home >languages >Greek > Tips

Hints and tips

Slowed down word

To help you master the pronunciation of the words you are learning, we have included a slowed down version of each word in the familiarise stage. It will leave a large enough gap for you to repeat the word before hearing it again Try putting the familiarise stage on repeat until you think you can recognise the words

Word Genders

In English there is only one word for 'the'. In greek there are three as each word is either masculine (o), feminine (e) or neuter (to). So you will hear (o andras) for 'the man', (e yeenecka) for 'the woman' and (to pedi) for 'the child' The gender of a word in Greek is important and it will affect many things in the construction of a sentence. It's no good knowing the Greek word for something if you don't know its gender.

Adjectives

Adjectives are words that describe a thing, so in the sentence 'the small man', 'small' is the adjective as it is describing the man. In Greek it's not that simple. There are three possible words depending on the gender of the thing being described. For example, the word small is different if you want to describe a woman rather than a man. To describe a child as small you would need another word again. To keep things simple Language addicts will only ever give you the masculine form of the adjective. Most of the time you can work out what the feminine and neuter forms are once you know the masculine form. In this example, the masculine form of small is 'mikros', feminine is 'mikree' and neuter is 'mikro'. Notice that it is only the end of the word that changes.

Formal Vs Informal

In Greek there is a formal and an informal way of addressing someone. This is unlike English, where we address everyone as 'you' whether it is the Queen of England or your pet dog. When you hear a phrase in Language Addicts we will be giving you the formal or polite version of that phrase. If we have used the informal version, you will hear the word 'informal' spoken after the word