Learn how to ask "When?"
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| 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 ask "Where" questions in Greek. |
| This time, we are going to ask "When" questions. |
| You want to know when your roommate is coming back home. You can ask him Pote tha gyriseis sto spiti? |
| So let’s break down this question. |
| First we had “pote”, which is the basic translation of "When" in Greek. |
| “tha gyriseis” is the verb "to come back", gyrizo, in the second person future tense. You may remember that we mentioned this verb in our lesson about the verb erchomai, meaning “come”. |
| Then we have “sto”, which is a contraction, or as we say in grammar terms a “syneresis”, between the preposition “se” and the article “to”. “Se” expresses the concept of location such as “at”, “in”, “on” and “to the”. Such contractions between “se” and articles show us the direction of movement or location in general. |
| Then finally we have “spiti” which is "home." |
| So, altogether it is “Pote tha gyriseis sto spiti?” |
| "When will you come back home?" |
| So in Greek, "When" is generally translated as the word Pote. So, if you want to ask "When were you born?" you would say Pote gennithikes? |
| [slowly] Pote gennithikes? |
| Let’s have a look at another example. |
| How can you say "When did you arrive?" |
| It is really simple because it’s exactly the same pattern - Pote eftases? |
| First we have Pote, which is "When" |
| The second word is eftases which is the verb ftáno in second person past tense. |
| Pote eftases? |
| You can also ask a question about duration like "Since when have you been a teacher?" Apo pote eisai daskalos? |
| To make the phrase "since when" we say apo pote in Greek. Apo means “from”. So, a literal translation would be “from when have you been a teacher?” |
| How about "Until when?" in Greek? The pattern is the same as “since when”, but instead of apo we use either mechri or os, which both mean “until”. |
| So for example, if you want to ask a friend "Until when are you going to stay here?" you could say either Os pote tha meineis edo? Or Mechri pote tha meineis edo? |
| Of course there are other ways to ask about time. You can even be more specific by asking about the year or the date. |
| For example, you can ask- |
| - "Which year did you start working?" which will be “Poion chrono archises na douleveis?” and |
| - "Which day do you prefer?" which will be |
| Poia mera protimas? |
| Now it’s time for Chrissi’s Insights. |
| There is one pronunciation detail that I should stress – be careful that the accent goes on the first syllable, POte. If you put the accent on the second syllable, for example poTE, it won’t make much sense since this is another word meaning “never” in Greek!Please remember this! |
| In this lesson, we learned how to correctly use the Greek word for "When", pote. In our next lesson, we’ll learn about asking questions with "Who" in Greek. |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next “Ελληνικά σε 3 λεπτά” lesson! |
| Geia sas! |
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