Learn how to write taf and yota
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
| Hi everybody, this is Stefania! Welcome to GreekPod101.com’s Alfaveeto made easy. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn the Greek alphabet: the alfaveeto! |
| In our previous lesson, we learnt two letters, “Alpha” and “Mee”. Remember them? Good! In this lesson we’ll move on to two more letters, see how they are written, and what we can do with them! |
| Our first letter this time is “Taf” –a consonant, and its sound is “t”. You may have heard it called “tau”, which is its usual name in English. I’m sure its uppercase form will seem very familiar since it is the same as the English “T” |
| This is what Taf looks like in uppercase and lowercase: |
| Here is Taf in uppercase. You should already be an expert at this shape! |
| It is handwritten like this: T |
| And this is what the lowercase Taf looks like when it’s printed. I think it’s easier than the lowercase “t” in English since it’s just an uppercase “T” but smaller! |
| When it is handwritten, the shape looks a little different -- like this: |
| τ |
| Let’s do it again- Here’s the uppercase form: Τ |
| And here’s the lowercase form: τ |
| Did you get it? I’m sure you already knew how to write this, didn’t you? |
| Let's move on to our second letter for this lesson. This is a vowel that you may have heard called Iota. In Greek, though it is called “Yota” and it makes the sound “ee”. Again, this will look very familiar since its appearance is the same as the English “I”. Here’s what Yota looks like in uppercase and lowercase: |
| This is what the uppercase Yota looks like –as I said before, it’s exactly the same as the English “I”. |
| It is handwritten like this: I |
| And this is what the lowercase Yota looks like. Notice how the bottom curves slightly when it is handwritten. |
| ι |
| Let’s do it again- Here’s the uppercase form: I |
| And here’s the lowercase form: ι |
| All these were pretty easy, weren’t they? Let’s see what we can do with them. By themselves, Taf and Yota spell only one word in Greek: “τι”. Even though it’s a very small word, it’s very important and used all the time in Greek because it means “what”! For example the first word in the question “τι ώρα είναι;” which means “what time is it?”. Other examples of its use are “τι θα φάμε;” or “what will we eat?”. This word is also used in “τι κάνεις;” which means “how are you?” |
| [H screen] |
| So, let’s write this very important two-letter word! |
| τι |
| Since these were super-easy, let’s try something using the all four letters we know. Do you remember the first two? They were Alpha and Mee, right? Let’s see them once again! |
| And if we put these together with Taf and Yota, what do we have? “μάτι” (“mati”) which means “eye”. Easy, huh? And if we add another Alpha in the end, we get “μάτια” (“matia”) which is the plural of “eye”: “eyes”. Let’s write this together! |
| ματια |
| Now it's time for Stefania’s insights. |
| As we said in our previous lesson, the best way to master the Alfaveeto, the Greek alphabet is by writing it as much as you can. So please, don’t neglect this! |
| Another great help would be to start trying to recognize the letters you’ve learned so far in Greek texts; if you can’t find any texts, you can always check out the transcripts on GreekPod101.com’s Advanced Audio Blog lessons. Don’t worry if you can’t understand the words yet, you *will* be able to practice recognizing the letters you’re learning here! |
| That’s it for this lesson! Do you know how to write “OK” in Greek? Check our next lesson and see for yourselves (hint, it won’t be difficult). |
| See you in the next Alfaveeto made easy lesson! Ya hara! |
Comments
Hide