Category: language

Although I was passively exposed to Spanish growing up in Texas, the first language I started learning was Greek—koine Greek to be precise. My father had “taken” it in college, and while he didn’t retain much of it even over summer break, he wanted to spark my interest in it at an early age. He taught me the alphabet and a few key words, and he even made a little quiz for me, to test my rudimentary Greek knowledge.

I was proud of my accomplishments, and soon began studying Greek as part of my schoolwork, going through the series of workbooks called Hey Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! (That’s the beauty of homeschooling—your study options are limitless!) The Hey Andrew! books were good, but went along at a dreadfully slow pace. I felt like it would be forever before I got to learn about adjectives! But by the time I went through the whole series, I had a good knowledge of Greek grammar. I think they may have even added another level since I finished.

At university, I wanted to minor in Greek New Testament, but I was afraid that the first basic classes would just be a boring review of things I already knew. So I had a talk with the Bible faculty, and arranged to take a special test to see if I was ready for second-year Greek classes. I brushed up on my Greek skills, and easily passed the test. So it was that I was taking Greek 3 as a freshman! From there I took all the Greek classes that my university offered, and quite enjoyed it. Read More

I love Greek. It has an awesome alphabet, cool cases, and a long legacy, and despite rumours to the contrary, it’s a living and growing language up to this day. It’s not quite my favourite language, but it’s right on up there, and over these next several days I’m finally getting around to improving my abilities in this noble and ancient tongue.

Of late my language learning has been kind of sporadic. Officially I am working on Nahuatl, in preparation for an upcoming trip to Mexico, and since a Korean sister in Christ has offered to help me with Korean once a week, I’ve been doing that. However, in general I haven’t been very focused or diligent in either Nahuatl or Korean lately for various reasons.

However, this time next week is the annual Atlanta Greek Festival, and since I enjoyed it last year, I would very much like to go again–and that means speaking Greek!

I have an interesting relationship with Greek. We got acquainted when I was quite young–in fact it was one of the first languages I ever studied, and I took special pride in being the only 10-year old I knew of who could parse Greek verbs. Nowadays I read from the Greek New Testament every day, and write in my study journal in Greek. I’m also currently reading the medieval epic Digenes Akritas, which is its own unique flavour of Greek. But the sad part is that I really cannot speak Greek, despite all this knowledge of the language!

Last year at the Greek Festival, I made a special effort to ask around and see if I could find somebody who spoke Greek. But when I found those people, I felt woefully inadequate as my brain protested “You want me to speak what? After filling me up with Nahuatl?”

But not this time! As a long-time lover and learner of Greek, I am going to try hard during these next seven days to review my basic knowledge of Modern Greek, form sentences aloud, and practice phrases that would be useful when meeting someone for the first time. It will be challenging, but I think with some effort I will feel much more prepared to go to the Greek Festival and enjoy it much more than last year!

Γνῶσις τῆς γλώσσης ἢ θάνατος!