{"id":603,"date":"2010-07-22T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/?p=603"},"modified":"2016-01-26T01:29:21","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T23:29:21","slug":"rough-greek-overview-modern-greek-from-learners-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/rough-greek-overview-modern-greek-from-learners-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough Greek Overview: Modern Greek From A Learner’s Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Attention:<\/strong> If you want to learn or improve your Greek while having fun, please try my Interlinear Greek bilingual book<\/a>. This book is a Greek book by Roubina Gouyoumtzian translated in the innovative Interlinear format, where the translation is provided below each word. Such format lets you read and improve your Greek easily regardless of your level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Attention: The details in this post are not intended to be completely accurate and may contain mistakes, misrepresentation and gross simplifications.<\/p>\n

I’m over 50 days already in Greece and I have gotten a little bit used to the Greek language. I’m nowhere near good so this might contain errors but I thought I would give you all a small representation of the Greek language and what you would experience if you were around to learn it. I’m going to write mostly in Roman letters so that everybody can read it and keep it simple. Here goes…<\/p>\n

About the Greek letters (and pronunciation)…<\/h2>\n

I have already written about learning the letters of the Greek alphabet<\/a>. Learning to read Greek with sufficient accuracy is not a big problem either. I can read it now and pronounce the words given some time. My reading speed is not very good, though. I have talked to a girl who also studied Greek for two years, has a C1 diploma of Greek and she said she still doesn’t read it as fast as she would read the Latin alphabet. It is normal and probably not something you can do much about. The speed is obviously even worse for texts with words you do not recognize.<\/p>\n

As you have seen in my post, the letters are straightforward. Talking about Modern Greek, you only have to learn the letters and a few extra combinations such as \u03bf\u03c5<\/strong> which is pronounced like in sou<\/strong>p while it should be pronounced oi<\/strong> in boy<\/strong>, \u03b1\u03b9<\/strong> which is pronounced like the French \u00e9<\/strong> and then you’re good to read it. I sometimes still have problems with \u03bd\u03c4 becomes it is seemingly pronounced nd<\/strong> and d<\/strong> by some people and I do not know which is correct (the one in the middle – nasal (n) and d supposedly – is but I might have problems with this nasal sound). Same for \u03b3\u03ba<\/strong> this is pronounced either ng or g). I am also not sure if I pronounce the sounds of letters \u03b3 (g) and \u03b4 (d) correctly but at least I seem to be understood.<\/p>\n

So, in summary, Greek pronunciation is just 24 easy letters and some combinations thereof… very regular, pretty easy.<\/p>\n

Stress oh stress<\/h3>\n

Oh, there is more. Every word is actually stressed in Greek. Not only that, the stress mark must<\/strong> be shown in every word. Here’s an example of a Greek text for you (I hope I got that right):<\/p>\n

\u039c\u03bf\u03c5 \u03b1\u03c1\u03ad\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd \u03bb\u03af\u03b3\u03bf \u03bf\u03b9 \u03b3\u03bb\u03ce\u03c3\u03c3\u03b5\u03c2.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With correct accent, it could be transcribed as:<\/p>\n

Mou ar\u00e9soun l\u00edgo oi gl\u00f3sses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, in informal chat, Greeks would write it something like this:<\/p>\n

Mou aresoun ligo oi glwsses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the fact remains that every word that has more than one syllable has an accent and it has become a part of the word in some way. This is actually very good for language learners like me because we can remember how to pronounce the words correctly like this.<\/p>\n

If you are still wondering what stress is, consider this example. In English you say EXport and some kind of emphasis is put on the syllable ex<\/strong>. For example, it would be wrong to say exPORT<\/em> emphasizing PORT and the word would be stressed incorrectly. In Greek, all words are like that. The same English word would be written \u00e9xport<\/strong> to emphasize the place of the stress if English had adopted the Greek system of stress.<\/p>\n

Languages like Russian or Lithuanian have dynamic stress which changes with different forms of words as well but it is usually not shown on words which is a pity because it would actually make the language so much easier for learners and enable getting easier solutions of problems concerning agreeing on the pronunciation of the word among native speakers.<\/p>\n

How to construct sentences<\/h2>\n

Okay, so now we can talk about how to make phrases in Greek. I don’t know where to start. Perhaps we will start with verbs.<\/p>\n

Oh verbs…<\/h3>\n

I found it kind of strange that verbs don’t have the infinitive (*to*) form in Greek. What they have instead is the first person form which is the key to other forms and is used in dictionaries.<\/p>\n

There is one single form… for example, let’s talk about finishing, the form in Greek is \u03c4\u03b5\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9\u03ce\u03bd\u03c9 which would be written telei\u00f3no<\/strong> and considering that ei<\/strong> together is pronounced simply as i,<\/strong> it is pronounced teli\u00f3no<\/em> as well (that is what I will use in the examples for ease).<\/p>\n

This form means I finish<\/em>. Then you have five different forms for all of the tenses, so roughly teli\u00f3nis<\/strong> for you finish<\/em>, teli\u00f3ne<\/strong> for he finishes, teli\u00f3noume, teli\u00f3nete<\/strong> and teli\u00f3noun<\/strong> (remember that ou is pronounced like in sou<\/strong>p). This is pretty easy and pretty regular.<\/p>\n

Also there is another case of these where the last letter is stressed such as \u03bc\u03b9\u03bb\u03ce<\/strong> which is mil\u00f3<\/strong> for I speak<\/em>. It can also be written as \u03bc\u03b9\u03bb\u03ac\u03c9<\/strong> that is mil\u00e1o<\/strong> which is a form I like a bit more (and these two are changed interchangeably something like he was not<\/em> and he wasn’t<\/em> in English). Then these have slightly different endings as it goes mil\u00e1s<\/strong> for you<\/em>, mil\u00e1i<\/strong> for he<\/em>, mil\u00e1me<\/strong> for we<\/em>, etc. Still pretty easy.<\/p>\n

As it has been pointed out by a commentator Tsela<\/a> below, there is another conjugation for words such as bor\u00f3<\/i> which which is in fact similar to the first one mentioned except that it also has stress on the first syllable.<\/p>\n

Some verb magic<\/h3>\n

If you want to connect two verbs together you have to put na<\/i> in the middle of them. For example, I want<\/em> is th\u00e9lo<\/strong> (th pronounced like in the English word this<\/em>) and I do<\/em> is k\u00e1no<\/strong> so if you want to say I want to finish<\/strong> you have to say th\u00e9lo na k\u00e1no<\/strong>. Same for you want to do: thelis na kanis<\/strong>, etc. It is not very hard.<\/p>\n

However, k\u00e1no<\/strong> is a bit of an exception here because na<\/strong> does not force k\u00e1no<\/strong> to change to its second form. It is not the case for most other verbs because they change to their second form after k\u00e1no<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The second form of verbs<\/h3>\n

So, if you want to say I want to finish<\/em> you have th\u00e9lo<\/strong>, na<\/strong> and teli\u00f3no<\/strong> but then teli\u00f3no changes to its second form. The second form of verbs ending in ono<\/strong> is oso<\/strong> so the second form of teli\u00f3no<\/strong> is teli\u00f3so<\/strong>. So if you want to say I want to finish you say th\u00e9lo na teli\u00f3so<\/strong> which sounds much cooler to me.<\/p>\n

Most of the verbs change like that so for example if you want to say I want to speak<\/em> you change mil\u00f3 to mil\u00edso (it changes like that because its ending is stressed) so you have th\u00e9lo na mil\u00edso<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Many different Greek endings have change patterns so for example gr\u00e1fo<\/strong> (I write) becomes gr\u00e1pso<\/strong>, ni\u00f3tho<\/strong> (I feel) becomes ni\u00f3so<\/strong>, etc. Then there are some which you cannot guess from patterns and have to learn separately. For example, vl\u00e9po<\/strong> (I see) becomes do<\/strong> after na which is kind of hard to foresee.<\/p>\n

Of course, this second form can not only be used for th\u00e9lo<\/strong> (I want) but instead for practically all cases where you have two verbs together (I can see, I want to have, etc.)<\/p>\n

The second form is more important than you think…<\/h3>\n

You would think that you would only use the second form after na<\/strong> but actually it has a lot more uses than that.<\/p>\n

In an old construction, if you wanted to express the future and say I will do<\/strong> you would say I want to do<\/strong> because want<\/strong> implies that it will happen in the future (you still want it). As we have already mentioned, it would be th\u00e9lo na k\u00e1no<\/strong>. However, in speech th\u00e9lo na<\/strong> simply got shortened to tha<\/strong> (Greek \u03b8\u03b1<\/strong>) and that became the future marking particle.<\/p>\n

Thus you also use the second form for the future. You want tha mil\u00edso<\/strong> for I will speak<\/em>, tha gr\u00e1pso<\/strong> for I will write<\/em>, etc. That works wonders.<\/p>\n

But wait… there’s more. The second form for the past too!<\/h3>\n

Now not only the second form is used in the future, it is also used in the past. You just slightly change the endings and you have the past forms. For example, you had mil\u00edso<\/strong> for the form of mil\u00f3<\/strong> (I speak). You can change it to m\u00edlisa<\/strong> and you got I spoke<\/strong> which is the past. In a similar fashion you get mil\u00edses<\/strong> for you spoke, mil\u00edse<\/strong> for he spoke, etc. This is not terribly difficult, is it.<\/p>\n

Stress usually falls on the second to last syllable so if you have less than three syllables you have an extra letter (usually \u00e9) added in the beginning so k\u00e1no (which is both the first and the second form) becomes kana but that’s only two syllables so it becomes \u00e9kana<\/strong> for I did<\/em>. Same for \u00e9grapsa<\/strong> for I wrote<\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n

The mediopassive voice is creeping me<\/h2>\n

Right, the only thing that rains on the parade here is the Greek mediopassive voice (just called simply passive in Modern Greek). First, though, the word for to be<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The words for to be<\/em><\/h3>\n

The word for to be look different (like in many languages). In Greek they are different because they don’t end in \u03c9 like most verbs do in their first form. Here’s a table with the word for to be<\/strong> in Greek:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\u03b5\u03af\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9 (\u00ed<\/strong>m\u00e9)<\/td>\n\u03b5\u03af\u03bc\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5 (\u00ed<\/strong>mast\u00e9)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u03b5\u03af\u03c3\u03b1\u03b9 (\u00ed<\/strong>s\u00e9)<\/td>\n\u03b5\u03af\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5, \u03b5\u03af\u03c3\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5 (\u00ed<\/strong>st\u00e9)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 (\u00ed<\/strong>n\u00e9)<\/td>\n\u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 (\u00ed<\/strong>n\u00e9)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

The Modern Greek mediopassive voice<\/h3>\n

Alright, so you have some word, such as teli\u00f3no. If you say teli\u00f3no that’s fine, you finish something. But if you are a day for example and you want to say I finish myself, you would say teli\u00f3no-e\u00edmai which has become teli\u00f3nomai<\/strong> in Greek. Thus to say the day is finishing<\/em> you could say i m\u00e9ra<\/em> teli\u00f3netai<\/strong> which would mean the day finishes itself. You could also use this to say *I wash myself* in one word and similar things. Greek uses that a lot.<\/p>\n

Now it would be fine if the endings weren’t a bit messed up so you get forms such as telionithika<\/em>, etc (I still haven’t learnt those forms fully).<\/p>\n

Also there are some words like sk\u00e9ftomai (I think), koim\u00e1mai (I sleep) or onir\u00e9vomai (I dream) which only have the passive voice and do not have active voice because if you, say, think, in the Greek mind you are doing something to yourself instead of just doing something so it’s passive.<\/p>\n

Alright, a bit annoying, but it still sometimes sounds cool and is not so hard to learn after all.<\/p>\n

Noun articles, declensions and other changes…<\/h2>\n

Nouns are things to describe objects such as apple, table, language or cucumber. In Greek, they have different genders which are actually three like in a lot of Indoeuropean languages: masculine (male), feminine (female) and neuter. Thus you have o sk\u00edlos<\/strong> for dog<\/em> (masculine), i g\u00e1ta <\/strong>for cat<\/em> (feminine) and to sp\u00edti<\/strong> for house<\/em> (neuter).<\/p>\n

These are not so very hard because they can usually be told by the ending of the word. If anything, you also have the article which is different or every gender and in the end it is okay not to get the genders right too.<\/p>\n

Now nouns, their articles and adjectives (things that describe them) all change in some ways. The good news are that these changes are not so hard. You can get a good overview of the changes in Glavkos blog-posts for masculine<\/a> masculine<\/a>, neuter<\/a>, neuter<\/a> and feminine<\/a> nouns and I have also left comments about the broad patterns I have noticed there.<\/p>\n

In summary… noun changes for you<\/h3>\n

Let’s go with o sk\u00edlos<\/strong> which is a masculine word meaning the dog<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If you want to say the house of the dog<\/em> you change you say to sp\u00edti tou sk\u00edlou<\/strong> where o sk\u00edlos<\/strong> changes to tou sk\u00edlou<\/strong>. Thats the first change<\/u> you will have.<\/p>\n

If you want to say that something is being done with the dog or use the dog with prepositions such as with, from, on, concerning, etc. you say to sk\u00edlo <\/strong>where o sk\u00edlos<\/strong> changes to\u00a0to sk\u00edlo<\/strong>. You could say, for example, tha pao me to skilo<\/strong> which means I will go with the dog <\/em>(because me<\/strong> means with<\/em>). You could also say blepo to skilo<\/strong> which means I see the dog<\/em>. That is the second change<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The third change<\/span> is when you want to call the dog where you say sk\u00ed<\/strong>l\u00e9 as in dog, come here!<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Then you have all of these three changes for the plural too (except endings in the plural usually change even less and the changes are even more predictable). You have different endings for nouns for all three genders as well as for adjectives (word such as black, good, etc.) and even articles but in the end it’s not that much. Of course, I still get a lot of the endings wrong and I haven’t memorized all of them that well but that’s not a big obstacle to speaking Greek and they come with time. The situation seems to me similar like that in German except in German you can’t tell the gender of a word by the ending whereas in Greek you usually can.<\/p>\n

My summary about nouns could be this: nouns change but not very much.<\/p>\n

Greek words<\/h2>\n

Alright, Greek words are another matter. They are usually different from English although some of them have roots in English and that is very nice.<\/p>\n

A thing is to k\u00f3smos (as in cosmos), a soul is psich\u00ed (as in psychic), vivl\u00edo (written biblio, think the Bible) – book, etc. Otherwise some of the words seem unfamiliar and I have to learn a lot of them by rote with flashcards. Here are ten random words for you from my yesterday flashcard learning so that you can find how similar – or different – they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
strength<\/td>\nsth\u00e9nos<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
wooden<\/td>\nks\u00edlinos<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
strength<\/td>\nsth\u00e9nos<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
easy, weak<\/td>\nelafr\u00eds<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
companion<\/td>\no s\u00edndrofos<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
naugty<\/td>\n\u00e1tachtos<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
beast<\/td>\no kt\u00ednos<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
leisure<\/td>\ni anapsich\u00ed<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
I stop<\/td>\np\u00e1vo<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
middle<\/td>\nm\u00e9trios<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
wind<\/td>\no \u00e1nemos<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

As you can see, not very similar. Still a few of these words look familiar (m\u00e9trios – perhaps related to meter, anapsich\u00ed – looks related to psyche). I try to learn them and use associations to remember them better which is not always easy and I keep forgetting a lot of words but I have moved on a lot as well.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

The Modern Greek language does not seem very difficult to me. Sure, there are things to learn and the words are not very familiar, etc. thus it is definitely harder to learn than say Portuguese. However, the pronunciation is not overly complicated and it is totally phonetic (what you see is what you get… unlike English), the changes in words are not so drastic as in other languages so that you can usually trace back the original form from other forms (unlike Estonian, for example) and it has been simplified a great deal since Ancient Greek so if there still are people learning Ancient Greek, Modern Greek is not that difficult and definitely learnable. That’s my conclusion so far.<\/p>\n

The Cool Thing<\/h2>\n

As far as verbs are concerned, you can use the cool Greek Verbs Online Conjugator<\/a>. Solves a lot of problems while learning. :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m over 50 days already in Greece and I have gotten a little bit used to the Greek language. I’m nowhere near good so this might contain errors but I thought I would give you all a small representation of the Greek language and what you would experience if you were around to learn it. I’m going to write mostly in Roman letters so that everybody can read it and keep it simple. Here goes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions\/1001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}