Modern Greek 101

[Termital]

Anybody around that wants to learn Greek, either the language basics, or just how to speak common, useful phrases like "The underpants on the flagpole are not mine, officer"?

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Come savage aspiring GL poets!

[Dragon Phoenix]

Kalispera!

[CrystyB]

You mean "Kalispera!", don't you?

[Termital]

Kalhspera DP! Ti qa hqeleV na maqeiV prwta; Or, if you prefer:
Good evening DP! What would you like to learn first?

Grr.. I hate that I can't put accents where they belong. Still, it's better than forcing you to use a Greek codepage. Unless you have any other suggestions, I'll start with a little article on reading Greek, which is very very simple and regular, unlike languages like say, english. Spelling is another story altogether, but you after reading just one post, you will be able to read greek like your native tongue! Not that you'd understand any of it . Of course, i should finish said post first, but it should be ready by tomorrow. Feel free to ask anything that pops into your head.

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Come savage aspiring GL poets!

[CrystyB]

What's the difference (if any) in pronouncing h and e? Or q and t? (i know they're named different, but how are they differentiated when part of words?)

[Ningal]

The difference between h and e is very simple: the former is pronounced 'i', and the latter is 'e'.

In the case of q and t, the former is an interdental fricative (I don't know if you can pronounce it, some speakers of languages that have smashed it into 't' have problems, but it's the sound at the beginning of English "thin"), while the latter is a dental stop (your perfectly normal 't' sound).

Hope I haven't been too obfuscatory.

[Termital]

How to read Greek

Unlike english, the pronunciation of text is pretty much standard, and bears no exceptions.

How to pronounce letters:

A,a: like apple
B,b: like violet
G,g: like white
D,d: like then
E,e: like ever
Z,z: like zap
H,h: like pit
Q,q: like therapy
I,i: like pit
K,k: like kite
L,l: like lake
M,m: like map
N,n: like nap
X,x: like axis
O,o: like top
P,p: like pot
R,r: like ripe
S,s,V: like sing
T,t: like tap
U,u: like pit
F,f: like fan
C,c: like hope
Y,y: like snaps
W,w: like top

Certain letter combinations are pronounced diferently than the sum of their parts.Most of them are vowel combinations

ai is pronounced like ever.
ei, oi are both pronounced like pit.
ou is pronounced like poor.
au is pronounced like after ,or like avian.
eu is pronounced like effect ,or like Evelyn.

When these letters are meant to be pronounced separately, you will see a pair of dots separating the second letter of the combination from the rest placed atop the letter in lowercase. These look just like umlauts in German.

Certain consonant combinations are sometimes pronounced somewhat differently. Sadly, there is no obvious rule as to which is which. These are:

mp may be pronounced like amplification, or like book.
nt may be pronounced like ant, or like eden.
gg is usually pronounced like good, but occasionaly pronounced like wasp.

To make your pronounciation task easier, each lowercase word of more than one syllable bears a single stress. These stresses look just like acutes from french (a forward slash atop the vowel). Vowel combinations noted above always bear the stress on the second vowel. Since the symbol set does not have accented versions of characters, I will either italicise the stressed letter, or put the accent after it. A kludge, I know. Even if the text is written in capitals, take your chances knowing that only the last three syllables of a word can be stressed.

And now.. punctuation! Punctuation in greek is just like in English, with just a few exceptions:

; is the greek equivalent of the question mark.
A dot placed high is the greek version of the english ; . Again, to avoid having you load greek codepages, we'll settle for ° (this is usualy produced in Windows with Shift-Ctrl-Alt-; ).
Instead of single and double quotes, « » (Ctrl-Alt-[ and ])are the symbols you'll see. You may be happy to know that a generation of 80's computers with bad language support have done their damndest to make sure that we convert to the english standard with quotes, but they persist.


I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you how to read numbers and dates. In short, like all the rest of the non-English-speaking world. Thousand separators are dots, decimal separators are commas. Dates are writen in dd/mm/yy format.

That's all ! Yes, I know it looks like a lot, but it's actually very standard and straightforward. Now that you know how to pronounce tham, any common, useful phrases you'd like to know? You know, stuff like:
"This is not my luggage!" - «Aute¢V den ei¢nai oi aposkeue¢V mou!»,
"Where can I find a cab?" - «Pou mporw¢ na brw taxi¢;»,
"This luxury sailboat's rudder has been constructed from carbon fiber." - «To phda¢lio autou¢ tou polutelou¢V istiofo¢rou e¢cei kataskeuasqei¢ apo¢ anqrakonh¢mata.» and
"Get lost!" - «Aei ca¢sou!».

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Come savage aspiring GL poets!

[Termital]

Common greetings and phrases:

Hi/Bye: Geia
How are you?: PwV ei¢sai;/(formal) PwV ei¢(sa)ste;
My ulcer is killing me! : To e¢lkoV mou me peqai¢nei!
Good morning: Kalhme¢ra
Good evening: Kalhspe¢ra
Good night: Kalhnu¢cta
Thanks: Eucaristw¢
Thank you very much: SaV eucaristw¢ polu¢
please/response to a thank you: Parakalw¢
Yes: Nai
No: ¢Oci
I said no!: Ei¢pa o¢ci!
Are you deaf?: Ei¢sai koufo¢V;
I hope you learned your lesson: Elpi¢zw na e¢maqeV to ma¢qhma sou

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Come savage aspiring GL poets!

[CrystyB]

Geia?? Do you respect Mother Earth that much?

Ow and since i think you didn't fully answer my question, i was talking about similar sounds written using different letters. I just knew both h and e were e's: e-ta and ep-si-lon. But if you say h is i, that raises a bigger mess: there are three letters read "like in pit". Could you give more details? And on the same note, (just out of curiosity) are there rules as to when to use s and when to use V? They're both sigma although the latter looks too much like dzeta (z)...

And also i thought d was d, not "then"...

All in all, thanks a lot; i'll print that and might as well try to practice some time...

[Ningal]

Geia may or may not be a shortened/reduced form of a wish for good health (with the initial u- destressed and then removed). The form is all wrong, I think, for it to be referring to gh or Gaia.

Yes, there's a lot of redundancy in the writing system these days, largely because it's so conservative with respect to pronunciation and because it's been around so long. The choice of one way of writing a sound over another is purely etymological, so unless you're intimately familiar with the ancient language, words basically have to be memorized by spelling (or at least along with it).

In Olden Days, h was a long e, while e was a short one. Now there's been a bunch of sound shifts, and it's not just three letters that give the 'i' sound, there are also several digraphs that do the same - ei, oi, and ui that I can think of offhand.

Lowercase sigma is s under most circumstances and V at the end of a word.

Edited because I forgot something: The old voiced stops (b, d and g) used to be exactly that, being pronounced b, d, and g, respectively, but they've all been spirantized since Olden Days. They are, in fact, now pronounced v, voiced th, and like Arabic gh (much easier to demonstrate than to explain in an English-speaking environment).

Personally, this may just be a Cretan dialect thing, or I may just be American and ignorant, but I've never heard gg pronounced like w, only single g. Also, it seems Termy forgot a digraph: gk is phonetically equivalent to gg and can be pronounced ng (with hard/stopped g), nk, or g, depending on speaker and environment. For some odd reason, it can appear at the beginning of a word, while gg can't, so it's the preferred way of writing the g sound in foreign and borrowed words.

In a similar vein, all the old nasal/voiceless-stop combinations alternate in pronunciation the same way - mp may be rendered as mp, mb, or b and nt as nt, nd, or d. Don't worry too much at first about which pronunciation to use; the variation is complex and chaotic, and you should be understood pretty much no matter which of the three you go with.

[This message has been edited by Ningal (edited 01-27-2003 03:13 AM).]

[Termital]

In ancient greek, H was a long(double) E, omega was a long o. Also, Y was pronounced like U. D was pronounced like dean and like then. It also used a larger 26 character alphabet, from which came the 25-letter Latin one with only minor changes(yes, 25, J does not exist in latin). The extra characters were something I think is called copa (not kappa), and digamma, which looks just like the name suggests - one gamma atop another, of in other words an F. These letters never saw much use, and were eventually replaced. You may not even find them in ancient greek texts, because most copiers followed suit in removing them. There are quite a lot to be found on archaelogical sites and finds though.

When lowercase characters were introduced into the language, it quickly became obvious that, in cursive writing, writing a clean s at the end of the word was difficult. So it got switched to something closer to the latin version of s, namely V. V is always used only at the end of the word, s is used everywhere but there.

In modern greek, i,h,u,oi,ei are all pronounced like tip.e,ai are both like bet. Yes, that's a hell to spell. Unlike english though, where spelling is pretty much arbitrary, greece is a highly structured language, and one where the roots of words are easily obvious, so you eventually figure it out. Actually, the closest thing to greek grammar is the german one, so the germans amidst you will feel at ease should they try to pick up the language.

And geia comes from the word ugei¢a, meaning health, not Gaia, the ancient greek earth goddess, or gh, which means earth.

Keep them coming!

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Come savage aspiring GL poets!

[Termital]

Pah, in between checking the thread and posting (a proccess in which I normally engage offline) Ningal posted, was much more eloquent, and of course correct too. Maybe I should leave the task to him. It should be noted that I am only writing these as a casual speaker, whose strong interests in school were math, physics and the like. I would hardly know the terminology to describe grammar and syntax in greek, much less english, so bear with me when I describe everything with an example. The w, for example, is the closest I can get to the gamma sound, which I can only describe something far cleaner, shorter and drier than w. Still, I'll try my best. And I can always count on Ningal to outdo me .

[Ningal]

*koitazei proV allou kai sfurizei, me teleia aqwothta sto proswpo*

[This message has been edited by Ningal (edited 01-29-2003 12:55 AM).]

[Termital]

or, *Looks towards elsewhere and whistles, with perfect innocence on face*
Odd in either language really, but perhaps I'm missing some sort of quote or reference. New lesson coming up shortly.

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Come savage aspiring GL poets!

[Ningal]

(no, i was just being unidiomatic because my Greek skills failed me miserably at that point and English wold hardly have been appropriate)

(and now you know why leaving this all to me would have been a Patently Bad Idea)