Koine Greek Whatsapp group

[Friedrich de Wet]

Hi guys

I started whatsapp groups to chat in Koine Greek. There is a group for beginners and a group for more advanced writers (maybe later on I'll start an intermediate group). If you are interested in joining one of the groups, or both, send me a personal message. The more the merrier.

[Jason Hare]

Can you give an example of how WhatsApp can be used for language learning?

I'm not sure that it would be worth getting messages while you're sleeping.

I mean, if someone sends a voice message while you're sleeping on the other side of the world (which might wake some people up), then you want to respond when you're awake, you might have twenty messages from other people waiting to be listened to; you might miss the most important (for you) message in the conversation.

I'm just not sure about how learning can be structured with WhatsApp. Does it focus on reading and writing? Voice messages? Videos?

I'm interested in the idea, but I don't know how it's done.

[Friedrich de Wet]

Hi Jason

People can probably implement it in many ways that are helpful for them. At the moment we chat primarily with text messages (we do not use voice messages, since some people do not have the same accents). Every now and again we might post a small video with a textual description of what's happening. It is easier with text messages to scan through and see what you are interested in. Although, at this stage there is not a lot of traffic that you might be over burdened. You can always mute the group so that you won't be woken up.

We only started the group very recently, so it's still experimentation. I'm curious to see how we can do it better and better.

[Josue]

How can I join this WhatsApp group to practice Koine Greek?

[Paul-Nitz]

I've been experimenting with Greek on WhatsApp for a while now and learned a few things.

One on one text conversations can work well. One Greek-WhatsApp interesting conversation I had was about conversion with an Afrikaner Calvinist (a long conversation, as you might imagine - I'm an old-fashioned, confessional Lutheran).

Groups are more difficult. A mismatch of ability can cause frustration. It needs a "driver" to keep the conversation going.

But the most important thing to make this, or any exchange, both enjoyable and useful for learning language is that
it must have a true communicative purpose.

That's why the conversation about conversion worked. I knew that my Calvinist friend had only ever heard the Arminian/Calvin sides and not my illogical Lutheran view of conversion. I had a real communicative purpose in mind and he had interest in hearing it and negotiating meaning.

Telling a story or sharing news or debating doctrine could all have true communicative purpose. Even getting together to talk about the weather actually works, if you are truly interested in hearing about the weather. (See Textkit 7-Year long discussion of weather in Greek - https://textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/v ... start=3280 )

What does NOT work is things like this: ἐγώ εἰμι ἀνήρ. τὸ ὄνομα μου ἐστιν Paul Nitz. You know that stuff already, and besides, it's really boring.

An ideal situation would be to connect two people whose only common language is Koine. That really opens up the possibilities for genuine communication.