Lesson 3: Greek greetings and a grain of grammar
Grammar
First, I’m afraid, a bit of grammar. Learning a little bit now will make things much quicker in the long run.
Cases
Greek has a case system. This means that nouns (words that name things) change their form depending on the job they are doing in the sentence. The words only change at the ends, and so they are still easily recognisable.
The two cases we need now are the nominative and the accusative. The nominative (nom. for short) is used for the noun doing the action in an ordinary sentence, also called the ‘subject’, while the accusative (acc.) is used for the thing or person acted on, the ‘object’. So in ‘The man saw the dog’, ‘man’ is nominative, ‘dog’ accusative.
Quite often the nominative and accusative forms of a word will happen to be the same.
Genders
Greek also has a system of genders: nouns can be masculine, feminine or neuter. In principle you have to learn the gender of each noun, but there are a few big groups that you can distinguish by the endings of their nominative forms. For example:
| Ending | Gender | Example (nom.) | Example (acc.) | Meaning |
| ος | Masculine | δρο'μος | δρο'μο | road (‘hippodrome’=‘horse road’, i.e. a course for horses to run round on) |
| η | Feminine | ο'ρεξη | ο'ρεξη | appetite (‘anorexic’=‘without appetite’) |
| α | Feminine | με'ρα | με'ρα | day (‘ephemeral’=‘for the day’) |
| ο | Neuter | φαρμακει'ο | φαρμακει'ο | chemist (‘pharmacist’) |
| ι | Neuter | ταξι'δι | ταξι'δι | journey (from the same origin as ‘taxi’) |
| υ | Neuter | βρα'δυ | βρα'δυ | evening |
There are plenty of exceptions to the table above, but most are rare words. Only the first row is significantly misleading: there is a considerable number of common words ending in ος that are feminine and neuter.
Greetings
Greek has an enormous range of greetings you can use. They fall into two classes: ‘nice wishes’ and ‘health’.
Nice wishes
The formula here is to think of a noun, put it in the accusative, and prefix it by the right form of καλο'ς (nice: ‘calligraphy’ is ‘nice writing’). The form of καλο'ς depends on the gender of the noun. For masculine and neuter, use καλο'; for feminine, use καλη'. Hence:
| Noun | Meaning | Greeting | Use |
| με'ρα | day (see above) | καλη' με'ρα, καλημε'ρα | Meeting someone, starting a ’phone converstation, entering a shop, as long as it’s not too late in the day |
| εσπε'ρα | evening (‘vespers’ are in the evening) | καλησπε'ρα | Meeting someone, starting a ’phone converstation, entering a shop, in the evening |
| βρα'δυ | evening | καλο' βρα'δυ | Parting company in the evening |
| νυ'χτα | night | καλη' νυ'χτα | Parting company at night |
| βδομα'δα | week (a ‘hebdomad’ is a group of seven) | καλη' βδομα'δα | Meeting someone on a Monday, especially in business |
| μη'νας | month | καλο' μη'να | Meeting someone on the first of the month, especially in business |
| χρονια' | year (a ‘chronicle’ logs events over years) | καλη' χρονια' | As ‘happy new year’ |
| ο'ρεξη | appetite (see above) | καλη' ο'ρεξη | To someone starting a meal |
| ταξι'δι | journey (see above) | καλο' ταξι'δι | To anyone starting a journey |
| δρο'μος | road (see above) | καλο' δρο'μο | To anyone starting a journey by road, especially the driver |
As you can imagine, if the first of the month falls on a Monday, business tends to slow down slightly as every ’phone call starts with the string of greetings καλημε'ρα, καλη' βδομα'δα, καλο' μη'να.
Why the accusative? Presumably because these greetings are short for ‘I wish to you a nice day’ etc., making ‘day’ the object of ‘wish’.
Health greetings
The Greek for ‘health’ is υγει'α (as seen in ‘hygeine’), which gets shortened to γεια. This word forms the basis of:
| Greeting | Meaning | Use |
| γεια σου | health to you | As general hello or goodbye to someone young or a good friend |
| γεια σας | health to you | As general hello or goodbye to someone older or a stranger, or to a group |
| στη γεια σου | to your health | As ‘cheers’ (when drinking) to someone young or a good friend |
| στη γεια σας | to your health | As ‘cheers’ to someone older or a stranger, or to a group |
| στη γεια μας | to our health | As ‘cheers’ among a group |
In Lesson 4, we’ll see how easy it is to learn some vocabulary.
This page most recently updated Fri 4 Feb 16:49:58 GMT 2022
All trademarks used are hereby acknowledged.