In which I tell the world a most embarrassing fact about myself

My attempts to learn Greek are more along the lines of an epic struggle between good and evil than a regular language lesson. It seems that after 36 years of life speaking good ol’ American English I am a bit set in my ways when it comes to pronouncing things, even things that bear no resemblance to my beloved Latin alphabet. Sure, I hear bonafide Greek all the time. Yes, I do know how certain letters are supposed to be pronounced. Yet when I find myself pronouncing a new word for the first time, I always resort to the regular old way of pronouncing things.

For example, the Greek epsilon (ε), which greatly resembles a nice Latin e, is pronounced more like eh, not eee. This is a fact I have known for at least 2 years now. And even though my brain knows this, understands it, and would tell someone learning Greek for the very first time this, I cannot seem to transfer this fact to my vocal chords. No doubt if my ass could talk it would pronounce it right, but alas, it is not to be. You can literally see blood vessels burst in my husband’s head, steam pour out of his ears and tiny goblins painting his hair gray every time I mispronounce an epsilon. This fact is well known amongst family, and every time I do it in front of my mother-in-law, she simply dies laughing.

But this is not the only thing. I don’t spit enough when I say chi (χ), I keep getting delta (δ) and theta (θ) mixed up (or rather, I pronounce my thetas like my deltas, which is incorrect, another fact I am quite well aware of) and for the love of all that is good and holy I cannot seem to grasp the concept of accents. I try, really I do, but something that should be as simple as telling time seems to be as complicated as rocket science in my pea-sized nugget of a brain. No matter what, whenever I try to enunciate the accent correctly, I get it ass backwards. This is not amusing to my poor husband, who, after running around the apartment in circles with tinfoil on his head and thwapping at the cats with his underwear in frustration, pauses for a minute, surely contemplating how many times I was dropped on my head as an infant that I can’t figure out how to goddamn enunciate my accents properly. Our cats probably speak better Greek than I do.

With a series of repetitive blows to the head, perhaps I can reset my brain to normal functionality somehow. I honestly don’t know how I am ever going to learn Greek well enough to feel comfortable speaking to people without them looking at me like I just swallowed a cow pie, but my reading ability is coming along nicely. In time, perhaps, I’ll be able to eh and spit with the best of them. Probably not before my husband’s hair turns entirely gray, though.