
Marilena: No connection. I studied something which I don't know why I studied it. Of course I do not regret it because I had a great time. Business Management in Piraeus University. I work at a travel agency. I'm very good at editing, according to Dimitris.
Dimitris: You have smashing ideas.
Marilena: Yes, I'm not good at pressing the button and shift because I still get confused, but Dimitris will always call me before making the final cut and say: ''Marilou, come tell me your opinion, what we should cut, what to put in''...
Danae: Where can one find you? Why should one find you? What does it mean for one to be a supporter and not just a viewer, a supporter of Easy Greek?
Dimitris: It means... for a start, they can find us on Facebook and Instagram. I think the most important platform after Youtube is Patreon. There, one can become a member of ours for just 4 dollars a month, which is the base plan. We have different tiers: four dollars, ten, twenty, thirty and fifty dollars per month. Everyone gets transcripts for each episode, they get a sheet with vocabulary that we choose ourselves, and then exercises that use that selected vocabulary.
Danae: So it's a complete material related to each episode one can watch. What feedback do the supporters who receive these materials give you?
Dimitris & Marilena: We'd asked them (on Patreon) about the exercises: are they hard, are they boring? Are they ''just right''? What are they? And most people said ''they're great, keep doing what you're doing''!
Thank you for your awesome work and for this interview, Marilena and Dimitris!
Don’t miss the whole interview - watch it below:
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