Normally when we travel to a new place we struggle with the typical things like: what should we order from a restaurant? where is the hotel? Do you tip taxi drivers? In Athens, however, we had an entirely new problem to contend with… Greek. I never thought having to memorize the Greek alphabet as part of my initiation into my business fraternity would actually be worth something. Turns out that all those days of reciting the Greek alphabet backwards and forwards really paid off here. My only regret is that they only taught us the capital letters. Thanks ΔΣΠ!
Test your Greek alphabet knowledge and sound out this phrase: BUΛΛΔOΓΣ PUΛE!
Yes, I am aware that even if you understand the alphabet you probably still can’t communicate with the natives. But it is really difficult just reading street signs and maps if your brain cannot process how a word is pronounced. The Greek alphabet just looks so foreign and strange that sometimes the only thing I could do to navigate is to sound words out on the map and on the street signs and see if they sounded the same. A lot of the streets signs were in Greek, and the map I had was only in English.
For those who don’t know, the Greek alphabet goes something like this (yes, it is in order): Α (alpha), Β (beta), Γ (gamma), Δ (delta), Ε (epsilon), Ζ (zeta), Η (eta), Θ (theta), Ι (iota), Κ (kappa), Λ (lamda), Μ (mu), Ν (nu), Ξ (xi), Ο (omicron), Π (pi), Ρ (rho), Σ (sigma), Τ (tau), Υ (upsilon), Φ (phi), Χ (chi), Ψ (psi), Ω (omega). Whew! Now throw in the lowercase letters: αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρσςτυφχψωf, and you can see where it might get very difficult to decipher. All of these letters are pronounced in ways that for the most part correspond to pronunciations in English, only they are represented by different symbols. For example, Φ is pronounced like ‘f’ or ‘ph’, while Λ is pronounced like ‘L’.
It helped a lot to be able to pronounce Greek words, because by sounding the words out we were often able to guess the meaning. As a result of our efforts we discovered that a lot of words in the English language have Greek roots, like Pharmacy (ΦAPMAKY). I have always been interested by language, and have often thought that if I had a second calling it would be as a linguist (too bad I don’t know any foreign languages, but that is a minor detail). For anyone with similar interests, Greece is certainly a boon for armchair linguistics.
The answer, by the way, is a simple truth – Bulldogs Rule!
P.S. Joe should be posting about our experiences in Athens any day now!