Useful Phrases

My boyfriend and I have recently joined his father on a trip to Greece. We started in Kavala to attend his cousin’s wedding and flew from there to Athens then continued by car to his father’s home town, a little village in the Lakonia prefecture.

In Kavala, we had several of his relatives around who, thankfully, spoke a least a little English, and when we drove out to stay in the province his aunt and uncle were present and happy to translate for us. Unfortunately, they left a couple of days ago to return to the US, stranding us with my bf’s father and grandmother (yiayia). Eager to communicate with his yiayia, who is funny and delightful and our hostess while we stay in the village, we’ve tried to talk to her on a simple level using just the little Greek we know (”Hello” “How are you?” “It’s hot today” “I’d like some coffee” “Would you like any water?” “Where is George?” and the like). She’s too vivacious for bland conversation though, so she takes off on random tangents about all the relatives in the village and surrounding area, vacations, vocations, meals and snacks and we have no idea what else. His dad refuses to translate for us, and refused to stop in Athens to let us look for a phrasebook, so we bought the only phrasebook we found within a 25km radius of the village: the “English – Greek Dialogue for the English Speaking Tourist”.

The British and Greek flags on the cover signal that you’ll encounter UK spellings and grammar (”tire” as “tyre”, “Do you have a toilet?” as “Have you a toilet?”), but the text below the title (”Over 1400 carefully chosen phrases. Over 1500 useful words.”) is misleading and the claim about having conversion tables and a comprehensive index is a downright lie. Perhaps the tables and index were supposed to be printed on the 7 blank pages at the end of the book.

Although it could be worse, the book is poorly edited and outdated, has multiple spelling errors and foregoes phrases like “How do you say … in Greek?”, “What do you call this?” and “How am I related to this person?” for phrases like “Do you sell harpoon guns?” (Poulate psarotoufeka?), “We deliver with one month credit” (fortonoume me pistosi enos mina), and “Is it possible to find a chess board?” (Boroume na vroume mia skakiera?)

Thankfully, we found a computer repair store in a nearby village which offers internet access for 4,50 Euros an hour on two desktops running Ubuntu in the back of the shop. After checking my email and updating my status on Facebook, I started searching for Greek language websites and found the Greek page at omniglot.com with the essential phrase “To hoverkráft mou íne gemáto hélia” or “My hovercraft is full of eels.” Hopefully, with a little more practice I won’t have to say “It’s all Greek to me.” Instead I’ll use “Íne gia ména kinézika.” (”It’s Chinese to me.”)

For even more fun, check out their “‘Useful’ Phrases” page.