For anyone going to Greece this summer for the first time, kalos irthes (welcome) to the language laboratory! Most Greeks in restaurants and shops speak English, but a few words such as please (parakalo) and thank you (evcharisto – think of the Eucharist, ‘We give thanks’) won’t go amiss and will probably open wider the already open doors of courtesy.
What you don’t want is to appear like the apocryphal Englishman in Crete who rode down the village street on a donkey, waving to the locals and calling out Kalamari! Kalamari! He thought their hysterical laughter was their way of thanking him for his greeting. It was. But instead of – as he supposed – saying good day, (kalimera) he was actually declaiming ‘Squid! Squid!’, which isn’t the right thing at all, unless you are ordering your dinner.
Although nai (pronounced ne) looks like a negative, it is the Greek for yes; and the opposite, ochi, may sound a bit like the affirmative, but means no. And don’t worry if someone asks ‘Pou?’. It isn’t what it sounds like. It just means he is asking you ‘Where?’ Most modern Greek is related to the classical language which is so rarely taught these days (Belvedere boys excepted). I recently saw some tourists puzzling over a sign at a gateway which read Idiotikos oikos. Oikos means house, from which we get “economics”. But what is an idiotic house? Is the house itself stupid? Or is the owner a bit loopy? A lunatic asylum, perhaps? No: an “idiot” in Greece means what it has always meant – a private person, and the sign merely announced that the house was private property.
As the season changed last month from spring to summer, most shops were displaying a sign saying Telos epokes. Telos, as all teleologists will know, means the end, but why are shops announcing the end of an epoch? No one really thinks that history is about to end. Not on the high street, anyway.
The end of retail therapy as we know it? Well, you might be justified in thinking so, given the many empty premises, due mainly to the enormous downturn in tourism. No, “end of an epoch” simply indicates the end-of-season sales usually with 50 per cent reductions on all stock because epoch means season, nothing more awesome than that.
In fact, as a tourist, you won’t need much language if it’s souvenirs that you seek. Most souvenirs in Corfu, where I live, are made in Taiwan. I did convince an Englishwoman last year that a five-foot model of a komodo dragon was actually a local speciality discovered by the young Gerald Durrell in a nearby lagoon in the 1930s, and I think the only reason she didn’t make the purchase was the fact that it wouldn’t have fitted in her suitcase.
On Corfu, Rhodes, Samos, Naxos (yes, it’s an island as well as a record company) the merchandise is getting more and more identical, and thankfully, tourists are beginning to vote with their feet. Another English tourist last week said, rather too loudly, while inspecting Taiwanese dream-catchers (so redolent of Corfu), “I’ve never seen so much crap in all my life”. And he wasn’t talking about pou?
All of which adds up to some basic rules: enjoy misprints in taverna menus, but don’t snigger. A “mixed girl” isn’t an escapee from the “idiotic house”, it’s a selection of cooked meats. “Roast lamp” isn’t your bedside light marinated and cooked to perfection, it’s usually a succulent knuckle of the smaller sheep (arnaki). “Baked at coal” actually means that the food has been cooked over a charcoal grill (or girl if you prefer). It took me some time when I first came here to work out that “baked spart” was charcoal-grilled gavros, or sprat, and it’s very, very tasty. Which brings me to one cardinal rule: never, never agree to a dish of fresh fish unless you first establish the end price.
At anything up to €50 per kilo for sea bass or bream your lunch with salad and wine can cost you €80, when €20 to 25 is a fair price for two people. Most fish comes frozen, because the Greek waters have been largely fished out, but don’t neglect it for that reason. The squid (or good day) can be delicious, as can the sardines (sardelas), octopus (chtopodi) and the less costly white fish, of which my favourite is the humble gilthead or dorade (tsipoura) but make sure to put the accent on the second syllable, tsipóura, otherwise you may be served a glass of tspouro, the Greek equivalent of poitín and, to my palate, more vile and poisonous than a tumbler of “where?” (if you follow me).
At least you are unlikely to make the mistake of a friend of mine who went into a hardware shop to buy some wood adhesive. Ksilos means wood, and skilos means dog. The shop assistant is still puzzling over the fact that my friend said that he wanted to glue two dogs together. But that’s for another day in the language laboratory.