After many years spent laboriously teaching and learning languages, I was surprised to learn that teach yourself have a series of one-day courses. My Greek is minimal. I have the ten words most people share – kalimera, yasu, ne, ohi, efharisto and so on. We have a holiday in Greece coming up so why not?

The course comes with its CD and booklet and uses a mere fifty basic words. Liz teaches Andy on the plane. He is a bit of a clown but his low brow comments have some value as mnemonics. For example, he talks about throwing moss when he has to learn ‘thromos’ (street).

An advantage, for me at least, is that the course uses the script I am used to – that reduces the problem!

The idea behind the course is that it is infinitely better and more polite to have a smattering of a foreign language and at least to try to communicate, rather than expecting everybody else to speak English. The Independent claims that Elisabeth Smith’s one-day courses are “a language lifeline … fun, fast and easy”.

You can attempt French, German, Italian or Spanish in the same way, but I have yet to find out whether my ‘one-day’ skill will be any use at all.

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