Modern Greek/LegacyLesson 11

Lesson 11: Irregular verbs, the genitive, family, the body, prepositions

=The genitive= What English expresses using possessives or the presposition "of," Greek expresses using the genitive case. The following example shows the noun σκύλος in all the subject, genitive, and object cases.

Example:

The genitive plural is easy, because it's always formed with -ων, and the article is always των.

The genitive singular is formed according to a greater variety of patterns, of which three of the most important are shown here:

Accentuation
In some nouns, when the antepenult is accented, the genitive is accented at the penult and when the penult is accented the genitive is accented at the ultimate. There is a set of rules to distinguish in which cases this happens. Most of the rules derive from Ancient Greek and have to do with either long and short vowels or Ancient Greek declensions. This is an issue with Modern Greek itself, since most of the nuances of Ancient Greek are lost in Modern Greek. People in most cases put the accent intuitively and at some instances even native speakers have great difficulty in accentuating correctly. This is why it is often said that in order to properly speak Modern Greek, one has to have at least a basic level of Ancient Greek.

The accent can also advance two positions, from antepenult to ultimate between nominative plural and genitive plural. The noun το χάδι (the caress) presents the following declensions:

Genitive indefinite article
The following list shows the indefinite article in all three of the cases covered so far:

=Genitive pronouns=

When indicating possession, the genitive pronoun follows the noun it modifies.

When greeting a person you either say Γεια σας (the polite plural) or Γεια σου (friendly address, more often than not the σου is omitted). Γεια is a short form for υγεία (health → "hygiene"). For a group of people except the abovementioned Γεια σας, the salutation Χαίρετε (rejoice) is also utilized.

When a noun followed by a possessive pronoun has the accent on the third syllable from the end, it gets a second accent on the final syllable:

In Greek, rather than saying that you like something, you say that it is pleasing to you, using the verb αρέσω:

This form is a remnant of the ancient dative case (δοτική πτώση). Something similar happens with certain prepositions (see below).

=Prepositions= The following are some common prepositions:

Examples:

If the preposition σε is followed by a definite article, the joint form στο(ν)/στη(ν)/στο (σε plus το(ν)/τη(ν)/το) is used:

As a remnant of ancient Greek's more complex case system, certain prepositions (πρό, εναντίον, εκ/εξ) are supposed to take the genitive case rather than the object (accusative) case. In these constructions, the genitive is really being used as the dative (indirect object) case, as in the use of the genitive with the verb αρέσω. This is a usage that is dying out, and a beginner doesn't need to worry about it too much. There are, however, certain fixed phrases that will seem inexplicable otherwise:

Prepositions used as prefixes
It is extremely common for Greek verbs to be formed by adding a preposition as a prefix to a simpler verb. However, the preposition may be in a different form than the ones given above, e.g., εις rather than σε. A common prefix is συν-/συμ-, from the ancient Greek preposition συν, with, together. Two other suffixes based on ancient Greek prepositions are δια, for, because of, relating to, and υπό, under (~"hypodermic").

=Family=

Vocabulary:

Examples:

Note that in Greek, a definite article is used with a person's name.

=Grimm's law= The words πατέρας and μητέρα are actually closely related to the English words mother and father. When English and Greek words are derived from the same root in their common ancestral language, Indo-European, the consonants are related as follows:

This is known as Grimm's law (after a linguist from the same family that collected the Grimm's fairy tales). Sometimes it can help you to learn words in Greek.

Examples:

In some cases, the Greek word that's cognate to the English one is ancient rather than modern. For example, brother corresponds to the ancient φρατήρ (e.g. "fraternity"), not the modern αδελφός, and door to the ancient θύρα rather than modern πόρτα (which is a loan from italian).

=Nouns in -ας and -ης=



Other than -ος, the most common endings for masculine nouns are -ας and -ης.

Ο πατέρας, the father:

Ο μαθητής, the student, pupil:

These endings are particularly common in nouns referring to professions, e.g., ο αστροναύτης, the astronaut.

=People= Vocabulary:



Examples:

=The letter ν at the end of a word=

You might have noticed above that while both ο πατέρας and ο μαθητής are masculine nouns, the definite article at the accusative (object) case is different:

There is a general rule that applies not only to the definite article but to most words ending with a ν. According to this rule if the next word does not start with a vowel or any of the voiceless plosives (κ, π, τ, ξ, ψ) then the ν is often omitted.

Thus, the avoidance of complex consonant combinations helps in producing a smooth flow of speech.

=Reading=

Vocabulary: