"Why Modern Greek?" This is a question that I've been asked before about my, if I can flatter myself, Quixotic endeavor. When I was in high school, I tried to teach myself Classical Greek, but failed. In trying to figure out why I failed, I arrived at the conclusion, probably in further retrospect incorrect - the root problem was lack of diligence, that my failure was due to me being a very aural person. And, so I figured, since I couldn't hear the language I was handicapped in learning it.

I decided to start studying Modern Greek as a means of quickly learning the language and then assuming that it would be easy to learn the classical language once the modern had been mastered. This logic was flawed in both its premises Modern Greek is not an easy language to learn -- though perhaps easier in morphology to classical Greek, and learning the classical language, once the modern one is learned plus the difficulties of learning the modern language itself is probably greater than learning the classical language directly. Roughly:

While,
[Modern Greek] < [Classical].
Unfortunately,
[Modern Greek] + [Modern to Classical] > [Classical Alone]

So, if I'm not learning Modern Greek as a means of learning the classical language then why? Firstly, it IS a means of learning Ancient Greek, just not the most efficient. I still plan on learning both. But Modern Greek is a wonderful language, with a wonderful urban folk music, ρεμπέτικο, many world class, Nobel prize winning poets and is the native language of one of my favorite authors, Kazantzakis (Καζαντζάκης).