Language, Part 1

During my first month in Greece, lack of understanding (of Greek) led me to zone out all the time. My brain just started ignoring everything, assuming it wouldn't know what it meant. I'd find myself in outerspace even when speaking with English speakers, like my roommate, Lizzie. Greek class has finally begun, and I'm feeling a little more in tune. I latch onto key words here and there and pat myself for understanding them.

Greek class: Seven of us meet twice a week for an hour and a half with Angeliki, a spunky, beautiful Greek woman in her thirties. I adore her. She brings a very relaxed and fun vibe to the class, while pushing us enough so that we're progressing.

Before class began, I was feeling a little apathetic about learning Greek. Why? Because after this year, I will probably never hear, let alone need to speak Greek again. So it's easy to feel like putting effort into learning Greek is a waste of time. However, the language class has re-sparked my interest. Now that I have a teeny tiny grasp of the language, I want to learn more and more.

On day 1 (we've had four classes thus far) Angeliki zoomed through the alphabet and began writing in Greek immediately.  "Woah lady, slow down" was my initial reaction, and I felt quite frustrated. But this has forced me to learn the alphabet, and now I feel like I've almost got it down. I don't know exactly what goes on in the brain when humans learn new alphabets, but I'd love to find out. It's gotta be good for you. It's exciting to walk around and look at signs and decipher what the words on them sound like. What they mean, well, that's a whole other story.

What they mean is fascinating. Roots of English words are everywhere you look, so it's exciting to study the language from an etymological perspective, even if I won't converse in it much post 2011. There's something extremely satisfying about making connections between English words and their Greek roots: For example, the word for children in Greek is pedi. Like pediatrician!

Other fun connecty words:

Catharsis -to purge

Schizo - to split

Anthras - man 

Xenothoxio-  hotel- place where foreigners (xeno) stay

I could keep going, but English derives around 50,000 words in its lexicon from Greek, and I don't want to get carried away..

I've been listening to "Language Addicts: Greek" (from itunes) while I walk to work (when I'm not crossing at busy intersections and worrying about how not to get killed). I've learned a lot of basic adjectives and nouns this way, although they're kinda random. (Oseedaxeeooho. The pensioner, male.)

Greek has 34 centuries of written records. It may not be popular, but it has some serious staying power. It came much before our Latin alphabet, which came from IT. I must remember, when I get frustrated that the Greek letter for the r sound (ro) looks like what we call P, that this is how it was first. This fact also makes the Greek alphabet quite interesting - it's about a third the same letters we use for the same sounds, a third letters we use for totally different sounds, and a third totally different letters, (and for some totally different sounds, such as "gh" sound or "x" sound - h.) And they dont have a letter for b sound. Or j. James is pronounced Tzames.

Not knowing the language is a pretty serious handicap, even when almost everyone can speak English. I can't begin to imagine how frustrating it must be to only speak a language that isn't commonly known. Not knowing depletes your confidence and you just can't do the things you normally would. Shopping becomes this strange tango of hoping people will not approach you and speak and psyching yourself up to go ask for what you need. I've begun to rely on "Ummmmm," which Greeks don't use as a staller. Instead they say, "eennnhhh" or "ahhh" to fill the space between words.

I've been in touch with a private tutor and am going to try and set up a lesson for this coming week.
Should be fluent soon.