“Τα καταλαβαίνει όλα, αλλά μου απαντάει στα αγγλικά.”
If you are raising a child with Greek outside Greece, this may sound very familiar. You speak to them in Greek, they understand you perfectly well, they follow conversations with grandparents and relatives — and then they answer in English.
Parents often worry about this. Some wonder whether they should insist more on Greek at home. Others assume that their child simply doesn’t want to speak it. And sometimes there is a feeling that, after years of hearing Greek, they should be speaking much more than they are.
In reality, this is something we see very often in children growing up with more than one language.
Understanding Greek doesn’t automatically mean speaking Greek
Understanding a language and producing it are two different things.
A child can have a surprisingly good understanding of Greek without being able to find the same words when they need them in conversation. In linguistic terms, their receptive skills are stronger than their productive skills.
This is particularly common in children growing up outside Greece.
Think about how their languages are actually used during a normal week. Greek might be spoken at home, with grandparents or during visits to Greece. But the language they use at school, with friends, at football practice, while watching videos or playing games is usually the language of the country they live in.
So even when there is plenty of Greek around them, they may simply have much more practice speaking the other language.
“We speak Greek to them all the time. Why do they still answer in English?”
Because, quite simply, it works.
A parent asks, “Τι έκανες σήμερα στο σχολείο;”
The child answers, “We had PE and then I played with Sophie.”
The parent understands. The conversation carries on. Nobody has misunderstood anybody.
Over time, this can easily become the family’s normal pattern: the parent speaks Greek and the child answers in English.
This doesn’t mean that speaking Greek at home isn’t helping. Quite the opposite. All that exposure is one of the reasons the child understands Greek in the first place.
But speaking needs practice too.
It is one thing to recognise a word when someone else uses it. It is another to find that word yourself, put it into a sentence and say what you want to say while a conversation is moving along.
When English — or another language — comes faster, children will naturally reach for it.
Sometimes the problem isn’t language. It’s confidence.
We notice this particularly as children get older.
A younger child may happily say something in Greek even if half the sentence is wrong. Older children are often much more conscious of mistakes. They know when they are missing a word. They notice when their Greek doesn’t sound like their grandparents’ or their cousins’ Greek. And they may feel awkward when someone corrects them.
Imagine knowing exactly what you want to say, but knowing that you could say it much better in another language. Choosing the easier language is hardly surprising.
This is also why repeatedly saying “Say it in Greek” doesn’t always get the result parents hope for.
Encouragement is important, but children also need to feel that they can experiment with Greek without every conversation becoming a language exercise.
They need Greek for the life they actually live
This is an important one.
As children get older, what they want to talk about changes. Their Greek needs to grow with them.
A child may know the Greek words for colours, animals, food and members of the family. But can they tell you about an argument they had with a friend? Explain the rules of their favourite game? Talk about a film they loved? Complain about homework? Tell a joke?
If they don’t have the Greek they need for the things they actually want to say, they will use the language that gives them that freedom.
This is why helping a child speak more Greek isn’t simply about teaching them more vocabulary or correcting their grammar. They need opportunities to do things with the language: tell stories, ask questions, disagree, explain, joke, describe and have real conversations.
What can parents do?
Keeping Greek present at home is already doing a lot.
Beyond that, try to give your child reasons to use it rather than turning every interaction into a test. Ask questions that invite more than a yes or no. Talk about things they genuinely care about. Give them time to find a word instead of immediately supplying it. And don’t worry if English occasionally appears in the middle of a Greek sentence.
Most importantly, don’t make perfect Greek the condition for speaking Greek.
If a child who normally answers entirely in English starts giving you a few sentences in Greek, that matters. If they stop halfway through a sentence to ask, “How do you say this in Greek?”, that matters too.
Confidence is built through those small attempts.
From understanding Greek to actually using it
At The Greek Online School, we meet children with very different relationships with Greek. Some have spoken it from a young age. Some understand their parents but rarely answer in Greek. Some speak comfortably but need help with reading and writing. Others mainly hear Greek when they speak to grandparents or spend their summers in Greece.
So when we meet a child, the question is not simply, “What level of Greek are they?”
We want to know what happens when they actually try to communicate. What do they understand easily? Where do they switch languages? Which words are difficult to retrieve? Do they avoid longer answers? Are they worried about making mistakes?
These things tell us much more about what the child needs next.
For a child who already understands a great deal of Greek, the language hasn’t necessarily disappeared simply because they aren’t speaking it.
Very often, they need more opportunities, more practice and a little more confidence to start using what is already there.