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Lesson Transcript

Geia, legomai Chrissi Hi everybody! I’m Chrissi.
Welcome to GreekPod101.com’s “Ελληνικά σε 3 λεπτά”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Greek.
In the last lesson, we learned how to use Greek adjectives.
In this lesson we will start a series dedicated to the most common Greek verbs, the ones you will definitely hear all the time!
The first verb in our series will be pigaino, which means "to go". So let's go!
Imagine you run into a friend on the street and he asks you Pou pigaineis? That's an informal way to ask "Where are you going?".
So if, for example, you are going shopping you will say:
Pigaino gia psonia.
So let’s break down this answer.
First we had-
Pigaino which is "I am going to..." This is the first person form of the verb pigaino, "to go", in the present tense.
After it was gia which is a way to indicate the reason we are going somewhere; it is equivalent to the English "for".
And finally we had psonia which is a noun that means “shopping”.
Notice that even though in English we use the personal pronoun “I”, in Greek we usually don’t because it’s implied.
Psonia is a neuter noun and it’s always used in the plural. Even though nouns usually go with their respective articles, definite or indefinite, in this case, the article is not used.
So what happens in other cases? Let’s say for example that you want to say “I’m going to the office”. In Greek this is Pigaino sto grafeio and here we use the preposition sto that signifies movement or direction. Similar phrases are “I’m going to the cinema” (Pigaino sto sinema), “I’m going to school” (Pigaino sto scholeio) or “I’m going home” (Pigaino sto spiti). Let’s see them once more together...
Pigaino sto grafeio.
Pigaino sto sinema.
Pigaino sto scholeio
Pigaino sto spiti.
Now it’s time for Chrissi’s Insights.
Even though the verb “go” is pigaino, in everyday conversations, Greeks also use a shorter form of the verb: pao. So if you hear a sentence like Pao sto scholeio, don't worry -- it means the same thing as Pigaino sto scholeio - "I go to school." Since Greek has many long words, these substitutions are very common, and even though some people think they make the language difficult, I believe they make it easier!
So, in this lesson, we learned how to use the verb pigaino.
Next time, we’ll learn another very useful verb, kano.
Do you know what this verb means? Check the next “Ελληνικά σε 3 λεπτά” lesson and find out!
Geia sas!

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