How Greeks do Banks

In the UK, the bank manager lives in a wee room at the back. You never get to see her.

In Greece, the bank manager has to be a man (legally) and is always stationed on the (large) desk nearest the window so that everyone can see his status.


Generally, a large desk seems to be a highly valued accessory for any worker. We think that a large desk indicates seriousness and importance, which is heavily valued.

Learn Greek:

1. The Desk = τo θρaνio (to thra-nee-oh)
2. My Desk is the biggest = τo θρaνio μou εivai τo μεγaλητερo (to thra-neeo mou ee-nai to mega-leetero)

One thing about learning Greek is getting over the fact that they miss out vowels where a regular civilised person would expect a vowel to be.

Look at this sign for a vet. The Greek word for vet Kτηνaτρεio starts with a K and a T, which are letters that sound the same in English.
If the British were inventing a word like this we would force ourselves to insert at least a little "i" as a proper division between two hard vowels.

But not this mob.

They just batter right on. K-Teen-ee-ah-tree-oh.

Nutty as a fruit cake. But you get used to it.

Crime Scene

So we finally got exposed to the Kalymnos crime scene this week when a little local incident resulted in a trip to the police station to make a report plus visits to the neighbours to ask them to keep an eye out.

It's good for our Greek. We now know the words for "thief", "electric drill" and "together we must protect our houses."

Time of The Fat Watermelon

Learn Greek time again.

Watermelon = Kaρπouζi (Karpouzi)

At the moment there is a glut of watermelons from Kos and Rhodes and the price is down to 40 cents/kilo. You can get a big fat karpouzi for €3.

Selecting a good one is a local skill and a matter of pride.



We have a lot of watermelon = Eχouμe πoλi kaρπouζi (Echoume poli karpouzi)


See?

Easy!

Learn Greek - letter Ψ

Ψ is the letter Psi.
It begins words like

τo ψaρo (to psaro) - the fish
n ψeυτιa (i psevtia) - the lie
ψaλλω (psallo) - I sing

It's a letter that just doesn't exist in the Roman alphabet we use for English but it's pretty easy to remember if you think about Poseidon, the old Greek God of the Sea.

Look at Poseidon's trident... it's a big letter Psi - Ψ and his name starts with Ps - P'seidon - and he's in charge of all the fish - ola ta psari.

See?

Easy!

By the way, we're learning with Pimsleur Greek language course and it really is very good.

Learn Greek - word for WOOD

OK - Time for another lesson in the world's least intensive Greek course.

Today - it's the word for wood - xylos.

In small Greek letters this is ξyloς.

In capitals: ΞYLOΣ

The picture above is a sign for a ΞYΛOYPΓEION - which is xylourgeion or wood-work shop. There's quite a few of these places on Kalymnos, churning out doors and windows and shelf units and so on.


Xylos is pretty easy to remember as being the word for wood because xylophones are made out of wood.



See?

Easy!

Learn Greek - letter Δ and word for street

OK, here we go again with the world's least intensive Greek course.
Today we see that ODOS mean road. Yeah - that triangle is called "delta" and it's kind of like the letter D.

You pronounce it with your tongue-tip against your front teeth so it sounds almost like "th" but not as soft. Like "this" rather than "thing".

Anyway - you can remember that Δ is a D because of the name delta. A river delta is a triangle. Δ is for Delta, see?

And you can remember that odos is the the word for road because of odometers - the posh name for a mileometer on your car dashboard.

Just how on Earth NTAPΓOYIN = Darwin, we'll have to deal with another day.

Until next time - don't study too much!

Learn Greek with Paul and Nicole

Right.

We've been here for five months and our Greek is shocking. Maybe some effort is required. You can learn with us.

But, as they say, siga-siga, which means "slowly"

So let's learn - a bit at a time. Let's start of with the word for chemist or pharmacy.

There it is - Farmakeio. Pretty much the same word as pharmacy.

See? Easy!

Stick with us - and you'll learn Greek in no less than ten years.

Day 14 - The Unfussy Tortoise and The Gay Bishop

Down in the yard, Michael feeds tins of dog-food to his cats and informs us that these seemingly disinterested moggies are in fact very fussy about their brands. Apparently, the kittens Nectarios and Avramopolous eat Fleshy while Sally, their mother, only eats Rockus, possibly because Rockus is for grown up dogs.



The wild tortoise who has no name and who is a frequent visitor to the garden is not fussy and tucks into some spare Fleshy before peeing and crawling off to hide under one of Michael’s tables of junk. The number of different types of animals we have witnessed pee in our lives increases by one.

We learn that Nectarios kitten is named after Bishop Nectarios who was apparently “demoted” by the Greek Orthodox Church when they discovered he was a homosexual. People round here, we are told, refer to him as The Sultana of the Aegean.


Interesting Greek language fact #2: There are only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet and three of them make exactly the same sound: “ee”.