Rather, we should enable their education by supporting more funding for Greek afternoon schools and college programs that teach Modern Greek. It is not unreasonable to think that one day, Greek could indeed join its ancient predecessor as a dead language.Īs Greek-Americans, we should not excuse those who cannot speak Greek and say that it is unnecessary. If this trend continues, fewer and fewer people will speak the language, and Greece, a crumbling nation of only eleven million will become the last bastion of the Greek language. What happened that caused even Greek-Americans to see Greek as an unnecessary piece of education? Greek is not often taught in schools, like the romance languages, or a critical language, like Arabic and Chinese. Without Greek, this culture, history, wisdom, and nation would not exist. It is what made them Hellenes and not simply another community to be conquered. The one unifying factor between such distinct cultures as those of Sparta and Athens was the language they spoke. It is the language that united the Greek city-states and made them Greek city-states. “Hellenic ideals” were expressed and refined in Greek. It is the language in which Socrates spoke and Plato wrote and of the world's first democracy in which Ioannis Metaxas told the Italian army Όχι and in which the people of Athens asked for the constitution for which Syntagma Square is named in 1822. Greek permeates every facet of Greek culture and history. As Greek-Americans, it is our duty to hold on to and promote our culture, so that it might survive and benefit our descendants, and the Greek language is inseparable from Greek culture. It is a mistake to assume that everyone has an equal opportunity to learn Greek, and it is just as big a mistake to say that you do not need to learn Greek. I see the argument about Greek and Greekness in the same light. It is also a mistake, however, to promote the idea that education is unnecessary. is equally as educated as someone who only graduated high school? No. The mistake is assuming that those who are less educated choose to be so, and that one’s privilege has nothing to do with it. There is a disconnect between the haves and have-nots, between the educated and uneducated. This is present in all conversations about education. Money, too, both at the individual and community levels, influences whether a Greek-American has the chance to learn Greek. Perhaps your parents did not speak Greek, or you never had the opportunity to attend Greek School. An inability to speak the language is not always an active choice. The ability to speak Greek is a privilege. Not everyone is given an equal opportunity to learn Greek. However, that same rejection of language as a part of identity is often accompanied by a desire to learn and speak Greek. People do not want to be excluded based on speaking ability. The argument against Greek linguistic ability as a signifier of Greekness is often an emotional one, especially when put forth by those who do not speak Greek, either as a form of guilt or exclusion when surrounded by Greek speakers. While I certainly accept that these are all valid potential components of one's Greek identity, I cannot accept that language does not play a role in Greekness. A few at the table rejected the ability to speak Greek as any indicator of Greekness, citing instead an adherence to "Hellenic ideals", proximity to the country through ancestry, and dedication to Greek culture. Over dinner one night, we had a long and heated debate about what it meant to be Greek. This past summer, I participated in a program for Greek-American college students that took us to Greece to assess the foreign policy issues most relevant to the home of our ancestors. "A few years ago you could barely speak Greek at all, and now you're the most talkative one here." I told him what I had figured out: I cared enough to try. By the end of the trip, we met with a family friend for dinner, and he asked me what had happened. I started making an active effort, asking questions and looking up vocabulary. Greek was a part of my heritage, and after high school I returned to Greece and was embarrassed by how little I remembered. Eventually, I stopped being able to string together more than a few words at a time.
I put in enough effort to do well on the Proficiency exam in eighth grade, and then I stopped practicing, focusing instead on Spanish.
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