A couple of months ago, I was in Sofia, Bulgaria, meeting with faculty and administrators of "St. Kliment Ohridski", University of Sofia, due to the cooperation the Hellenic American Union and the Hellenic American University are establishing with them. (I was there in order to discuss cooperation in the context of our Modern Greek Language Program.)
One day, I had arranged for a couple of meetings at the University. So, I went there and waited at the University entrance for my Bulgarian hosts to arrive. The day had started just fine, until dark clouds gathered really fast and it began to rain heavily. (In fact, "rain" is an understatement; it was actually a thunderstorm, with winds and hail the size of golf balls!) While I was watching nature unravel its might, one of the Professors I was meeting arrived, soaking wet.
Herself being a Professor of Modern Greek, we started a conversation in Greek about how moody the weather can be in those parts of the world, and she asked me about the various expressions and words in Greek, used to describe such extreme weather conditions. While I was squeezing my brain to come up with Greek synonyms, the peculiarity of the whole situation dawned one me: There we were, in Sofia, Bulgaria, one Greek and one Bulgarian, using Greek to communicate - and not English, the lingua franca par excellence - and talking about the Greek language!
Needless to say, I couldn't help feeling a bit of pride; the world has changed a lot, and people have developed new interests in language learning. In the old days, everyone had to know French to get by. Later, it was - and still is - English. Now, it's not only English but other languages as well, and Greek is one of them.
posted by ModernGreek@HAUGr @ 1:49 AM
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