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Greek Family - Vocabulary Lesson

Hello welcome to the vocabulary lesson for Greek family. let’s get started.

Headline says “woman will never be Greek enough for husband’s family.”

Greek, of course describe someone from Greece. The country of Greece. And then she starts the letter.

Dear Abby. I married a Greek man whose family never accepted me. She said she was young and naive.

Naive means innocent. It means, but not like guilty and innocent. It means you don’t have much experience in the world. You don’t know much about the world.

And it also has the idea that you trust people too much. Right? You just… you’re… you’re maybe too friendly… too open, too much trust. You’re not careful enough with people.

That’s naive… naive. so you don’t have much experience in the world and you don’t know much about the world and life. Naive… naive.

So she said she was naive when she got married.

And she said she tried to fit in with her husband’s family and she converted from Catholicism to the Greek Orthodox faith.

To convert, means to change and it can have a religious meaning. in this case, of course it does have a religious meaning. To convert, in this case means to change religions… change religions. We usually say convert to a new religion.

So if you convert to Christianity, it means you used to be another religion now you’re a Christian. If you convert to Buddhism, you used to be something else now you are a Buddhist.

So that’s to convert… to convert… to change from one religion to another.

Alright and she uses the word faith here. she converted to the Greek orthodox faith. Greek Orthodox is a kind of Christianity but different than the Catholic Church.

In this case faith means religion. Faith can mean like belief. It can mean belief in something. you have a deep belief even though you’re not sure but this case faith means religion… a religion we sometimes use this, you have to use it with the name of the religions.

We might say the Hindu faith, the Christian faith, the Muslim faith. So that just means the Muslim religion, the Christian religion, the Buddhist religion, the Hindu religion. Faith… a little bit different meaning for faith than we normally than how we normally use it.

In the second paragraph we see the word relative. she said my husband and I travel to Crete. It’s an island in Greece. With his family to visit his relatives there.

Relatives means family members… family members. But it usually means more distant family members. So your husband and your wife, your children, they are not relatives. We don’t use the word relatives to describe your close… close family, like your husband or your children.

Relatives usually means grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, all of those people. We describe as relatives. So they’re in your family but they’re not living in your house. well they might be living in your house. your grandmother could live in your house. but they’re not so close and is not your immediate family. Relatives are little farther away, grandparents, cousins etc.

Alright and she said some extended family members refused to share the dinner table with her. Extended family has the same idea as relatives. Extended family means grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. We usually say immediate family or nuclear family. That’s your husband or wife and your children or if you’re young, it means your father and your mother and your brothers and sisters.

That’s your immediate family but then we have the extended family and those are the relatives, those are the people like you are a little farther, like grandparents, cousins etc.

So extended family and these family members refused to share the dinner table with her. To refuse means to say no, means you say you will not do something and refuse normally goes with an action right? somebody wants you to do something and you refuse.

So refuse, you refuse to do something, you refuse to do an action usually.

So in this case they refused to share the dinner table means they refused to eat with her. So you refuse an action. You say no to an action.

Alright and then we go down to the next paragraph. She says our daughter Athena was born four years later. She said what broke the camel’s back for me. To break the camel’s back. This is a common phrase in English. It has a short version and a long version this is a short version. If you say what broke the camel’s back.

But we also sometimes say the straw that broke the camel’s back. The straw that broke the camel’s back or just broke the camel’s back. Either one it means it’s the last thing. It’s the action or the situation that finally makes you do something, that finally changes your mind.

So you have to imagine that you have a camel. Right? It’s an animal and you’re putting stuff on top of the camel. So you put maybe straw.

Straw is like grass but you’re putting some on the camel and the camel is okay.

You put more, you put more. It gets heavier and heavier and heavier. You put more, you put more, you put more, oh now the camels ahhh… his back is hurting. you put more, more, more and finally you put one more and the camel’s back breaks.

Right? so it’s the final thing. It’s the final bad experience that causes the camel to break or to die. This where it comes from and so it means like that you have some kind of bad situation and it’s been happening a long time.

So let’s say in this case that the family, they do something bad to her, then they do something another thing that’s bad, then they do another bad thing, then another. Each time she’s a little more upset, a little more angry, but more, more, more bad things, more about things, more bad things.

Finally they did something to her daughter, they were rude to her daughter, that was the last straw. Right? that’s what broke the camels back. It was the last event after this she was so angry, she will not be nice to them anymore.

It’s the final action and now she can’t, she can’t handle it anymore.

Alright and so what happened is that the father, the father-in-law was giving money to all the grandchildren, who had Greek heritage but didn’t give one to their daughter.

Heritage means, when we talk about Greek heritage or German heritage or Japanese heritage. Heritage means where your family comes from. Where your family comes from.

And it’s talking about your family in the past. So it doesn’t mean right now. So we can have someone, a child, this child was born in America. So that child, the girl is American but she’s of Greek heritage because her father’s Greek, her grandparents are Greek.

Right? half of her family is Greek so she’s not Greek the girl is not Greek because she’s American born in America, lives in America. But she is of Greek heritage. Right? Her family is Greek. So someone, an immigrant comes here.

Let’s say from Mexico, they’re Mexican but their children. Let’s say their children are born in America, they grow up in America, they always live in America, they’re Americans but they’re of Mexican heritage. Family going back in history was Mexican.

Alright and then we keep going and she says that her little daughter was really upset. When she didn’t get money from her father-in-law like everybody else and then she said her husband just tries to stay neutral.

Neutral means in this case neutral means you don’t pick a side. so maybe we have one side against another side and you say oh I’m not fighting on either side. I’m in the middle. I will not support either side. I am neutral.

So the husband won’t support his wife and daughter and husband also won’t support his Greek family.

He just says I’m neutral. He won’t help either one. He won’t choose either side.

And finally the last sentence, she says Abby how far should someone have to go or how far should I have to go to fit in with my husband’s family?

Remember to fit in means to have a good relationship with. To fit in with the family means have a good relationship with the family, to belong to the family, to be part of the family. That’s to fit in.

She said “how far should I have to go to do this?”

That means how far do I need to go, how far should I have to go. That just means how much do I need to do.

How much do I need to do or how much should I try. That’s the meaning of that phrase. How far should I have to go to learn English?

It means what must I do? How much do I need to do to learn English? Or how much do I need to try to learn English? How far do I need to go?

Alright so that’s all. that’s all the vocabulary, this little thing.

Listen to this a few times, make sure you know the vocabulary.

This one’s not too difficult I hope and then we’ll move on to the mini-story. See you next time, bye.