A Reading Strategy for intermediate students, so that you can understand complex sentences better
Recently, I started studying Spanish again. It’s fun to try to discover the meaning of new words, although reading at the intermediate level comes with its challenges.
I know most of the words, but the ones I don’t, can sometimes make the whole paragraph incomprehensible. Other times, even if I do know all the words, reading them together in a large sentence is what makes it confusing. That’s when I feel lost.
When it comes to Greek, there is a strategy you can use to help you read effectively at the intermediate level, so that you can understand what you are reading with more ease.
I’m sharing this from both teacher’s & learner’s point of view, without using too much grammar terminology, just the basics.
Let’s dive right in!
Step 1: Verbs
When you are reading a complex sentence, start with the main verbs.
Why? Because Greek sentences depend on the verb: you get a lot of information out of it, because this is the word that shows you the action, the time (present, past, future) and, potentially, the person / subject of the sentence.
Focusing first on the verb helps you break down a complex structure. A good old dictionary can help you with understanding the meaning or you can use Readlang to translate single words when reading online.
(A tip & a downside: Readlang works only on Chrome. If you are on Chrome, install the extension and start clicking on any word you’d like to translate in a Greek text: the app translates it immediately and even creates flashcards for you.)
When you have identified the verbs and have a very general idea of what is happening, move to the next step.
Step 2: Smaller chunks
Now start with breaking down the sentence into smaller chunks. In Greek, you have either commas that help you do that or conjunctions, such as: γιατί, επειδή, όταν, άλλωστε etc.
It’s also helpful to separate each of the sentences starting with a conjunction and create even smaller chunks with only one verb: these are usually the “subordinate clauses” (“δευτερεύουσες προτάσεις”), which, in practice, add more information to the story.
The Greek language is particularly …“notorious” for its large sentences, where the use of the subordinate clauses is very frequent.
Real life example: I keep stopping myself from adding more and more commas when writing this very paragraph. I use full stops. Because that’s what we do in English - but not in Greek!
Step 3: The subject - who is doing what?
Now that we have the smaller chunks down, let’s focus on the subject of each sentence.
Normally, the subject is in the nominative case - the “naming” case of any noun: Το δέντρο, η πόλη, ο ήλιος.
However, it can also be any adjective (e.g. ο καλός, η έξυπνη, το γρήγορο), pronoun (e.g. αυτός, εμείς, etc.), and even a whole sentence, usually starting with the article “το”, such as: “Το να περπατάς καθημερινά κάνει καλό” (Walking everyday is beneficial).
As well, there can be no apparent subject - it can be “integrated” in the verb’s ending, which is distinct for each grammatical person. An example: “περιμένουμε” signifies “εμείς”, which is the subject.
The subject is then assumed, instead of actually found in the sentence. By knowing the subject, (apparent or not) you can understand who/what does (or is) what.
Step 4: Adjectives and participles
In sentences in general, but especially in literature, you’ll find a lot of descriptive words. These are beautiful and add to the story, but they can be an extra challenge, especially when you need to open the dictionary for each one of them.
I remember trying to read Tolkien’s Two Towers in English, about 20 years ago. It was impossible, and I gave up. The amount of adjectives and descriptions he used was way above my English level at the time.
What can you do, in order not to give up, though? First, unlike me, be patient 😄. Next, try to focus on the nouns first, and then the adjectives.
The nouns set the foundation, and the adjectives or the participles (which often in Modern Greek are used in the same way) are a bit like ornaments. When you feel overwhelmed by a large, complex sentence, try to understand first the nouns, and then all the words that describe them.
Step 5: Colloquialisms and filler words
Often, these are the ones that cause the most confusion, not just in Greek, but to any language. These are also the most challenging to navigate in a text. Why? Because each individual word means something different. It’s the phrase that matters.
In my new project Ιστολόγιο | The Greek Blog for learners, you’ll find original articles in Greek, where such phrases are underlined. This draws your attention to the whole phrase, not just to single words.
In other authentic texts, for example news articles, where you don’t have such clues, you can try to target these phrases by elimination: when you’ve broken down most of the sentence and figured out the verbs, the subject, or the adjectives, then it is possible to identify them.
Once you do, you can use my absolute favourite online language tool: WordReference.com, which is the most accurate application I know for Greek. WordReference very often includes not just the meaning of single words, but also examples with colloquial expressions.
In short:
Focus on the verbs first
Break the sentence in smaller chunks
Find the subject: who/what is doing what?
Explore the adjectives & participles that are used for a more detailed description
Identify, if you are able, the colloquialisms and filler words
How about trying what you’ve learned with an actual Greek text? Choose one of yours that you find a pit puzzling, or head to Ιστολόγιο | The Greek Blog to read the new Greek article and put in practice what you learned today. Let me know how it goes!
Thank you for learning with me,
~ Danae
