PETER RUFFHEAD: Worship And Learn Greek

For adults learning a language like a child

I found it so hard to learn Greek: its complex grammar, hundreds and hundreds of new words, mouth acrobatics and new rhythm.

Many lessons cover topics which are, in reality, irrelevant, since I would bring along a fluent Greek speaker for critical decisions. It seemed to be necessary to learn so much just to get nowhere.

Compounding this, 5 year old Greek kids speak it without hesitation. They don’t talk about critical topics, and they do make mistakes with their grammar, but they don’t care —people understand them anyway!

So let’s learn from them. They don’t do jargon. They play and learn. They use a smaller range of words and guess the rest!

We will worship. We will sing Greek translations of worship songs that we know in English. We will learn the important words, and pick up the rest gradually. As we sing along to the CD in Greek, we are blessed and encouraged. The music gives the rhythm and our mouths learn to make the new sounds.

With this foundation, we are then confident to pick up new words from other songs and contexts. Just like a child.