Category: Greek

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Greek participles – meet the -μένος gang!

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There’s a class of words in Modern Greek that are derived from verbs but not used to form tenses – they’re purely adjectival. I’ve written about them in the past, in terms of how they contrast with another class of adjectives, and knowing a bit more about them can really help polish your fluency.

It’s worth revisiting these as they’re so widespread. In fact, the Duolingo Greek course has a whole unit on them, which is why they’re suddenly on my own radar again! I’m talking about passive past participles – they describe something that has been done to someone or something.

Meet the -μένος gang

You can usually spot them by their characteristic -μένος ending. In fact, you’ve probably been using a couple without even knowing it:

κουρασμένος (tired)

απασχολημένος (busy)

These words are passive as they describe a state of having had something happen to you – something has tired you out, for example (even the English is a past participle here). For busy, it’s closer to translate απασχολημένος  as ‘occupied’, which is what has been ‘done’ to busy people!

These passive past participles are formed from the verbal root. And in most cases, they’re completely transparent, containing all the elements of that root:

κουράζω (I tire) > κουρασμένος (tired) (ζ and σ are a common alternation in Greek roots)

απασχολώ (I occupy) > απασχολημένος (occupied, busy)

A disappearing act – Greek assimilation

Sometimes, however, the connection is not so obvious. There’s a group of Greek verbs that have a root with -β- and -φ- where that element disappears from the participle:

κόβω (I cut) κομμένος (cut)
κρύβω (I hide, tr.) κρυμμένος (hidden)
ράβω (I sew) ραμμένος (sewn)
βάφω (I paint) βαμμένος (painted)
γράφω (I write) γραμμένος (written)

What’s happened here is called assimilation – a case of one sound becoming more like another. Because the root consonant of these verbs is labial, ie., pronounced with the lips, it matches the place of articulation of the /m/ of the ending -μμένος. For ease of pronunciation, one becomes even more like the other – and it’s that /m/ that wins out here, passing its properties backwards (so this is regressive assimilation rather than progressive, where the properties of an earlier segment move to a later one).

There’s even a set of these participles that are formed additionally via reduplication – a doubling of syllables to express some category change (for instance, an imperfective / perfective distinction). Here are a couple:

δίνω (I give) δεδομένος (given)
πείθω (I convince) πεπεισμένος (convinced)

These are particularly exciting to scholars of Indo-European, as it’s a quite an ancient mechanism found in the proto-language, and not particularly productive in modern day Indo-European languages. When you see it fossilised in forms like this, historical linguists can get very excited.

Peeking under the bonnet of Greek grammar reveals just how deep some of these patterns run – and how much historical linguistics can supercharge your understanding and retention!

A rainbow flag for Pride - celebrating queer language

Pride Across Languages: A Queer Lexicon for 2025

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June is Pride month, and as linguists (a proudly diverse crew if ever there was one), it’s the perfect moment to celebrate the vibrant vocabulary that queer speakers use — and create — in the languages we love.

Queer language isn’t just about labels. It’s about visibility, resistance, solidarity, and joy. And like any living part of language, it evolves. Some terms come from institutions and activism; others bubble up from youth slang, subcultures, or the internet. Some are reclaimed from slurs, and others are lovingly borrowed from English. What they all have in common is that they tell stories — about culture, politics, humour, and belonging.

Here’s a multilingual sampler of queer vocabulary in the languages I work with and love, as well as terms to be aware (and wary) of — updated for 2025 and with a couple of notes to explain where and how these terms are used. As you’d expect, English terms have been co-opted in many cultures and are widely understood.

FRENCH

French queer vocabulary bridges formal discourse and rich colloquial creativity, particularly in urban and activist spaces. Youth and LGBTQ+ communities often borrow from verlan (urban backslang), argot, and pop culture.

Formal / Inclusive:
– LGBTQIA+ — widely used in activist and legal discourse.
– Une personne transgenre / non-binaire — trans / non-binary person.
– Homos / lesbiennes / bisexuel·le·s — broadly accepted and understood.

Colloquial / Reclaimed:
– Gouine — dyke; used proudly by some lesbians.
– Tarlouze / tapette — pejorative and generally not reclaimed (yet).
– Draguer — to flirt or cruise.
– Militant·e LGBT — LGBTQ+ activist.

Regional variant: In Québec French, you may encounter allosexuel·le (non-heterosexual) or personne queer, used in a slightly different way than in France.

GERMAN

German queer language mixes formal clarity with rich subcultural registers. Germany has a strong LGBTQIA+ history, with Christopher Street Day (CSD) being the main Pride celebration.

Standard Terms:
– Schwul / lesbisch / bi / pan — gay / lesbian / bi / pan; widely accepted.
– Queer — directly borrowed and proudly used.
– Nicht-binär / trans / inter — gender-inclusive language.
– Regenbogenfamilie — literally rainbow family.
– Coming-out — borrowed directly from English.

Colloquial / Subcultural:
– Homo — casual term; can be neutral or teasing.
– Gay sein — “to be gay,” borrowed and adapted from English.
– Tunte — an effeminate gay man; can be camp and celebratory within communities but also historically a slur.

Sociolinguistic note: German LGBTQ+ youth often use a hybrid of German and English (“queer sein”, “pride month feiern”, and “nonbinary Person” are common).

GREEK

Greek queer vocabulary is lively but still shaped by ongoing stigma in some spheres. Younger generations and activist circles are doing brilliant work coining and promoting respectful terms.

Formal / Inclusive:
– ΛΟΑΤΚΙ+ (LOATKI+) — LGBTQIA+.
– Ομοφυλόφιλος/η, λεσβία, αμφιφυλόφιλος/η — standard but formal.
– Τρανς άτομο — trans person.
– Κουήρ — transliteration of “queer.”

Slang / Reclaimed:
– Πούστης — historical slur for gay men; sometimes reclaimed but still very charged, so use with care.
– Λεσβού / λεσβία — lesbian (the former more colloquial).
– Ντραγκ κουίν — drag queen.
– Καμάκι — flirtation or cruising (not exclusively queer).

Cultural note: Greek queer media increasingly uses international terms like non-binary and queer without translation, reflecting global influences and activist solidarity.

NORWEGIAN

Norwegian LGBTQIA+ vocabulary is inclusive, modern, and quite straightforward, with excellent mainstream acceptance of terms like skeiv.

Standard / Positive:
– Skeiv — literally “crooked”; now a proudly reclaimed umbrella term for queer identities.
– Homofil / lesbisk / bifil / panfil — general, neutral orientation terms.
– Transperson / ikke-binær — trans / non-binary person.
– Regnbuefamilie — rainbow family.
– Pride-parade / skeiv kultur — directly borrowed terms.

Today, skeiv is actively used by government in public comms, youth organisations, and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups across Norway. Neighbouring Swedish has co-opted the English queer in most cases, although also has the reclaimed bög for gay men – occasionally, the word Regnbågspersoner (rainbow people) is found in Swedish event blurb and similar as an umbrella term.

SCOTTISH GAELIC

Gaelic queer vocabulary is vibrant and developing all the time, with new terms emerging thanks to community activism. Much of the lexicon is borrowed, calqued or adapted respectfully.

Affirming / Respectful Terms:
– Co-sheòrsach — same-sex attracted (literally “same-gendered”).
– Boireannach co-sheòrsach / fear co-sheòrsach — lesbian / gay man.
– Gèidh — gay.
– Neo-bhìnearaidh — non-binary.
– Gnè-sòisealta — gender identity.
– Gnèitheachas — sexuality / sexual orientation.
– Aithris gnè — gender expression.

Emerging language: Community groups are also exploring terms like cuèir (queer), far-ghnèitheach (genderqueer), and coimhearsnachd gèidh (gay community). These are not yet standardised but are used lovingly in queer Gaelic circles.

FINAL THOUGHTS: LANGUAGE AS RESISTANCE, JOY, AND KINSHIP

Words are powerful. They help us name ourselves, find each other, and push back against silence. In each of these languages, queer terms are not just dictionary entries — they’re evidence of visibility, resistance, and renewal.

What’s more, the growth of queer vocabularies often mirrors broader shifts in society — whether it’s skeiv being used in official policy, κουήρ entering mainstream Greek media, or Gaelic activists forging new terms for non-binary identities. Each new word is a signal of change, community, and possibility.

OVER TO YOU

Do you know other queer terms in the languages you’re learning or using? Have you seen how words can include — or exclude — depending on context? Drop a comment or share your favourites with me on the socials!

With love and linguistic Pride,
Rich x

The Greek flag flying in a sunny sky

Greek Feeds on Insta You’ll Actually Want to Follow

Not all scrolling is bad for you – especially when you’re learning Greek. Language learning content feeds are popping up left, right and centre these days, so you can hop online and feel wholesome rather as you swipe and learn.

Instagram is probably my platform of choice for lingua-content, not least because of the number of language learning channels on it. Insta has nifty, intuitive bookmark folders, which allow you to save content in separate streams for each of your languages.

My Greek folder has seen a lot of recent action, thanks to a raft of edu-taining reels that are only getting better and better. They range from everyday grammar tips to mini lessons on colloquial, slangy phrases – the kind of thing that really sets your language apart from ‘book Greek’.

So what’s worth sharing in my bookmarks?

GREEK WITH DIMITRIS

If you’re new to the language, then Greek with Dimitris makes for a nice way in. He focuses on building basic vocabulary with some excellent, clearly narrated videos, but also runs regular pop quizzes in his stories.

GLOSSONAUTS

Props to Glossonauts for the wonderful channel name – etymologically hellenic and evocative of us all as language explorers (γλώσσα glossa = language, ναύτης náftis = sailor). The content is more geared towards beginner and lower intermediate learners, but with some great bonus content on people and culture.

GREEK OUT WITH MARIA

Greek Out With Maria falls firmly into the ‘learn the language like a local’ camp, and is excellent if you’re an intermediate learner looking to speak more idiomatically. Maria focuses on expressive, colloquial phrases that you won’t find in a textbook.  What’s especially great about this channel is the amount of cultural content and nod to the ‘hellenic soul’. I particularly loved this explanation of one of the lyrics from this year’s superb Eurovision entry by Greece’s Klavdia.

LEARN GREEK WITH KALLIA

Learn Greek with Kallia is another wonderful source of colloquialisms, with a growing catalogue of micro-lessons on sounding like a native. The language is informal and really colourful – exactly the kind of thing you’ll be reaching for if you’re spending any serious time in Greece.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ7JnXiMbd0/

THE GREEK SCHOLAR

In contrast to the other channels here, this feed takes a more traditional text / infographic approach to content that works really well as a mini-lesson format. Of particular interest is its great library of swipe-through guides to colloquial vocabulary usage. Take this video on φτάνω (arrive) – who knew it could be such a versatile verb?

GREEK LEARNING HUB

Greek Learning Hub has a really good range of content from vocab for beginners to longer, in-context dialogues. Some of the channel’s best reels are those where vocabulary is introduced through subtitled conversation, like this supermarket topic lesson.

So that’s what’s been filling my bookmark folder up. Have you found any other essential channels στα ελληνικά? What have I missed? Let me know in the comments!

A Greek swirly texture!

Understanding ‘να’ in Greek: Where Did The Weather Go?

If you’re an English speaker learning Greek, you may have come across phrases like:

ελπίζω ο καιρός να είναι καλός
I hope the weather will be good

…and found yourself scratching your head. Why, you might wonder, does “the weather” (ο καιρός) seem to be relegated to a spot before the connector να? In English, we’d say, “I hope that the weather is good,” keeping “the weather” after ‘that’. In Greek, though, να doesn’t play along with this structure.

It all comes down to understanding να for what it really is – a subjunctive marker, and not a conjunction.

Say Na Na Na – for Greek

The particle να is very picky about what it allows around it: να must precede the verb, forming a neat package with it, leaving no room for anything else in between. The only exception is the word μην, not. This structure – with ‘weather’ heading it – places the whole clause, ο καιρός να είναι καλός, as the object of ελπίζω (“I hope”).

In Greek, the construction feels natural, while to English speakers, it may look like ελπίζω is just left hanging without an obvious subject. But once we appreciate να as a subjunctive marker rather than a conjunction, the structure makes more sense.

Let’s look at a few other examples where this subjunctive magic word order comes into play:

Ελπίζω η Ελένη να έρθει σύντομα.
I hope Helen comes soon.

Ελπίζω ο γιατρός να είναι ευχαριστημένος.
I hope the doctor is happy.

Recognising να as a subjunctive marker – and that ‘hope’ takes a whole clause as its complement – transforms how we see these Greek structures. Instead of expecting conjunctions and noun placements as in English, we come to appreciate how να insists on a tidy verb clause, helping Greek verbs express hope, wishes, and desires in their own neat way.

Getting a Handle on Modern Greek : The Imperfect Tense

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We all have a sticking point somewhere in our target languages. For me and Modern Greek, it was, for too long, the imperfect tense.

I noticed it in conversation classes with my teacher. I’d be narrating a story or incident, flowing easily enough when talking about single events in the past. I saw, I heard, I went… All simple past, or aorist, in Greek: είδα, άκουσα, πήγα (ída, ákusa, píga).

It all unravelled when I needed to express what was ongoing. I was talking, I was sleeping, I was thinking… The kind of thing we use the past continuous for in English. We use this device very frequently in storytelling, especially when one action undercuts or interrupts another. Think: I was watching the TV when…

All this means that if you only have a handle on the simple past, you can only really tell half the story.

When I spot a gap like this, I like to simplify it before tackling it. And with verbs, a nice simplification trick for learning is to only learn the parts you use regularly at first. For me, the sticking points came when talking to my teacher about what I was doing.

So I’d focus first on learning just the imperfect patterns for the first person, singular, the ‘I’ form.

The Imperfect Tense in Modern Greek – Egotistical Edition

Here – greatly simplified – is the ‘cheat sheet’ I used to get a handle on the imperfect tense in Modern Greek.

Type A (verbs stressed before the final syllable like γράφω – write)

The stress moves back a syllable – if there’s no syllable to move back to, you add a stressed ε- at the beginning. The first person singular ending is -α.

Example: γράφω (gráfo, I write) – έγραφα (égrafa, I was writing)

In many ways, this is the easiest one – it has the same pattern as the aorist, which many master early on, but without any root change. Compare έγραψα (égrapsa – I wrote).

Type B ( verbs with final stressed -ώ or -άω like μιλάω – speak)

These verbs have a whole set of endings to themselves – variations on -ούσα (-úsa). There’s no stress change – we just substitute the -ώ/-άω for -ούσα in the first person singular:

Example: μιλάω (miláo, I speak) – μιλούσα (milúsa, I was speaking)

Passive and Deponent Verbs (ending in -μαι like κοιμάμαι – sleep)

Now these are the strange ones. Although not so strange, if you’ve already learnt the word for I was, which is ήμουν (ímun) in Modern Greek. The verb ‘to be’ – irregular in so many languages – actually follows the endings of the passive verbs, so you already knew the pattern without realising. In the first person singular, the imperfect tense takes the ending -όμουν (-ómun):

Example: κοιμάμαι (kimáme, I sleep) – κοιμόμουν (kimómun – I was sleeping)

Roundup

So there you have it. Rather than learning a whole paradigm of six persons for three types of verb – 18 forms – you can get your first grip on the imperfect tense in Modern Greek by learning three examples. To round them up:

Group Present (1ps) Imperfect (1ps)
I γράφω έγραφα
II μιλάω μιλούσα
Passive κοιμάμαι κοιμόμουν

Needless to say, when you’ve memorised these, changing the person – to you, she, we and so on – is just a case of adjusting the ending slightly. The -α (-a) changes to -ες (-es) for ‘you’, for example, while the -όμουν (-ómun) changes to -όσουν (-ósun). But that’s for the next stage of your functional, chunked-up tense learning. In the meantime, you can enjoy being able to express what you were doing in the past when chatting with your teacher!

The one-form-at-a-time focus can be a motivation-saving shortcut for heavily inflected languages. It’s helped me with other tricky verb forms in Greek, as well as other languages. It’s part of the wider truth that nothing is too big to learn if you break it down into chunks – advice worth remembering when you keep coming up against stubborn gaps in your language learning knowledge.

Have you had similar experiences when learning conjugations? Which were your trickiest tenses? And how did you master them? Let us know in the comments below!

Fun With Texts : Travel Edition

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I came across an ancient video this week that took me right back. The video in question  was from a series of video diary entries I made on a trip to Austria in 2004. In this particular segment, I was proudly showing off the stash of free leaflets I’d cached from Klagenfurt town hall – treasures of authentic texts to take home for my teaching materials box.

German-language texts from Austria - leaflets about the EU in 2004

Austrian leaflets about the EU (2004)

A still of Rich West-Soley showing some leaflets from Austria in a video from 2004

Showing off my Austrian leaflet haul in 2004 in a video shot on a phone just a little more sophisticated than a toaster, judging from the quality

Fast forward 19 years, and I’m approaching the end of a wonderful, extended trip around Greece. It’s been a holiday full of wonderful sights, amazing food, and of course, lots of language practice. Incidentally, Greeks must be amongst the most encouraging people on the planet when you try to speak their language.

But what links this trip with that early noughties vid is that continued fascination with curating authentic texts. It’s a polyglot obsession that’s lasted well beyond my classroom teaching days; there’s no longer any teaching materials box to fill, but I’m still on the hunt.

Hunting Texts : Then and Now

The format has changed, naturally. It’s less about free brochures and leaflets now. Alas, my EasyJet baggage allowance won’t quite stretch to that any more. This time, it’s digital – and I’ve been going to town collecting text samples for my virtual Greek learning box.

Of course, Greece has a tradition of texts that stretches back a little further than many fellow European countries. It’s been particularly fun looking out for inscriptions on the many ancient monuments, and spotting similarities and differences between the ancient and modern languages.

A stone tablet in an Ancient Greek ruin, with a partial inscription in Greek

Authentic Texts in stone!

An Ancient Greek artefact


But it’s the modern examples that really hit the spot – the more everyday and prosaic the better. From bags of crisps to public notices, every bit of writing is a potential new word learnt, and an extra peep into the target language culture. It’s addictive.

A notice to save water on a Greek ship

Save water, and save those words (in Anki!)

A washing machine control panel with Greek labelling

It’ll all come out in the wash

As far as I’m concerned, there’s never any going over-the-top when collecting digital texts. Knock yourself out with as much target language as you can! The criteria for what makes an authentic text are wildly broad – it can be the odd couple of words, a text-dense poster or an entire book. It all has worth to us as learners, no matter how long.

The only rule I try to stick to is one of practical use; I aim to try and use the images somewhere, be it a blog post (like this one on German political posters) or by scraping the language for Anki flashcard entries.

A bag of crisps with Greek labelling

Language snacks

Are you a curator of authentic texts in your target language? How do you collect them, and what do you do with them afterwards? Let us know in the comments!

False equivalencies - the equation 1+1=3. Image from freeimages.com.

Equivocal Equivalencies : Avoiding the X=Y Trap in Language Learning

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When starting out with language learning, it’s tempting to assume a one-on-one correspondence between your native and target language for everything you come across. It seems like a simple game of equivalencies: X equals Y. But you quickly learn that it’s not always as simple as that. Different languages carve the world up in subtly different ways.

It’s most obviously the case with content words. For instance, ‘sad’ in English covers both the person feeling the emotion, and the situation causing it. In Greek, it’s two words: λυπημένος (lipiménos, the former, with a Greek passive adjective ending) and λυπηρός (lipirós, the latter). Now that would have scuppered Elton John’s sad sad situation.

But function words differ, too. Grammatical categories that have lexically crumbled into each other in English remain resolutely separate in other languages. Take the word where. In English, you can use this as an interrogative:

Where is the bank?

And you can use it as a relative:

I know where you are.

Same word, two completely different functions. It leads English monolinguals to assume that they’re equivalent, identical. For sure, their function is related – both referencing place – but they’re performing different jobs, respectively standing in for missing information and joining two clauses.

False Equivalencies

Something that took me a little time to get my head around was the same situation in Scottish Gaelic. The interrogative and the relative are different words here, càit(e) and far:

Càit a bheil e? (Where is he?)
Tha fios agam far a bheil e. (I know where he is.)

Norwegian behaves in a similar way, although with a further complication. Generally, hvor is the interrogateive, and der the relative:

Hvor er du? (Where are you?)
Jeg vil være der du er. (I want to be where you are.)

But when a question is implicit, the relative is just hvor, as in English:

Jeg vil vite hvor du kommer fra. (I want to know where you come from.)

Incidentally, it’s the same situation with Norwegian then, which is variously når or da, according to the rule above.

Interesting tidbits of language, for a geek like me / us. But they serve as a reminder to delve a little deeper into usage using a resource like Wiktionary when you learn a word that seems to correspond neatly to one in your native language(s).

It may be less than half the story!

A Short and Easy Modern Greek Grammar (Gardner 1892). Dense, but thorough descriptions!

Feeling Dense When It Don’t Make Sense

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When I first started learning Greek many years ago, as a very inexperienced polyglot-in-the-making, I remember trying to get to grips with an interesting quirk of pronunciation – and feeling a little dense when it didn’t make sense at first.

It was all about stress placement. Specifically, something a bit funny can happen in Greek when a little word like μου (mou – my) follows a polysyllabic word. The longer word gets an extra stress accent – very strange considering the fact that Greek words usually only have a single stressed syllable.

το διαμέρισμα (to diamérisma – the flat)
το διαμέρισμά μου (to diamérismá mou – my flat)

I remember reading this in some dusty old grammar I got from the library, and not quite getting it. I made a mental note that the stress can sometimes change under certain circumstances, and left it at that, feeling ever so slightly befuddled (but undeterred!).

With time, of course, I came across lots of examples of this happening in Greek texts and speech. And with that exposure, my hit-and-miss attempts at reproducing it, and my eventual improvement, came a kind of instinct for where it takes place.

Getting Technical

Wind forward a good twenty years, and I’m leafing through a Modern Greek grammar primer from 1892 (as you do). A Short and Easy Modern Greek Grammar was an introductory text originally penned by German Karl Wied, and released in a translation by Mary Gardner in 1892. As it’s such an old, copyright-expired book, it’s quite easy to get a PDF scan of it, such as this 1910 edition at the Internet Archive.

I love these texts for the insight they give into how the target language itself has changed in recent years. But they also offer a fascinating glimpse into the history of foreign language education. How things have changed in a hundred-and-twenty years! But then again, how they stay the same. The technical descriptions aren’t vastly different from the thorough explanations you’ll find in a Routledge Comprehensive Grammar. Well, maybe a little extra Victorian bombast, but the format has remained surprisingly static over a century.

Page from a Short and Easy Modern Greek Grammar (Gardner 1892). Dense, but thorough descriptions!

A Short and Easy Modern Greek Grammar (Gardner, after Wied, 1892)

Right there, on page eight, is that accent phenomenon I struggled with as a youth. The description is given in quite traditionalist, grammatical language. It explains that the stress-jumping occurs with enclitics, snippets of words so short that they lack an accent of their own and almost merge into the preceding word.

It’s a technically accurate and comprehensive explanation. But I probably wouldn’t have had a clue if I’d read it there first!

A Time and a Place

There are two points to make here. First, don’t be fazed if you struggle to get difficult grammatical points in traditional texts. With enough exposure to real language, you’ll develop your own instinct for these intricacies. There’s a time and a place for comprehensive, formal grammars, and it’s probably not at the very start of your journey (as much as I love to geek out with hundred-year-old tomes).

Secondly, it’s not that such resources are not useful at all. It’s just that they’re perhaps better used when you have a bit of a handle on the language already, and you are ready for the why as well as the how. It’s also a nice reminder that a little time and experience can make a huge difference with language learning.

What first seemed dense and inaccessible can make complete sense when you revisit it with some street-learned smarts.

Map pins - great for pinpointing a location, just like prepositions of place! Image from freeimages.com

Location Location : Prepositions of Place Between Languages

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Prepositions can be tricky, not least those relating to location. They don’t always align between languages, so they are a common source of language learning errors. But getting them right like a master is all down to how we think about space and place in the world.

One of the biggest differences between languages relates to being within an enclosed area or on a flat, open space. It might sound like a very specific category distinction for brains to carve out, especially as we give it no thought in our native languages. But brains do carve physical space up like this, and exactly what counts as each can differ from language to language.

Approximate Location…

Take the word station, for example. In English, it’s neither here nor there. You tend to be at the station, at being as fairly vague preposition attaching some entity generally to a location. Likewise, in French, you’re à la gare, and in German, you’ll be am Bahnhof, each language using its personal flavour of at. However, in Polish, you’ll literally be on (top of) the station – na dworcu. That’s because, for Polish speakers, the station is a large, flat, open space. Whatever historical and cultural reasons led to that distinction – different styles of station buildings or layout or whatever – might now be lost, but they’re felt still in those prepositions.

Sometimes, the deciding factor is which part of the location the speaker has in mind. In English, we similarly say at university, specifying very generally with at again. German and French follow once more with an der Uni(versität) and à l’unversité. But in Polish, you’re na uniwersytecie, literally on the university. In Polish, it’s the quad-like nature of the lawned university courtyard that is the defining concept; in English, French, and German, it’s perhaps more about the buildings, or even just that general dot on the city map.

Diverging Laylines

So far, it seems like English, French and German form a bit of a group here, behaving in the same way. But it’s certainly not always like that. German and Polish pair up on the opposite side of English when it comes to parking your car. In English, you’re usually in or at the car park. I’d say in personally; it always seems like an enclosed, fenced or walled in area for me, whether it’s indoors or outdoors. French prefers at, giving us au parking. Not so in German, where you’re auf dem Parkplatz, and in Polish, which plumps for na parkingu – literally on (top of) the car park.

And it’s not always physical places that see this variation, either. Think of a party: in English, you’ll be at one, as in French, which places you à une fête. But in German, you’ll be auf einer Party, and in Polish, na imprezie, conceiving the party as a flat area of space. Where, presumably, there is just as much fun being had as in the English and French counterparts.

And for the Less Fussy…

There are, of course, languages which make the whole business of location much easier. Spanish, for example, allows the little word en (in) to do a lot of heavy lifting. En la estación, en la universidad, en la fiesta. How’s that for a helping hand? And Greek also tends to use σε (se, in) as a general catch-all for in, at, on, you name it. At the train station? Στο σταθμό (sto stathmó). At the university? Στο πανεπιστήμιο (sto panepistímio). At the party? Στο πάρτι (sto párti). Of course, you can finesse location with more detailed words like πάνω (pano – on top), κάτω (kato – below), μέσα (mesa – inside) and so on, but you won’t necessarily be breaking any rules if you don’t.

And given the trickery involved in learning prepositions in some other languages, that’s something I’m often very grateful for!

Greek microblog content from Instagram (screenshot).

The Way of the Microblog : Kitchen Sink Inspiration and Language Learning

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It’s all about the foreign language microblog for me lately. Short, snappy snippets of target language piped directly to your social media streams: what’s not to love?

In fact, I’m practically drowning in them at the moment. That’s thanks to the notorious and mysterious algorithm (TM), of course, which is a fact of life these days; like one thing, and you get a ton more of the same thrown at you, for better or for worse.

Happily, in the case of us language learners, it’s generally for the better. Take my Instagram feed; its AI wisdom has decided to channel reams of Greek pop psych, heartwarming quotes and concise self help my way. It’s twee and a wee bit naff, granted. But every one of those posts is a 30-second language lesson.

This latest bite-sized adventure all started with a single Greek account, gnwmika.gr. It exclusively posts what you might call ‘fridge magnet’ content: folk wisdom and kitchen sink inspiration.

The great lesson imparted here, in true, lofty microblog style, is:

“Beautiful things will make you love life. Difficult ones will teach you to appreciate and respect the beautiful ones.”

I know – deep, eh.

Anyway, I hit follow and thought little else of it… Until things escalated. Next thing, I’m being shepherded to not only more of the same, but anything and everything Greek. Poetry, history, celebs, TV… the lot. It’s become a rabbit hole leading to some well obscure (but fascinating) places. And, crucially:

…my Greek is so much better for it!

Fill Your Little (Microblog) World Right Up

It all plays in marvellously to the fill your world with target language strategy. Since our worlds are ever more digital, one of the easiest ways to do that is to follow the monkeys out of accounts we find fun and engaging. Add one or two, and let the system start popping more and more into your suggested follows.

Now, the only catch is that the algorithm (TM) is smothering me in Greek. I’d love a bit of Gaelic, Icelandic, Norwegian or Polish (and the rest). So, if you’re reading this and have some good microblog recommendations to kick the cycle off again…

…please let me know!