Yassas, Philamou!

"Oh, you have a house here! Have you been studying Greek?" asked the nice Turkish lady who runs the vegan restaurant and juice bar.

"No, not really. I just pick up phrases here and there," I said.

"That's good because all the foreigners start by learning Greek and they give up after a month or two. They just don't need it."

When people at home learn I have a house in Greece, they often ask if I have Greek heritage, speak Greek or am learning Greek – to all of which the answer is "no", although the questions make sense. Sometimes I think maybe I should learn Greek. When I lived in Thailand and Taiwan, learning the languages was not only useful, but conveyed respect that furthered my opportunities and got me greater assistance, forbearance and kindness. My Chinese beyond ordering food – which I am pretty good at – was never good, but even the effort helped.

So it would seem that learning Greek could only be to my advantage.

In Singapore, the national language is English but there are three additionally recognized "mother tongue" languages: Malay, Tamil and Mandarin. In reality, there are about eight more "sub-languages" as most Chinese families also speak the dialect of the region from which their families immigrated. Having moved to Singapore not long after living in Taiwan, I thought I might continue developing my Chinese. At the same time, I also lived in Bali and went back and forth between Singapore and Bali. Malay and Indonesian are akin to the differences between British and American English, so I also had plenty of opportunity to further the mostly practical Indonesian I was learning in Bali.

I learned not a word more Chinese and only Malay signage played any part in my learning – I don't think I ever attempted to use it. Learning the other languages not only didn't seem necessary, but speaking English was not offense to anyone. In fact, I think sometimes Singaporeans appreciated it because it recognized that they too are native English speakers. 

That certainly isn't the case in Greece where few people seem to want to be seen as native English speakers. Yet, by and large, they not only speak English well, but don't seem offended at people not speaking their language. Several Greeks have explained to me that Greece is well aware that only its 10 million people speak their native language. For a few benchmarks, that's 3,300 percent fewer people than the United States, one-seventh the population of Thailand, a little more than one-seventh the population of France and only 1.42 times as many people as Hong Kong which is in essence a quasi-city-state.

Here on Patmos where tourism is THE major economic driver, it seems kids start speaking passable English in their mid-teens. 

For someone like me, there are certain Patmians who make it even easier to be lazy about language learning. There are therefore a couple of generations of Patmians who were born in other countries like the United States, UK and Australia. After the war, the Greek economy was devastated and people left for better opportunities. In many cases, as Greece recovered into a place that was at least well-off enough, some people began returning – especially those from a place as beautiful, special and desirable as Patmos. These true bilingual kids are now adults and in many cases own businesses around the island – such as Prokopis who runs the hardware store who toggles between Australian English and Greek seamlessly – who to my amusement curses when things go wrong in English, "F— me dead! This damn machine!" or the woman whose son owns the local gym who grew up in Ohio and sounds like she could be my next door neighbor when she speaks English. 

Then there are the "love children" of Patmos – the bilingual kids of foreign tourists who fell in love with a Patmian on vacation or somewhere along the way like the teenage son of the people who own Tzaveri Taverna who sound British even through he's been to England only a handful of times or Andreas who runs the lounge chair concession at Agriolivadi Beach whose Dad sounds as Greek as can be and whose "mum" is British. Andreas may well be one of the most genteel people on the island and an excellent cultural bridge with whom I always enjoy talking.

With these kinds of people scattered not all that infrequently around the island, sticking with English is all the easier because they aren't just easy conversations, but they can articulate complex things. If it weren't for Andreas, I wouldn't understand why the garbage and recycling station near the port that has been there for at least the 14 years I've been coming to Patmos was removed and the nature of the political debate around it. In the end, we agreed that some asshole ruined it for everyone. Without Australian-born Stavros at the fire alarm and protection shop, I would never have understood the raging debate of electricity generation and distribution in which the Greek government wants send power via undersea lines to reduce the number of fossil-fuel burning power-plants and many Patmians resist not wanting to be dependent on facilities on other islands and cables that may be prone to disruption. For now, the little diesel fueled power plant on Patmos keep on burning – largely due to populist rage. And let's not get started with the even more complex conversation around solar.

My dual-citizenship, multi-cultural friends are some of the most valuable.

Nonetheless, now that I own a house here and have some kind of place in the community, my instincts tell me to learn more Greek. Maybe not fluent, but at least more conversational phrases as a sign of respect, belonging and connection. I think I also have decent mind for language, so this should be an attainable goal, especially given learning language in context is much easier and better than book learning. Asking the people around me for words and phrases is generally good community and relationship building, so it's something I plan to do more.

Language resides in a funny part of the brain. As we try to transmit and interpret ideas, our brains use a lot of shortcuts – pathways designed to make quick sense of things based on existing knowledge and past experiences – which is why we misinterpret song lyrics and sometimes THINK we know what we heard better than we actually do. It's pretty common when finding oneself in a foreign language environment to pull out whatever foreign language knowledge we have – whether or not it's the correct language. When I first started living in Thailand, I filled in the gaps in my nascent Thai with French vocabulary. It did nothing good for anyone. In Taiwan, I usually inserted Thai vocabulary into my gaps. This also helped no one. For some reason, this year for the first time, I'm tossing in bits of Indonesian. It's astonishing to me because Indonesian is not even a language at which I'm particularly good. Maybe it's island life? I really can't figure it out.

The only place scattered bits of other languages have ever served me is Turkey. Turkey being a crossroads of the world, Turkish seems to include a lot of cognates from a variety of languages including French, English, German, Farsi and Hindi. Lucky for me, I grew up with a Persian best friend because my very limited Farsi (or Parsi Proper because we speak the more refined dialect of Shiraz in my adopted Persian family) opened up some key vocabulary in Turkey including vegetables and tea. 

One thing I believe to be true is that language is a function of culture. We can learn a lot about who a people are through their language because it's not just a set of words but an entire way of constructing and sharing ideas. The difference between English and French isn't just a matter of the particulars of vocabulary or grammatical rules – but of how people construct their very thoughts before sharing. In the scope of things, the British and French are more more alike than different, however much they might object or deny it.

For example, the Thai language has no word for similar. I pointed this out recently to a Thai-American yoga friend who is bilingual. She said that of course you can say similar in Thai. I asked her how she would do it. She gave a long two sentences explaining the idea of two things that are the same, but not the same, so they are alike, but different. I pointed out that one word in English does that entire job which gave her pause – she had never considered it before. How fascinating that entire levels of nuance can exist in one culture and escape another – and it happens in all sorts of ways among various cultures and languages.

The good news for me is that in the scope of things, Greeks are more like Americans than not. We share a similar emotional space and a worldview that is close enough to easily understand one another. Sure, our sense of urgency may be quite different and make no mistake Greek culture is MUCH higher in collectivism than highly individualistic America. But we can connect, converse and relate in the ways of the heart. For that reason, Greek may be a great language to learn.