It's All Greek To Me

We were lucky in that most of the places we went to in Greece were pretty heavily geared towards tourists, and so most places subtitled their Greek with English - if they even bothered to use Greek at all. But in a couple of places, we were on our own. The thing with written Greek is there's a two-step decoding process; first, translate all the ancient characters into the Western alphabet, then, take a stab at what they're actually on about. Neither of us had a clue about the language - it doesn't seem to have roots back to the languages that we can bluff (French, Italian and German) - so we often failed dismally, but occasionally, we'd hit gold, which was incredibly satisfying.

Often these words were "imported" from another language and were in a certain context (like on a restaurant menu) that helped us. And as we went along Johnny remembered more and more Greek symbols from his nerdy Maths and Physics past that were useful - like:
Π/π - [Pi] - Greek sound 'P' - The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter
Δ/δ - [Delta] - Greek sound 'D' - The difference between two values
Λ/λ - [Lambda] - Greek sound 'L' - The wavelength of a signal
Μ/μ - [Mu] - Greek sound 'M' - The prefix for "micro"
Θ/θ - [Theta] - Greek sound 'Th' - The unknown angle in geometry
Φ/ϕ - [Phi] - Greek sound 'F' - A second unknown angle
Ρ/ρ - [Rho] - Greek sound 'R' - The resistivity of a metal

And armed with not much more than that, watch how text that previously resembled a page from an Applied Physics textbook becomes simple!:

ΚΡΕΜ ΚΑΡΑΜΕΛ (on a menu)
KREM KARAMEL
Creme Caramel

ΠΟΣΕΙΔΩΝ (on the side of a boat)
POSEIDON

Φοτογραϕια (on the front of a shop selling camera gear)
Fotografia
Photography

Johnny was pretty pleased when he worked out that last one!