Thursday 11 October 2018

More Misunderstandings

Here are a couple more examples of the way you can get yourself into a spot of bother if you happen to mispronounce a word when trying out your Greek.

The Greek word for 'offer' is 'prosforah,' whereas the word for 'accent,' as in how someone speaks their own language, is 'proforah.' The only difference is the 's.' In both cases the syllable you stress is the last one. Now, think about this a moment. I was talking to a Greek friend the other day and I wanted to say that I know when I speak Greek I have an accent. So I said, "Eho mia prosforah." Effectively I said I have an offer [for her]. Fortunately, she didn't take that the wrong way!

It would be equally as embarrassing the other way around too. If you're talking to someone and you want to say, in a nice way of course, that they have an accent when they speak your language, you don't really want to be saying, "You have an offer?" Especially if you give the impression that it's a question or an invitation. Be prepared to make a run for it.

Slightly less serious a misunderstanding comes if you want to refer to a hammock. Now, you may be thinking, "it's not that often one wants to say 'hammock' when speaking Greek." But here you might just be wrong, because you'd be amazed how many hammocks can be seen hanging from trees in gardens and beach-side bars over here.

A hammock is 'mia ai-ora' whereas an [or one] hour is 'mia ora.' So, if you want to say "you arrived on time," you actually say in Greek 'you arrived on your hour', since you'd say "irthes stin ora sou." I told someone the other day that they'd arrived in their hammock. I had no idea why they looked at me in that strange way.

Ah, well, onward and upward, eh?

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