Last two weeks I have been traveling around Greece. Lots of interesting historical places as well as beautiful scenery, great food, nice weather, cheap prices...
When we visited Bethel in Athens, I asked our tour guide, Marcos, how much do they understand when they read the Greek Scriptures in their original language. I knew Greek language today is different from ancient times, but I wanted to know how different. The brother told me they can read it and understand most of what it says, but it's arduous to decypher because many old grammar twists have disappeared in the modern speech. An approximate comparison would be for a modern English speaker to read Chaucer:
This frere bosteth that he knoweth helle, And God it woot, that it is litel wonder; Freres and feendes been but lyte asonder.
That's why the organization prepared the NWT in Modern Greek, which is easy to understand. I found that interesting. They can still read what the apostles wrote 2000 years ago and understand it reasonably well! And they can even read inscriptions that are almost one thousand year older, since they still use the same letters!
When the Watchtower explains the meaning of some Greek term, like "apostle" or "apostasy", for Greek brothers it is redundant, because that's exactly what the word means for them.
That led me to another crazy idea. Many difficult words we use, especially science-related words, come from Greek (telescope, stomatologist, arthropod...). But for a Greek they are directly understandable. For example, as a child at the school I had to learn by heart that butterflies and moths are "lepidoptera", from Greek lepis 'scale' and pteros 'wing". But for a Greek student, "lepidoptera" means exactly "scaled wings". So for them it's not a mysterious name, it's self-explanatory! Not fair!