I’ve got a short article for you today, but it’s a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. Let’s say you’ve practiced Greek for months, painstakingly drilled your verbs and vocabulary in anticipation of an authentic Greek summer, but everyone with a thick Greek accent automatically defaults to speaking English every time you lead off with a well-practiced question or phrase.
First off, it’s important to be looking for locals in the right places. All of the employees in the service industry, whether it be in hotels, restaurants, or car rental companies, all speak perfect or near-perfect English, and they’re just as eager to practice their English as you are to practice your Greek. In my opinion, conducting intermediate to advanced conversations with these people is a fool’s errand, and it’ll find you repeating yourself or being forced to switch back to English at the first instance of confusion.
In that same vein, it’s important to be intentional about where you’re traveling to in the first place. If you’re choosing to spend your vacation in places like Athens, Mykonos, Santorini and Paros, you need to pivot if your goal is to engage with “real Greeks in the real Greece.” Of course, you’ll find the highest concentration of ethnic Greeks in these places, but they’re all busy sharing their hospitality with visitors from all over the world, whose common lingua franca is, of course, the English language.
So here’s what you do. Pick a less tourist-y island or regional city and go to one of those village stores that only sells garden tools or flowers or pastries and fire away. I guarantee you those locals don’t speak a word of English, and the only way to communicate at all with them is to use Greek or mime everything – whichever yields the best results.
Village churches are also excellent places to practice your Greek, since church attendance is dominated by the older generations, who are much less likely to speak English. Just last week, my brothers and I went to Church in Triavasalos, Milos, and spent an hour chatting with the locals during coffee hour. Once they heard us speaking decent Greek with a distinctly American accent (despite my best attempts to honor the phonetics of the language) the local γιαγιάδες flocked to hear our names and where we were from.
That’s pretty much the extent of my practical advice. By taking this approach, you’ll be putting yourself in a position to meet some amazing Greek locals who want nothing more than to share their business with someone new or hear about life in America. The nation of our ancestors is filled with fascinating, welcoming, hospitable people; it’s time we meet them where they’re at and reconnect like we mean it.
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