I have a character who speaks Greek and English natively. I’m wondering if there are any ways Greek would influence his English speech patterns, like unusual word order, translated idioms, or something. I’m not going to write a phonetic accent. He primarily speaks Greek with his parents and some family friends and English elsewhere. His parents and family friends taught him English and Greek around the same time, probably primarily Greek first.
It’s set in the modern US. I’ve googled Greek accent, Greek & English code-switching, and Greeklish and not come up with much. (Or rather, most of it is how English affects the Greek)
One thought would be that a person of Greek ancestry is likely to have been influenced by the Greek Orthodox Church (even if they don’t believe or actively practice at the present time), so one thing they might do is have trouble remembering when American Christmas or Easter is or use Orthodox-related terms such as Theotokos in preference to western terms such as “Virgin Mary”.
Code switching occurs only wihenboth speakers in a conversation are fluent in both languages, and can switch back and forth within a sentence. . A person has a natural tendency to speak a language that is understood the the person he is speaking to, and it “feels wrong” to say something in any language to a person who doesn’t understand it. When a person does not know a word in the language he is speaking, the brain automatically recognizes that, and alerts the speaker that an accommodation needs to be made in order to continue. It’s why radio announcers never say four-letter words on the radio, no matter how frequently they do in private conversation. Because the mind is set to flow within certain language constraints, and it feels wrong to deviate from it. When you begin speaking to any person, your mind locks you into the acceptable language forms for that person you are speaking to.
Walk up to a person who speaks Albanian and say “Say something in Albanian.” They can’t. They recognize you as an English-only speaker, and it is too hard to unlock that part of the brain to enable oneself to violate the language-propriety controls.
I don’t believe this at all. I took three years of high-school Spanish. That was many years ago. If you walked up to me and said say something in Spanish I could easily do so with little thought. I couldn’t give a speech – I don’t recall enough of it, but I could construct meaningful sentences and not just ones I recall rote from exercises.
In my family, those who grew up speaking only Greek tended to have thicker Greek accents while speaking English and tended to have Greek word patterns in their sentences even while speaking English. Their children, who grew up in the U.S., spoke both English and Greek flawlessly and could switch back and forth with ease. Conversations around the house would be mostly in Greek with a few occasional English words thrown in. The older folks (like my Grandmother) would speak almost entirely in Greek while the younger generation would often speak half Greek and half English.
My father spoke Greek until he went to kindergarten, at which point he had to learn English. He spoke English perfectly using normal English sentence structures. His parents (my grandparents) came off the boat from Greece in the 1920s. My generation tends to speak almost exclusively English in conversations at home but many of us can speak Greek (some a bit better than others).
Based on my personal experience, I would say that your character, who learned Greek and English simultaneously while growing up, would speak English without an accent and would use normal English sentence structures. He would be comfortable speaking either Greek or English and would be able to easily comprehend as well as speak in conversations that were a jumbled mix of both languages. Basically, he’d be the same as my father.
ETA: Oops, misread the OP. If your character learned English after the age of around 8 or 10 or so, they will probably speak with a Greek accent and will probably often use Greek sentence structures. You have to learn the language early. The earlier he learns English the more “English” his accent and sentence structures will be.
My family mostly went to the Greek Orthodox church, except for my father and my immediate family (since my father married an Englishwoman). None of my relatives ever had difficulty remembering when the American holidays were. When speaking English to non-Greeks, they would refer to Easter as “Greek Easter”. None of them ever used Orthodox terms per your example.
My Greek relatives who were born in Greece (and therefore grew up speaking exclusively Greek) tended to have this type of accent, some stronger than others:
Also, if you walked up to anyone in my family and asked them to say something in Greek, none of them would have any difficulty with it at all. I personally would probably say something like kali spera which means “good evening” (substituting other times of day if appropriate).
During my high school year, I worked in my uncle’s restaurant. Customers probably heard a lot of Greek words coming out of the kitchen. What they probably didn’t realize was that we were pretty much constantly hurling Greek insults back and forth at each other and that some of them were quite rude (e.g. calling someone a malaka, or masturbater). We got embarrassed quite a few times when my aunt came into the restaurant and overheard us.
You could just have some use of actual greek to give authenticity.
when he speaks to a young relative, he speaks in greek first, the expected exchanges. such as hello,good to see you , want drink ? have a seat.
If its a Didactic personality, like men, fathers, are to children, perhaps he says it in greek, then english, then greek again… hoping to get it through.
Then switches to english for real conversation .
Mannerisms eg curses. eg idiom.
Perhaps he curses to show authority…
Or if he is educated or an artist, he uses greek literature
Or if he is very patriotic or a sports fan, he talks about greek people and culture.
I suppose you might try some of these.
For example, your character might occasionally use a greek saying,
and then find he has to translate it into english.
“You drown in a teaspoon of water !”
OR “slowly the vegetables” to express frustration as the lack of progress.
Its a double entendre… (is he actually waiting for “vegetables” to cook, or is the slowness because they ARE vegetables ?)
If I can find a spot, I do plan on him using some translated Greek idioms. It’s difficult to find some with English meanings (‘No, Google, I am not looking for Greek idioms that have become part of English, sheesh’)