Steve's Blog of the Bizarre

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Grr... Lost my post - Greek lessons!

Blogger went on maintenaince while I was writing a post a couple of days ago (which I stupidly didn't copy first, blah blah) so this is vaguely what I was writing about:

Multi-lingual uni madness!

My flat is made up of 2 Greeks, 1 Spaniard and 2 English (including myself). We went on a flat expedition last week to Mykonos Café - a Greek café near the uni - to watch the football: Panathinaikos v. Bremen. The first language in the café, certainly on such an occasion as this, seems to be Greek with about 2 native English speakers there (I say about 2, probably just 2: me and my flatmate Chloe). Great opportunity to practise my non-existent Greek then! Well, I learnt how to say "This seat is taken". Quite useful really. Well, at least when you are in a Greek café full of Greek people. Not something you would just walk up to someone and say. Other linguistic achievements of the night: wrote text messages in Spanish to mysteriously disappearing flatmate; spoke French with someone from my course (who is Greek...); spoke English! To my sister! (no, really?!)

I do know some useful things in Greek though: "Good morning", "Good evening" (not "Goodbye", though but "Ciao" works as well as in most European languages), "My name is Steve", "Do you speak English?". And perhaps most usefully, learnt yesterday after a couple of hours of listening to Greek while reading for one of my courses, "Speak English!". All that and the words for "kitchen" and "swimming pool". Doesn't really make for amazing conversation yet, but I've got a year to learn (and study and work at Argos (again) and write a dissertation - not much to do really). Although there is apparently a Chinese guy who's more advanced than me - though that seems to be out of neccessity as the other 6 people in his flat are Greek...

Anyway, for any Greek speakers out there:
Καλημέρα. Είμαι ο Steve. Μιλάτε Αννλικά;

Yep. Profound.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home