Wicked Greek - A Guide to Tourist Greek

This is a fun book that may stimulate you to learn Greek, but is probably best used as a joke gift prior to a trip rather than a "must-carry" volume to take with you.

I found "Wicked Greek" on a bookstore shelf and I admit I stayed there laughing for about ten minutes. Most of this was because I could imagine saying some of these things to my friends in Greece. Would Takis at the Hotel Ionion understand if instead of getting the check-out time, I used this phrase book to ask how late they let lazy heathens sleep in the morning?

Still, it's a fun read and well-designed with phonetic pronunciations so you actually have a chance of making yourself understood. The only question is whether you would really want to!

This book is based on what I call the "moustache" school of language. Once I asked a friend of mine who knew Russian well to teach me a few phrases. I expected to learn "Hello, how are you" and so on. Instead, he drilled me on "Please, sir, can you tell me where to get my moustache trimmed?" His logic was that if I could say that, I would always be sure of getting someone to help me, since it would show that I had made the effort to learn the language, but had simply failed miserably. The same logic may apply here.

Author: Howard Tomb
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
ISBN: 1563057077
Format: Paperback
MSRP: $ 4.95