"It's all Greek to me"

I've often heard this expression used. Hell, I've used it myself on numerous occasions. But I don't think I really understood its full meaning until after my first few hours - nay, minutes - in Athens.

I thought living in a French-speaking world was difficult, but at least the French language shares most of its alphabet with my native English - and many of the words are spelled, if not pronounced, similarly. In Athens, though, I find myself struggling to think back to the first semester in my "Greek" business fraternity when I was required to learn/memorize the Greek alphabet. When I look at the signs, however, I realize I must have only needed to know the capital letters because the rest (with the notable exception of pi) make no sense at all.

But knowing the alphabet (which I don't any more anyway) and being able to understand the language are two TOTALLY different things. My travel book has a section on "essential phrases" and also includes other useful translations, but to be candid, I can't even understand/pronounce the phonetic spellings, much less comprehend the Greek.

I guess shouldn't complain too much as most of the signs are translated into English. But the street signs are not, which made the search for my hotel a challenging experience...