Learning the lingo……….

Cypriot is a very difficult language to learn. Unlike eg French or German , where letters are recognisable, Cypriot (slightly different to Greek), has an alphabet which is very unusual – or , in plain terms, very , very hard to learn – for us , that is!

I’ve been taking lessons now for 8 weeks, attending the local school every Tuesday and suffering the pains of the embarrassment of realising it won’t be easy – and making tons of mistakes, alongside the other members of the group.

Still, slowly, slowly (siga, siga), we’re beginning to learn phrases and have even started on verbs!

Thought I’d try my luck and attempt to speak only in Cypriot when we were in a local taverna, Arousas, in Kathikas: the main course and drinks were fine but when the waiter came to ask for coffee, I decided to have strong black Cypriot coffee instead of normal filter – so I asked for a “Skillos”, which is a dog – and I’d meant to ask for “Sketos” which is the coffee.

My loving husband fell about laughing, as did the waiter. The friends followed suit, when Tony explained what I’d done. I laughed too, just not as loudly as the others- but I blushed very deeply!

On school on Tuesday, we were told during our session on verbs, that there are 4 types of congugation: I begged the teacher not to tell tony, explaining that we’ve only been married 22 years and know of only 2 types………….don’t want him getting his hopes up!

Kala Kyriacos! (Happy Sunday for the uninitiated). Kai Kala Skillos!