[MGSA-L] Modiano family

George Baloglou gbaloglou at gmail.com
Fri Oct 10 01:17:41 PDT 2014


On the happy occasion of this year's Nobel Prize award to Patrick Modiano,
a Frenchman of Thessalonican origins, I quote the first paragraph from
Mario Modiano's -- author of *http://www.themodianos.gr/The_Story.pdf
<http://www.themodianos.gr/The_Story.pdf>* (Athens, 2000) -- short
autobiographical note:

*I was born in Salonika, Greece, in the vintage year of 1926, the second
son of Sam E. Modiano, **distinguished journalist and editor, and the
beautiful Nella Tchenio. I bear her father’s given name. **My father liked
variety, so he sent my brother Lelo to the Italian school, and me to a
Greek school that, thanks **to the German occupation, I never managed to
finish. At home we communicated in three languages: father (an **alumnus of
the Mission Laique Française) would speak in French to my mother and me.
Both would speak **Ladino to Lelo; and Lelo and I conversed in* *Greek.*

Variety or progressive assimilation? Lelo was four years older than Mario
... as for example mentioned in
*http://www.centropa.org/cs/photo/mario-modianos-bar-mitzvah
<http://www.centropa.org/cs/photo/mario-modianos-bar-mitzvah>* , part of
the last paragraph of which is of related ('linguistic') interest:

*What I remember more vividly from my bar mitzvah is the hard time I had
trying to learn enough Hebrew to be able to read the text. I had a teacher
who came home and taught me how to parrot the text from the Torah that I
was supposed to read at the service in the synagogue. I very much regret
that I never really learned Hebrew.*

Mario Modiano's bar mitzvah took place in Thessaloniki in 1939. About five
years later he joined the Greek Army as a lieutenant-interpreter: he
learned English on his own, while hiding in Athens.

-- 

Γιώργος Μπαλόγλου -- Θεσσαλονίκη

http://www.oswego.edu/~baloglou (1988 - 2008)

http://crystallomath.wordpress.com (2009 - )
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