An Athenian Diary

3

A" mavqoume ellhnikav!

("Let's Learn Greek!")

Every afternoon at 1.00 I climb the steps off Archimidous Street (yes, it's named for the famous Archimedes) into the Athens Centre. The doorway leads to a central courtyard brilliant in the early afternoon sun reflected off marble paving; bougainvillea crowd the sides of the buildings. Around the tables with umbrellas to ward off the sun sprawl the students, waiting for classes to begin. They are a motley group, mostly young, mostly American, probably not terribly well off, still radiating the excitement of youth and freedom in a foreign country. I talked with one young woman the other day who is from East Haven, and is in Athens for a language emersion course paid for by a government agency. (I think she may be in the Army.) There are one or two older students like me, shyer, or quieter, sitting in the corners.

My teacher Maria can't be too much older than the typical students. She grew up in Patras, almost at the far western tip of the Peloponnesos, a town I remember from my last visit almost twenty years ago as a hustling, bustling, no-nonsense port city. Maria's made her escape from family ties to live in Paris and now Athens; having studied ancient Greek and taught in a lykeion (the upper high school that Greeks must choose to attend if they want a gateway to higher education), she now supplements – or makes – her living teaching Greek to xenoi (foreigners) like me. On Fridays Maria disappears mysteriously, replaced by Rosa, a considerably older woman who straddles old Greece and new (but perhaps more about her another time).

The class has seen a lot of changes in the week I've attended. It's Intensive Level III, which means supposedly one knows already a basis of the language and a reasonable vocabulary. I wasn't at all sure that was where I belonged, but after some conversation Maria assured me that this was the level for me. For the first two days it was just the two of us, which was nice – she's a skilled teacher and I could feel the Greek burgeoning in my head. Then two more students showed up, a retired American and a British woman perhaps in her late thirties who'd lived five years in Croatia and had picked up some Greek also at some point. The dynamics changed – and not entirely for the better. Some adjustments had to be made; students moved up and down the ladder of classes; till Friday, when I walked into classes, both my classmates had been removed to Level II, and it was just me, and the formidable but utterly delightful Rosa. Later, though, my British colleague returned, and the class settled into a nice rhythm of the three of us, me and Jane and Maria or Rosa.

I've studied modern Greek off and on over the years. When we first lived in Athens I took private lessons with Edie and several of our friends; one by one, as the pressure of the American School program rose, folks dropped out, and I too became an irregular, and finally absent, presence. (I think Edie stuck it out, along with two others, much longer.) I've had lessons subsequently both in the US and in Greece, and taught myself a fair amount of grammar to read articles for my work. But I've never been in a situation where I could really learn to speak and understand anything beyond simple exchanges in stores or museums. This time I'm determined to make a good go of it – the lessons are really helpful, I've been reading the paper as often as I can, and trying to watch TV and listen to the radio. The hardest part is finding the time just to go off into Athens and have conversations. A friend who spent many years in Morocco told me he'd mastered his Arabic by spending several hours a day in a café, eavesdropping on conversations; eventually, become a regular, the other regulars began to include him in their circles, and he spoke and listened and learned. The model is ideal but harder to follow for me in Kolonaki where the cafes charge 3 euros for a coffee and I have obligations here at the School and at home. But there are many months ahead, and still three full weeks of my intensive lessons – so we'll see where I am in a month!

Update. It's been three weeks now since classes started. I've learned a lot -- that's absolutely clear -- but my chief frustration remains the same: I have a devil of a time understanding when ordinary people speak. Partly it's a matter of vocabulary and idiom, but another big element is the extraordinary velocity with which people speak. Really, if the energy expelling those words from mouths could be harnessed it could propel rockets to the moon! We have tapes and I listen repeatedly to the same conversations (they make no concessions to beginners) and even after five listenings there are still blocks of words I just can't distinguish. Everyone I talk with about this -- including my classmate Jane, whose comprehension is really very strong -- assures me that time will do the trick. Okay time, get to work! I'll be taking Level IV of Greek immediately after this class, and I have heard that it's the place where people often make a breakthrough, because there's not much new to learn -- just practice, conversation, repetition. I overheard some level 4 students talking the other day and I was impressed with their obvious fluency and ease. I'll report back in a month or so.

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