You're listening to a way with words this show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett.

Even if you don't know a word of Greek, you may be tempted to start learning that language

after reading a book by Mary Norris called Greek to me.

The subtitle is Adventures of the Comic Queen, and you may remember her earlier book called

Between You and Me, which is about her adventures as a comic queen that is wielding a copy editing

pencil at the New Yorker magazine for three decades.

Her book Greek to me is about her passion for both ancient Greek and modern Greek.

And it's a deeply personal love letter

to the language and this exuberant account

of falling in love with both the ancient and the modern version and she she writes about making multiple trips as a solo traveler in Greece and around the Aegean and I know very little modern Greek at all so I was especially excited to pick up some from this book.

For example I didn't know that the modern Greek word for plastic wrap is something like

Diaphony Membrani or this is so poetic.

Diaphanous membrane?

Yes, yes, wrap your sandwich in that diaphanous membrane.

Oh, that's very cool.

Yeah, diaphan is coming from Greek words that mean light shining through. And the modern Greek word for newspapers

Ephemarida, which means...

Ephemorial something?

Yes, it's related to the English word ephemeral.

It means lasting but for a day isn't that pretty

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