Greek lesson this evening was fairly basic. I'm quite surprised at how much I'd remembered from my last lesson two years ago. I'm in a class with two other ladies. And I'm sorry to say this, but the difference between their aptitude is massive..
One, let's call her L, is very composed, autoratitive and analytical. She hails orginally from Croatia and after a stint in Zimbabwe has found herself in Cyprus. She catches on quickly to Greek and can manipulate the language in terms of grammar and reference. The other, lets call her E, is far less defined, she's sort of fuzzy around the edges, scatterbrained, seemingly unfocussed and painfully slow at catching on. I'm very aware that I might sound terribly snobbish but a two hour lesson is enough time to grasp the concept of 'einai diko/diki/dika.. mou.. etc' i.e. 'it belongs to me' and in fact, it was covered in 20 minutes but she promptly forgot it. I guess some people have a head for languages and some just don't.
Saying that, I don't think it's wholly her fault- in my experience, British people tend to not assimulate foreign languages very well (I don't mean this offensively- it's the fault of the education system and a lack of need to learn languages other than English) but the difference was shocking. L had never been exposed to Greek (yet speaks English, Croatian (presumably), French and German) and could converse with relative ease (disregarding small errors- language is best undertaken without too much hesitation and with enthusiasm) whereas E has two grandchildren who speak greek (they're half cypriot) and a daughter in law who also speaks greek so has been exposed to it for at least 14 years and yet struggles with the simplest of sentence constructions.
Anyway, rant over. Greek is difficult to learn I suppose, whether or not you've been exposed to it.
Here's a gratuitous nice photo to make up for my hostility towards poor E!
