With today being a holiday many of you probably spent your afternoon and evening around the dinner table laughing and sharing stories with close family members and friends. Perhaps you were in church all day long with your community celebrating the resurrection of Christ or hunting for colorful Easter eggs planted by an imaginary Easter Bunny with the children. (You know – the kind of heartfelt moments Kodak and Hallmark pride themselves in knowing how to capture best.) If Easter happens to be a holiday you don’t particularly celebrate then maybe you spent your afternoon lying lazily in a grassy park with a good book. I’ll even go as far as guessing that it was a Lonely Planet guide to Greece for your upcoming summer travels. Either way today’s word should come in handy for anyone with an appetite for learning, maghiritsa (a tripe and herbs soup) or potential travelers to Greece.
Today’s word is a Greek word from Greece:
Pascha – Easter
According to the Ministry of Tourism in their little summary on how the Easter is celebrated, the word “Pascha” stems from the Jewish “Pasah” which means “Passover.” The corresponding Greek word for “Pascha” is “Lambri” (Brightness) because the day of the resurrection of Christ is a day full of joy and exhilaration. To sum it up, Easter is a pretty big deal in Greece.
Online sources for learning Greek for free include BBC Languages and AGNI. The courses at BBC Languages are incredible. Probably one of the best you’ll find online and audio can even be found for today’s word by clicking here. Amerispan offers Greek immersion and language courses in Athens. Pretty pricey, but hey it’s Greece!
Past Greek words: toh karavee