The English language has always been one of my favourite subjects to teach and study. However, when it comes to foreign language study, my interest will be piqued, and then wane as I realize the extent of time and effort that will have to put out in order to really master it.

When I was a teenager I wanted to become a flight attendant – until I learned that I would HAVE to be bilingual in French. So I quickly changed career focus to one that wouldn’t require so many mixed up sentences and tongue-tied-ness – Motherhood.

Little did I know that during these years of homeschooling I would once again be facing the need to begin studying another language. If for nothing more than exercising and strengthening our mental muscles, but even more so for the benefit of simply learning to speak another language and using our skills to bless others in the future.

Though we haven’t quite decided what we want to study, I’ve always been intrigued by the Greek language, especially in the study sections of my bible. Digging into the original Greek words and understanding more fully their meaning based on context, culture and chronology is eye-opening and exciting!

But just the idea of having to learn a whole new set of symbols for letters, sounds and words is enough to give one a headache.

Lessons in Greek – Not so painful after all!

That is, until we discovered Todd Friel’s “It’s Not Greek To Me” Greek lesson DVDs from New Leaf Publishing.

Now, if you’ve never heard Todd Friel on Wretched Radio, or heard him speak at conferences (or even if you have heard him speak), he’s hilarious! He’s also very clear and encouraging in his lessons on learning Greek.

Check out this trailer to get an idea of what I’m talking about:

You have to admit, you kind of want to see more, don’t you?  ;0)

Whether you’re someone who just wants to dig deeper into their Bible to better understand God’s word, or a student finishing high school and entering into seminary or post-secondary education, It’s Not Greek to Me is a great tool.

A lot of focus is put on memorizing the Greek alphabet before proceeding through the following lessons, which is crucial to your success. But once you’re there, everything else falls into place quite quickly, and before you know it (or at least, within the 10 lessons :D), you’re reading and speaking Greek with ease.

Now is the perfect time to check it out, just before school starts AND the DVDs are on sale!

What is your favorite (or least favorite) foreign language?

Funny story : we have a small backyard and our boys have been playing a lot of soccer lately. Well, last week, one of them accidentally kicked a sandal over the fence into the neighbour’s yard. 2 other soccer balls were also back there for who knows how long, so they decided to run around and knock on their door to ask if they could retrieve the items.

No problemo, right? Except that we live in a majority Asian community where a large number of the residents do not speak any English. Our boys came racing back, panicked, asking us, “Do you speak Chinese?!?!”. Fortunately, with the help of Google translate and our next door neighbour they were able to get their stuff back.

Hmm, maybe we should take up Mandarin lessons…